Sham Machandranath Kakade is an American computer scientist. He is a Gordon McKay Professor in Computer Science at Harvard University and also works in the Department of Statistics. He co-founded the Algorithmic Foundations of Data Science Institute.

Kakade's research includes studies on Reinforcement Learning, Tensor-Algebraic methods, and Convex optimization.

Kakade earned a bachelor's degree from Caltech and a PhD from the Gatsby Computational Neuroscience Unit at University College London. He has worked as a Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research, an assistant professor at the Toyota Technological Institute in Chicago and at Wharton, and a professor at the University of Washington.