Madhu Sudan (Tamil: மதுசூதன்) (born September 12, 1966) is an Indian computer scientist, professor of computer science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and a member of MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. He was awarded the Rolf Nevanlinna Prize at the 24th International Congress of Mathematicians in 2002. The prize recognizes outstanding work in the mathematical aspects of computer science. Sudan was honored for his work in advancing the theory of probabilistically checkable proofs—a way to recast a mathematical proof in computer language for additional checks on its validity—and developing error-correcting codes. For the same work, he received the ACM's Distinguished Doctoral Dissertation Award in 1993 and the Gödel Prize in 2001. Madhu Sudan has made important contributions to several areas of theoretical computer science, including probabilistically checkable proofs, non-approximability of optimization problems, and error-correcting codes. His work is characterized by brilliant insights and wide-ranging interests. Madhu Sudan was born in Madras (Chennai), India. He received his bachelor's degree in computer science from IIT Delhi in 1987 and his doctoral degree in computer science at the University of California, Berkeley in 1992. He was a research staff member at the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, New York from 1992 to 1997.
