The 6 outstanding winners of the Infosys Prize

Infosys Chairman Emeritus N R Narayana Murthy said on Wednesday the company was open to increasing the number of prize categories for scientists depending on returns it gets from its corpus.

He, however, said there was no such proposal as of now.

"Right now we are focussed on five prize categories, but depending upon the returns that we get from the corpus and recommendations given by various people, including jury chairs, board of trustees of Infosys Science Foundation will meet and consider from time-to-time (to increase prize categories)," he told reporters in Bengaluru.

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As on date, there was no such proposal but the company has an open mind to consider increasing prize categories, he said.

To a question, Infosys board of directors member Mohandas Pai said the company has no plan of giving research grant to young talent from the corpus, but wants to create new 'science heroes' by interacting with Infosys prize-winning scientists.

"At the end of the day, a true measure of any country's wealth depends on the wealth of scientists it boasts of," Pai said.

Earlier, Infosys Science Foundation announced 2011 prize winners across five categories.

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Former President A P J Abdul Kalam would felicitate prize winners Kalyan Deb (Engineering and Computer Science), Imran Siddiqi (Life Sciences), Kannan Soundarajan (Mathematical Sciences), Sriram Ramaswamy (Physical Sciences), Raghuram G Rajan (Economics) and Pratap Bhanu Mehta (Political Science and International Relations) in Bengaluru on January 9, 2012.

Each winner would receive a 22-carat gold medallion, a citation and Rs 50 lakh (Rs 5 million) in recognition of their outstanding contribution to scientific research, Pai said.