Infosys Prize 2026 goes to six researchers under 40, each worth $100,000

The Infosys Science Foundation on Thursday named the six winners of the Infosys Prize 2026, one in each of six fields, in an announcement made in Bengaluru. Each laureate receives a gold medal, a citation and a purse of $100,000 or its equivalent in rupees.

The winners are an economist at Princeton, an engineer at Carnegie Mellon, a law scholar based in India and Australia, a biologist in San Francisco, a mathematician in Bengaluru and a physicist in Singapore.

The six laureates

In economics, the prize goes to Karthik Sastry of Princeton University, an associate professor of economics and public affairs. The foundation cited his work on climate change, technological innovation and business cycle fluctuations.

In engineering and computer science, Swarun Kumar, an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at Carnegie Mellon University, was recognised for low-power wireless networks that go beyond delivering data to perceiving and acting in the physical world.

In humanities and social sciences, the winner is Gautam Bhatia, an adjunct professor at Jindal Global Law School and a Green Fellow at the University of New South Wales, Sydney. A report on the announcement describes his contribution as being to constitutional law.

In life sciences, Isha Jain, an associate investigator at the Gladstone Institutes and an assistant professor of biochemistry at the University of California, San Francisco, was honoured for oxygen biology. Her work showed that tissue damage in some mitochondrial diseases comes from excess oxygen rather than from a failure of energy production. She has also developed a small molecule to lower oxygen levels and vitamin-based treatments for inherited metabolic disorders.

In mathematical sciences, Riddhipratim Basu, an associate professor at ICTS-TIFR in Bengaluru, won for work in probability theory.

In physical sciences, Manoj Kumar Joshi, an experimental physicist and assistant professor at the Singapore University of Technology and Design, was honoured for trapped-ion experiments that enable quantum simulation.

Who announced it

The winners were announced by the foundation’s trustees: Srinath Batni, president of the Board of Trustees, K Dinesh, Kris Gopalakrishnan, Pratima Murthy and S D Shibulal. N R Narayana Murthy addressed the audience in a recorded message. The laureates were chosen by an international panel of jurors, made up of scholars and experts in each field.

“Recognizing exceptional researchers early in their careers is particularly important.”

Source: Srinath Batni, President, Infosys Science Foundation, November 12, 2026

How the prize has changed

The Infosys Science Foundation is a not-for-profit trust set up in 2009 and gives the prize every year. Since 2024 the prize has been confined to researchers under 40, a change meant to recognise talent early in a career. Reports on this year’s announcement note that past laureates have gone on to win honours such as the Nobel Prize, the Fields Medal and the MacArthur Fellowship.

That early focus shows in this year’s list. Five of the six laureates hold assistant or associate professorships, and four work outside India: at Princeton, Carnegie Mellon, UCSF with the Gladstone Institutes, and the Singapore University of Technology and Design. Basu is based at ICTS-TIFR in Bengaluru, and Bhatia is attached to Jindal Global Law School as well as to the University of New South Wales.

What it means for the winners

The $100,000 purse is the same in every category, so a mathematician and a lawyer are rewarded equally with an economist or a physicist. The prize is awarded for work already done, and the citations point to long-running research programmes: climate and technology in economics, oxygen and mitochondrial disease in biology, trapped-ion quantum simulation in physics.

What happens next

The foundation has not said in the announcement when the prize will be presented. The medal, citation and purse go to the six laureates at that event.