Research is the only means we have to make India a better nation: N R Narayana Murthy

Founder of IT services major Infosys and Trustee of the Infosys Science Foundation, N R Narayana Murthy, has called for building an ecosystem that nurtures research and turns India into a nation that is aspirational and provides a meritocratic, competitive, welcoming, and rewarding place for researchers.  

 In his keynote address at the Infosys Science Foundation Prize 2025, he said that science and research are not luxuries but necessities for human survival, dignity, and progress. “Creating such an ecosystem for research is our unfailing duty because, ultimately, research is the only means we have to make India a better nation, and this world a better world,” he added. As a welfare state, with India’s vision to reach the poorest child in the remotest village to have good access to nutrition, healthcare, shelter, education and an opportunity to lead a fulfilling life. “Research is humanity’s noblest collective enterprise. It demands courage, persistence, and imagination. It bridges science and society, reason and values, and ethics and dignity,” Murthy said.  

Particularly in the IT services sector, Salil Parekh, CEO & MD of Infosys, said that years of research into Artificial Intelligence, especially in building foundational models and data analysis, are now yielding results. “A lot of that AI is building new ways of doing work within our clients, and we will see more and more growth supported by what we are seeing in AI services, across tech services in Infosys,” Parekh said.  

 Infosys Prize 2025  

Infosys Science Foundation, the not-for-profit trust that awards annual prizes in six categories, has named the winners for 2025. Across the six categories, in Economics, Engineering and Computer Science, Nikhil Agarwal, Paul A. Samuelson Professor of Economics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Sushant Sachdeva, Associate Professor (CSC) of Mathematical and Computational Sciences at the University of Toronto, were awarded the prize, respectively.

In Humanities and Social Sciences and Life Sciences, Andrew Ollett, Associate Professor in the Department of South Asian Languages and Civilizations at the University of Chicago—who is the world’s foremost scholar of the Prakrit languages in this generation—and Anjana Badrinarayanan, Associate Professor at the National Centre for Biological Sciences, Bangalore, for her research in understanding mechanisms of genome maintenance and repair won the prize in respective categories.

Sabyasachi Mukherjee, Associate Professor at the School of Mathematics at Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai whose work has implications across physics, fluid dynamics, and data science was awarded in Mathematical Sciences category, while California Institute of Technology (Caltech)’s Professor of Chemical Engineering, Karthish Manthiram won the prize in the Physical Sciences category for his research in electrified chemical manufacturing which could help in efficient synthesis of chemicals that are fundamental to agriculture and industry.

Infosys Prize money consists of $100,000, and its earlier laureates include Nobel Prize winner Abhijit Banerjee, the Fields medal winner Manjul Bhargava, the Dan David Prize winner Sanjay Subrahmanyam, the MacArthur ‘genius’ Grant and British Academy Book Prize winner Sunil Amrith, and the Marconi Prize winner Hari Balakrishnan, among others.