ET AWARD............... CORPORATE CITIZEN

Making Science and Maths More Fun   Two entities, Infosys Science Foundation and Infosys Foundation, USA, both of recent vintage, are driving the CSR activities of Infosys into an esoteric yet critical realm rarely explored by corporates -science and maths. The company had steered its CSR initiatives through the Infosys Foundation with its focus on traditional issues and challenges. They continue to remain on the CSR radar, but what's galvanising Infosys is the new thrust on evangelising science and maths across educational, social and professional  hierarchies, across geographies. The ET Awards jury was impressed with the `quality of its effort', coupled with the scale. In 2014-15, Infosys spent `243 crore, or around 2% of its profits, on CSR. The multifaceted approach is clearly catalysing an ecosystem in overhauling the understanding, teaching and research in these subjects. Over the past year, academic and research campuses of all hues from the elite TIFR and the IITs to simple assemblies of wideeyed school children have attended lectures by some of the brightest minds in the world, mostly jurors and awardees of the Infosys Prize, seeking to inspire and attract youngsters into the scientific fold. The prize was set up with an endowment of `100 crore. An Infosys Prize awardee Manjul Bharg ava, professor at Princeton University and winner of the 2014 Fields Medal, has been striving to resurrect interest in the mathematical sciences here like never before. Bhargava, a number theorist -and an accomplished tabla player -has a knack for blending Sanskrit, music and magic while discussing maths with young audiences. Another compatriot, Madhu Sudan, principal researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the US and winner of the 2014 Infosys Prize, had also been doing the rounds of Indian institutions. He would like to change the way maths is taught in India, by rote, and thinks `mathematics deserves a better chance to come out of the shadows'. The ISF is helping this to happen. NR Narayana Murthy , a trustee of the ISF, is certain that solutions to our developmental challenges can come only when youngsters think critically . He says: “We need to train students to translate what they  imbibe in the classroom into an understanding of the natural and physical phenomena of science as well as of human behaviour.“ In September 2014, the Infosys Foundation identified Chennai Mathematical Institute (CMI) as one of the few institutions that can take the research agenda forward and constituted a corpus of `30 crore  to enhance faculty compensation and support fellowships. The Infosys Foundations' efforts at evangelising science and maths transcend borders with its partnership with the International Mathematics Union and the New York Academy of Sciences. In April, the Infosys Foundation, USA, announced a programme with Code.org to expand computer science education to students in the US. It includes professional development of teachers, curriculum development and social outreach. The initiative hopes to reach out to 350 middle and high school teachers  in the US. In India, the ISF has set up the Gnanadeepa workshops for similar purposes. It has trained 680 middle school science and maths teachers  in rural Karnataka .Evangelising mathematics is, therefore, not restricted to higher learning institutes only .For the Infosys foundations, it starts right at the grassroots -at the school levels.

ET19OCT15