I am a Professor of Computer Science at Harvard. My research is in the theories of computation and communication. I am very interested in understanding the many ways in which communication or computation can go wrong (i.e., have errors), and how to correct all such errors.
My Bulletin Board:
• I will be on sabbatical in Fall 2025. You can still reach me by email though responses may be delayed if I am traveling.
• I am chairing the Trevisan Prize 2025 search committee. Please send nominations. Instructions here.
• Of interest to Harvard CS students only: A DGS FAQ related to my past role as Director of grad studies. A Quals FAQ.
Madhu Sudan
Gordon McKay Professor of Computer Science Harvard John A. Poulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences
Member of Theory of Computation Group
Some TOC pointers :
Address:
Harvard SEC #3.434,
150 Western Ave,
Boston, MA 02134.
madhu at cs dot harvard dot edu
Research interests
Communication & Computing, Coding theory, Property Testing, Algebra in Computation.
Teaching
I am on sabbatical leave in Fall 2025. Here are courses I’ve taught previously.
Books/Monographs
- Efficient checking of polynomials …, (Ph.D. Thesis)
- Complexity Classification of Boolean Constraint Satisfaction Problems (with Nadia Creignou and Sanjeev Khanna)
- Essential Coding Theory (with Venkatesan Guruswami and Atri Rudra)
Professional activities
- Foundations and Trends in Theoretical Computer Science (Founding Editor)
- Theory of Computing (Editor)
- Electronic Colloquium on Computational Complexity (Scientific Committee)
- Starkware (Scientific Advisor)
Students
Current Students
- Prashanth Amireddy (co-advised with Salil Vadhan)
- Cassandra Marcussen
- Aaron (Louie) Putterman (co-advised with Salil Vadhan).
Former Students
- Yevgeniy Dodis (2000)
- Venkatesan Guruswami (2001)
- Eric Lehman (2002)
- Ryan O’Donnell (2003)
- Misha Alekhnovich (2003)
- Prahladh Harsha (2004)
- Adam Smith (2004)
- April Rasala Lehman (2005)
- Sergey Yekhanin (2007)
- Victor Chen (2009)
- Elena Grigorescu (2010)
- Brendan Juba (2010)
- Swastik Kopparty (2010)
- Ben Rossman (2010)
- Shubhangi Saraf (2011)
- Alan Guo (2015)
- Mohammad Bavarian (2017)
- Badih Ghazi (2018)
- Pritish Kamath (2019)
- Preetum Nakkiran (2021)
- Mitali Bafna (2022)
- Santhoshini Velusamy (2023)
- Jenny Kaufmann (2025, primary advisor was Virginia Vassilevska Williams)
Postdocs
- Luca Trevisan (1997)
- Salil Vadhan (1998)
- Lars Engebretsen (2000)
- Eli Ben-Sasson (2001-2003)
- Amir Shpilka (2002)
- Julia Chuzhoy (2004-2006)
- Tali Kaufman (2007-2009)
- Jakob Nordström (2008-2010)
- Elad Haramaty (2016-2017)
- Mrinal Kumar (2017-2018)
- Huacheng Yu (2017-2019)
- Omri Ben-Eliezer (2020-2021)
- Amirbehshad Shahrasbi (2020-2021)
- Sumegha Garg (2020-2022)