Posted: 17th June 2025

Rahul Santhanam has been awarded an ERC Advanced Grant as part of the EU’s Horizon Europe programme. It is one of the most prestigious and competitive funding schemes in the EU, giving senior researchers the opportunity to pursue research that could lead to major scientific breakthroughs. This year the competition attracted 2,534 proposals, which were reviewed by panels of internationally renowned researchers. Only 281 (11 %) of proposals were selected for funding. 

Professor Santhanam’s research focus is complexity theory, which studies the possibilities and limits of algorithms in a mathematical framework. In his ERC project, he will attack long-standing open questions on the limits of algorithms and mathematical proofs, such as the famous P vs NP question, and seek to develop a deeper understanding of the relationship between algorithms and proofs. His approach to these questions is based on the emerging area of ‘meta-complexity’, which studies the difficulty of determining whether a given dataset can be compressed. The research is motivated by applications in learning, cryptography and automated reasoning, among other areas. 

I am very grateful to the ERC for giving me the time and freedom to think about fundamental questions in a sustained way. My collaborators, postdocs and students have been an important part of this journey, and I look forward to continuing our work together. Rahul Santhanam