PeopleofSuperintelligence

Researcher

Atri Rudra

Atri Rudra is a theoretical computer scientist at the University at Buffalo whose work on error-correcting codes, database algorithms and structured matrices reaches into deep learning. After a bachelor's degree at IIT Kharagpur in 2000 and a research post at IBM India Research Lab, he earned a University of Washington PhD in 2007 and joined the Buffalo faculty in 2007. With his advisor Venkatesan Guruswami he built folded Reed–Solomon codes in 2006, work that received the 2026 STOC 20-Year Test of Time Award. In 2022, he coauthored the Monarch structured-matrix paper, which won an ICML Outstanding Paper Runner Up award, and the FlashAttention algorithm for Transformers. He holds the Katherine Johnson Chair in Artificial Intelligence and is the inaugural chair of Buffalo's Department of AI and Society.

Badges

Timeline

  1. 2000–2007

    IIT Kharagpur, IBM and a PhD

    He earns a bachelor's degree at the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur in 2000 and works as a Research Staff Member at IBM India Research Lab in New Delhi from 2000 to 2002. He completes a PhD at the University of Washington in 2007.

  2. 2006–2026

    Folded Reed–Solomon codes

    With his advisor Venkatesan Guruswami, he builds folded Reed–Solomon codes, the first family of error-correcting codes that achieve list-decoding capacity, in the paper "Explicit Capacity-Achieving List-Decodable Codes" presented at STOC 2006. The paper receives the STOC 20-Year Test of Time Award in 2026.

  3. 2007–2009

    Joining Buffalo's faculty

    He joins the computer science and engineering faculty of the University at Buffalo in 2007. In 2009, he receives an NSF CAREER Award.

  4. 2012–2022

    Worst-case optimal joins

    In 2012, he coauthors "Worst-case optimal join algorithms" at PODS, a database join algorithm that guarantees efficient performance in the hardest cases. His join-operator work wins an ACM PODS Alberto O. Mendelzon Test-of-Time Award in 2022, and he later carries these ideas into structured matrices for deep learning.

  5. 2019–2020

    Butterfly, HiPPO and Kaleidoscope

    In 2019, he coauthors "Learning Fast Algorithms for Linear Transforms Using Butterfly Factorizations" with Tri Dao, Albert Gu, Matthew Eichhorn and Christopher Ré. In 2020, he coauthors HiPPO, a framework that compresses sequential data online by projection onto polynomial bases, and kaleidoscope matrices, which capture any structured matrix with near-optimal space and time complexity.

  6. 2022

    Monarch and FlashAttention

    In 2022, he coauthors Monarch, a class of hardware-efficient structured matrices built from products of two block-diagonal matrices, with Tri Dao, Beidi Chen, Christopher Ré and others; the paper receives an ICML Outstanding Paper Runner Up award. Monarch speeds up ViT and GPT-2 training by 2x with comparable model quality. He also coauthors FlashAttention with Tri Dao, Daniel Y. Fu, Stefano Ermon and Christopher Ré, an IO-aware exact attention algorithm for Transformers.

  7. January 2023

    Katherine Johnson Chair in AI

    In January 2023, UB names him the first Katherine Johnson Chair in Artificial Intelligence, an endowed chair created by alumni D. Sivakumar and Uma Mahadevan. He is also a member of UB's Computing for Social Good group.

  8. As of October 2026

    Chair of AI and Society

    In June 2025, UB announces the Department of AI and Society, which launches in fall 2025 with $5 million from New York State, and names him its inaugural chair. He describes the department's vision as creating AI systems that are built by society, for society. In 2026, he continues as the department's inaugural chair and a professor.

Career

  1. Since 2007University at Buffalo, State University of New YorkFaculty member
  2. 2000–2002IBMResearch Staff Member

Education

  1. 2007University of WashingtonPhD
  2. 2000Indian Institute of Technology KharagpurBachelor's degree

From the biography.

  1. More people shaping AI studied at Massachusetts Institute of Technology than at any other institutionIncludes University at Buffalo, State University of New York. We estimate where the people shaping AI studied and where their careers led. Massachusetts Institute of Technology leads with 467 former students, including 291 recorded doctorates.
  2. The company share of AI researchers’ top papers was 31% in 2020–2024 and 8% in 1970–1974Includes University at Buffalo, State University of New York. We estimate where the people shaping AI worked when their most-cited papers appeared: the company share was 31% in 2020–2024 and 8% in 1970–1974, and Google led all organizations in 2020–2024.
  3. Google has the highest combined h-index among AI organizationsIncludes University at Buffalo, State University of New York. We estimate that Google holds the highest combined h-index at 8,016, while universities account for 73% of the deduplicated total across AI organizations.
  4. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology trained or employed 44 of the 187 AI major-prize winners, more than any other universityIncludes University at Buffalo, State University of New York. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology trained or employed 44 of the 187 AI major-prize winners, more than any other university. We compare doctorate and 5+ year employment links, career timing and current workplaces for 187 major-prize and 1,111 best-paper winners.

Colleagues

People named in this biography, and people with dated positions at the same organization in the same years.

Sources and credits

Photo: We have no published photo of Atri Rudra yet. Send us a free-licensed photo.

  1. Atri Rudra simons.berkeley.edu. Checked 21 October 2026.
  2. Guruswami Receives Test of Time Awards at STOC and CCC 2026 simons.berkeley.edu. Checked 21 October 2026.
  3. Rudra recognized with third Test of Time award in last two years - School of Engineering and Applied Sciences - University at Buffalo engineering.buffalo.edu. Checked 21 October 2026.
  4. Rudra and team win third Test of Time Award in five years - Department of AI and Society - University at Buffalo engineering.buffalo.edu. Checked 21 October 2026.
  5. Atri Rudra - Center for Information Integrity - University at Buffalo buffalo.edu. Checked 21 October 2026.
  6. Learning Fast Algorithms for Linear Transforms Using Butterfly Factorizations arxiv.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  7. HiPPO: Recurrent Memory with Optimal Polynomial Projections arxiv.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  8. Kaleidoscope: An Efficient, Learnable Representation For All Structured Linear Maps arxiv.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  9. Monarch: Expressive Structured Matrices for Efficient and Accurate Training arxiv.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  10. FlashAttention: Fast and Memory-Efficient Exact Attention with IO-Awareness arxiv.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  11. ICML 2022 Awards icml.cc. Checked 21 October 2026.
  12. Rudra named inaugural Katherine Johnson Chair in Artificial Intelligence - UBNow buffalo.edu. Checked 21 October 2026.
  13. UB to launch Department of AI and Society this fall - University at Buffalo buffalo.edu. Checked 21 October 2026.