Vaikalathur Shankar Sunder (or V.S. Sunder) is professor of mathematics at the Institute of Mathematical Sciences (commonly known as MATSCIENCE). He specialises in subfactors, operator algebras and functional analysis in general. In 1996, he was awarded the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for Science and Technology, the highest science award in India, in the mathematical sciences category. He is one of the first Indian operator algebraists. In addition to publishing over 60 papers, he has written six books including at least three monographs at the graduate level or higher on von Neumann algebras. One of the books was co-authored with Vaughan Jones, an operator algebraist, who has received the Fields Medal.