--- title: "Charles Sutton — author profile and papers" description: "Charles Sutton, Google: 2 papers on Elamur Research (2021–2022), h-index 46 — affiliations, topics, co-authors and who cites them in our library." canonical: "https://research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/charles-sutton/" --- [Elamur Research](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/charles-sutton/) [home](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [authors](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/) / Charles Sutton # Charles Sutton Charles Sutton works on large language models and what they can do with both natural language and source code. Sutton's papers here ask how a model's size shapes its ability to handle new tasks from only a few examples, and how far general-purpose models can go at writing working programs in a mainstream language such as Python. The approach is empirical: training or testing Transformer models across a range of sizes and measuring them on broad sets of benchmarks. The work falls under [Language models & pretraining](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/topics/language-models/) and [Code & programming languages](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/topics/code-and-programming/). The most cited paper here is [PaLM: Scaling Language Modeling with Pathways](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/chowdhery-2022-palm-scaling-language-modeling-pathways/). It describes training a very large dense decoder-only Transformer, spread across TPU v4 pods with the Pathways system. The resulting model gave strong few-shot results in language understanding and generation, translation, multilingual tasks and code. The next is [Program Synthesis with Large Language Models](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/austin-2021-program-synthesis-large-language-models/). It introduced two benchmarks, MBPP and MathQA-Python, and showed that accuracy at writing short Python programs rises steadily with model scale, under both few-shot prompting and fine-tuning. These two papers, from 2021 and 2022, also mark the most recent direction of the work. Both move away from earlier program synthesis built around narrow, purpose-made languages, toward general models evaluated on everyday programming and reasoning problems. Sutton is currently at [Google](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/companies/google/). Earlier affiliations include the [University of Edinburgh](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/universities/university-of-edinburgh/), the [University of Massachusetts Amherst](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/universities/university-of-massachusetts-amherst/), the [University of California, Berkeley](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/universities/university-of-california-berkeley/), and [The Alan Turing Institute](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/labs/the-alan-turing-institute/). Co-authors on the papers here include [Maarten Bosma](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/maarten-bosma/), [Jacob Austin](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/jacob-austin/) and [Aakanksha Chowdhery](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/aakanksha-chowdhery/), along with others such as Quoc V. Le and Henryk Michalewski. Charles Sutton has 2 papers in our library, in 2021–2022, most of them on [Language models & pretraining](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/topics/language-models/), [Code & programming languages](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/topics/code-and-programming/); often with [Maarten Bosma](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/maarten-bosma/), [Aakanksha Chowdhery](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/aakanksha-chowdhery/), [Adam Roberts](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/adam-roberts/). 2 papers in our library · 2021–2022 [OpenAlex](https://openalex.org/A5028501178) · [ORCID](https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0041-3820) · [**h-index 46**](https://openalex.org/authors/A5028501178) · [173 works](https://openalex.org/works?filter=author.id:A5028501178) · [29,358 citations](https://openalex.org/works?filter=author.id:A5028501178&sort=cited_by_count:desc) OpenAlex, 2026-10-14 [📄 2 works in our library](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/charles-sutton/#papers) · [🔗 6,225 citations in our library](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/charles-sutton/cited-by/) · [8 more in our library without a page yet](#also) · [⭐ Paper Star rank #691](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/paper-stars/page/7/#star-691) The profile is the library's match of the name; two people with one name are not always told apart. Elsewhere: [Google Scholar](https://scholar.google.com/citations?view_op=search_authors&mauthors=Charles+Sutton) · [Semantic Scholar](https://www.semanticscholar.org/search?q=Charles+Sutton) · [dblp](https://dblp.org/search?q=Charles+Sutton) · [ACL Anthology](https://aclanthology.org/search/?q=Charles+Sutton) ## Affiliations [🏢**Google** Mountain View · United States 2019–2025 · 28 papers*current*](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/companies/google/) · [🎓**University of Edinburgh** Edinburgh · United Kingdom 2010–2023 · 56 papers](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/universities/university-of-edinburgh/) · [🎓**University of Massachusetts Amherst** Amherst Center · United States 2003–2012 · 18 papers](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/universities/university-of-massachusetts-amherst/) · [🎓**University of California, Berkeley** Berkeley · United States 2008–2022 · 8 papers](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/universities/university-of-california-berkeley/) · [🔬**The Alan Turing Institute** London · United Kingdom 2016–2020 · 6 papers](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/labs/the-alan-turing-institute/) · [🔬**Institute for Machine Learning** Zurich · Switzerland 2015–2020 · 2 papers](https://ror.org/04p2fa809) From the bylines of their papers (OpenAlex, 2026-10-14), ORCID and Wikidata; institutions on papers are matched by machine. 7 more institutions on single bylines are not listed. ## Topics [Language models & pretraining (1)](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/topics/language-models/) · [Code & programming languages (1)](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/topics/code-and-programming/) ## Works by year ### 2020s [**2022** 1 paper](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/chowdhery-2022-palm-scaling-language-modeling-pathways/) · [**2021** 1 paper](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/austin-2021-program-synthesis-large-language-models/) ## Papers The most cited first (OpenAlex and our library). 1. **[PaLM: Scaling Language Modeling with Pathways](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/chowdhery-2022-palm-scaling-language-modeling-pathways/)** *(2022 · 2,603 citations)* The authors investigate how the size of a language model affects its ability to solve tasks from a few examples (few-shot), without task-specific fine-tuning. 2. **[Program Synthesis with Large Language Models](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/austin-2021-program-synthesis-large-language-models/)** *(2021 · 1,136 citations)* The paper asks how far general-purpose large language models can go at writing short programs in a mainstream language like Python. ## Also in our library 8 more works of theirs are in our library without a page here yet; they will appear as we publish them. ## Co-authors here 12 co-authors with a page, the most papers together first. - [Maarten Bosma](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/maarten-bosma/) ×2 - [Aakanksha Chowdhery](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/aakanksha-chowdhery/) - [Adam Roberts](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/adam-roberts/) - [David Dohan](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/david-dohan/) - [Henryk Michalewski](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/henryk-michalewski/) - [Hyung Won Chung](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/hyung-won-chung/) - [Jacob Austin](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/jacob-austin/) - [Jacob Devlin](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/jacob-devlin/) - [Paul Barham](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/paul-barham/) - [Quoc V. Le](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/quoc-v-le/) - [Sebastian Gehrmann](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/sebastian-gehrmann/) - [Sharan Narang](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/sharan-narang/) ## Cited by Papers of our library cite their works 6,225 times (of the 140,884 papers whose bibliographies we read); [483 citing papers with a page here →](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/charles-sutton/cited-by/).