Madhu Sudan, principal researcher at Microsoft Research New England and Adjunct Professor in the EECS Department and the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab at MIT is recipient of the Infosys Prize 2014 in Mathematical Sciences.
Sudan is sited for his seminal contribution to probabilistically checkable proofs (PCPs). The PCP Theorem has been hailed as one of the most fundamental contributions of theoretical computer science. Sudan’s work on list-decoding opened up the possibility of correcting far larger numbers of errors in data than previously thought possible — bringing new vigor and advances to the field. The focus of Prof. Sudan's work has been on how to efficiently extract useful information from data that has errors. This theme has wide-ranging applications: from theoretical (e.g., how to verify a proof) to practical (e.g., how to recover correct data stored on a CD when it gets scratched).
A congratulatory message from Infosys Jury Chair Srinivasa S. R. Varadhan states: "The jury was quite impressed by your work over the years covering different areas of theoretical computer science. Probabilistic proof checking is an important tool in the verification of algorithms making sure that programs work correctly and do what they are supposed to do. Your work in coding has resulted in better error-correcting codes that significantly impacts electronic communication and encryption. The panel is very glad to turn to theoretical computer science and choose you as the recipient."
Prior to joining Microsoft Research New England in 2009, Prof. Madhu Sudan joined the MIT faculty in 1997 — where among other roles he served as an Associate Director of MIT's CSAIL from 2007-2009. He received his PhD from the University of California, Berkeley in 1992. His current research interests include semantic communication and property testing.
Sudan has won many awards for his work during his distinguished career, including the ACM Distinguished Doctoral Dissertation (1993), the Godel Prize (2001), and the Rolf Nevanlinna Prize (2002). He is a fellow of ACM and of American Mathematical Society.
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