The Special Interest Group on Algorithms and Computation Theory (ACM SIGACT) announced on Monday (October 9) the awarding of the 2025 Gödel Prize to Eshan Chattopadhyay, an associate professor at Cornell University, and his advisorDavid Zuckerman. They received this honor for their seminal 2016 paper, Explicit Two-Source Extractors and Resilient Functions, which solved a nearly thirty-year-old open problem in theoretical computer science and significantly advanced research in pseudorandomness.

In their paper, they constructed an explicit two-source extractor that can combine two independent but "imperfect" random sources to produce an output that is close to truly random bits. This innovation bridges key subfields of robust functions and random sampling for the first time. Chattopadhyay commented that while they started the work with optimism, he never expected their method would succeed. He feels honored to see the ongoing development in the field due to their contributions.

Zuckerman is also a prominent scholar, having received numerous academic honors, and has mentored students who have entered top institutions. The Gödel Prize, established in 1993, has become one of the most prestigious awards in theoretical computer science, recognizing papers that have a profound impact on the field.