Madhu Sudan, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, received the 2002 Rolf Nevanlinna Prize, which recognizes outstanding work in the mathematical aspects of computer science. 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.
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 on Sept. 12, 1966 in Madras(Chennai), India. He received his bachelor's degree in computer science from the Indian Institute of Technology in New Delhi in 1987 and his doctoral degree in computer science at the University of California at 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. He is currently an associate professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.