ITHACA, N.Y. (Diya TV) — Eshan Chattopadhyay, associate professor of computer science at Cornell University and alumnus of IIT Kanpur, has been awarded the 2025 Gödel Prize—one of theoretical computer science’s most prestigious honors. He shares the prize with his Ph.D. advisor, David Zuckerman, professor at the University of Texas at Austin, for their groundbreaking research on randomness extraction.
Their award-winning paper, “Explicit Two-Source Extractors and Resilient Functions,” addresses a major problem in pseudorandomness that had remained unsolved for nearly three decades. The research introduces a method for converting two weak, unpredictable sources of randomness into one strong, reliable one. This solution opens new doors in complexity theory, cryptography, and secure computing.
Imagine flipping a lopsided coin—it still gives unpredictable results, but the randomness is biased. For decades, computer scientists struggled to find a way to extract truly random bits from such flawed sources. Chattopadhyay and Zuckerman’s technique finally cracked this problem.
“Our goal felt almost out of reach when we began,” said Chattopadhyay in a Cornell press release. “We had no idea if our approach would succeed. It’s amazing to see it recognized in this way.”
The result, first presented at the ACM Symposium on Theory of Computing (STOC) in 2016, won the Best Paper award. It was later published in the Annals of Mathematics in 2019—a rare crossover between computer science and pure mathematics.
The new method also uses less computing power than previous models, which could improve the security of everything from credit card encryption to military-grade communications.
Chattopadhyay earned his bachelor’s degree in computer science from IIT Kanpur in 2011. He completed his Ph.D. at UT Austin in 2016 under Zuckerman’s guidance. Before joining Cornell in 2018, he held research roles at Microsoft Research, UC Berkeley’s Simons Institute, and the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton.
His recent accolades include the NSF CAREER Award (2021), Sloan Research Fellowship (2023), and the NSF CISE Research Initiation Initiative (2019). In 2024, Cornell promoted him to associate professor in recognition of his research and teaching excellence.
At Cornell, he continues to work on pseudorandomness, circuit complexity, and communication theory, areas crucial to advancing computing foundations.
The Gödel Prize, named after legendary logician Kurt Gödel, is awarded annually by the ACM Special Interest Group on Algorithms and Computation Theory (SIGACT) and the European Association for Theoretical Computer Science. It celebrates work that makes a lasting impact in theoretical computer science.
In a celebratory post, the Dean of Resources and Alumni at IIT Kanpur called the award “a significant breakthrough in pseudorandomness and explicit constructions” and praised Chattopadhyay’s achievement as “another shining milestone” for the IITK alumni network.
“This recognition is truly an incredible honor,” said Chattopadhyay. “The Gödel Prize has celebrated some of the most beautiful and foundational work in our field. It’s surreal to see our work among them.”
The paper’s influence stretches far beyond academic theory. It lays the groundwork for more robust security systems and sharper algorithms. Chattopadhyay’s work not only answers a longstanding theoretical question but also paves the way for real-world advances in cybersecurity and computing reliability.
His journey—from Kanpur to Cornell, and from student to award-winning researcher—illustrates the power of curiosity, collaboration, and persistence in solving the hardest problems in computer science.
