Sumathi Rao is an Indian physicist, working at the Harish Chandra Research Institute in Allahabad (now known as Prayagraj). She currently works in the area of condensed matter theory, and formerly was a high energy physicist.
She obtained her BSc from MS University Baroda (Vadodara), where she was awarded the gold medal for standing first in the University, and her MSc in Physics from IIT Bombay. She then obtained her PhD in 1983 from SUNY Stonybrook. From 1983 to 1986 she was a postdoc at Fermilab in Chicago, and from 1986 to 1987 she was a postdoc at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. From 1988 to 1995 she was on the faculty at the Institute of Physics, Bhubaneswar.
She is interested in correlated mesoscopic physics in low dimensions. Current areas of interest include junctions in quantum wires, two-dimensional materials, topological insulators, spin liquids, the Quantum Hall effect and non-Abelian statistics.
She is a Fellow of the National Academy of Sciences of India and the Indian Academy of Sciences[1], and a Senior Associate at the International Centre for Theoretical Sciences, Bangalore.