Six Researchers Receive Infosys Prize 2026

The Infosys Science Foundation announced six winners of the Infosys Prize 2026 in Bengaluru on November 12, 2026.

Prize categories and award

The prize covers Economics; Engineering and Computer Science; Humanities and Social Sciences; Life Sciences; Mathematical Sciences; and Physical Sciences. Each laureate receives a gold medal, a citation and USD 100,000, or its equivalent in Indian rupees. Since 2024, the prize has recognised researchers under the age of 40.

The 2026 laureates

Karthik Sastry, Associate Professor at Princeton University, received the Economics prize for work on climate change, technological innovation and business cycle fluctuations. Swarun Kumar, Assistant Professor at Carnegie Mellon University, won for pioneering work in low-power wireless networks. Gautam Bhatia, Adjunct Professor at Jindal Global Law School, was recognised for work on constitutional law. Isha Jain of the University of California, San Francisco, received the Life Sciences prize for research in oxygen biology. Riddhipratim Basu, Associate Professor at ICTS-TIFR in Bangalore, was honoured for contributions to probability theory and statistical physics. Manoj Kumar Joshi, Assistant Professor at Singapore University of Technology and Design, received the Physical Sciences prize for work with trapped ions and programmable quantum machines.

Important Facts for Exams

• Qubit storage and transport: In trapped-ion quantum computers, electromagnetic fields confine ions; qubits occupy stable electronic states, while collective ion motion can transfer quantum information.
• Laser-mediated gates: Lasers drive single-qubit operations by coupling qubit states, or entangle ions by coupling their internal states to external motional states.
• Unified probability framework: Measure-theoretic probability handles discrete, continuous and mixed distributions within one framework, with the choice of measure accounting for their differences.