New York: A researcher of Indian origin, Eshan Chattopadhyay, who is an associate professor at Cornell University, has been awarded the 2025 Godel Prize, one of the most prestigious prizes in theoretical computer science. He is jointly honored with David Zuckerman, a professor at the University of Texas at Austin.
Their prize-winning paper, titled "Explicit TwoSource Extractors and Resilient Functions", was first presented in 2016 and later published in the Annals of Mathematics in 2019.
Chattpadhyay and Zuckerman’s paper constructs an explicit two-source extractor with polylogarithmic min-entropy, resolving a central problem in the theory of computation that had been open for almost three decades.
Extractors help generate reliable random data for computers, which is essential in fields like cryptography, secure communication, algorithms, and complex systems. Their contribution paves the way for better-designed systems and stronger cyber safety tools.
Chattopadhyay and Zuckerman will receive the award in Prague at STOC2025, held from June 23 to 27.
Eshan Chattopadhyay earned his PhD from the University of Texas at Austin under David Zuckerman in 2016. He later joined Cornell in 2018 after postdoctoral work at IAS Princeton and Simons Institute, Berkeley. Zuckerman has been a leader in pseudorandomness research since the 1990s.
