David Evans
Olsen Bicentennial Professor of Engineering
Professor of
Computer Science
University of Virginia
Contacting Me
| Schedule a Meeting
Recommended reading for:
Prospective Students |
Disgruntled Professors
3 Year-Olds |
Googlers
|
Humans
Pessimists |
Optimists
| Illiterates
My research group's current work focuses mainly on understanding and improving the trustworthiness of artificial intelligence/machine learning systems with a focus on properties including priv ac y, se cu ri ty, fairness, and censorship.
In Fall 2025 I am co-teaching a joint Computer Science and Law course with Thomas Nachbar. For earlier courses, see my Courses page.
As program co-chair for the 31st IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (Oakland 2010), I initiated the Systematization of Knowledge (SoK) papers. I was the founding director of the Interdisciplinary Major in Computer Science (which is now the BA Computer Science Degree).
I have written two introductory computer science books, both of which are available as free downloads under a Creative Commons license, and as nicely printed color versions from Amazon.com:
"The
BEST babies' book about computational universality I've read."
Scott Aaronson [full
review]
For my research papers, see Publications or my Google Scholar page.
Some other writings I think are worth reading include How to Live in Paradise, Jobs for Humans (2029-2059), The Dragon in the Room, CS101: One Year Later. and How Computing Changes Thinking.
I was the Founding Director of the Interdisciplinary Major in Computer Science, which became the most popular major taught by the Engineering School.
I believe public universities have a mission to provide open education, and make all of my teaching materials openly available. I published an open introductory computing textbook based on the cs1120 course.
Selected Courses at UVA (Full List)
Selected External Courses
I developed two open on-line courses for Udacity: cs101: Building a Search Engine (Prospect Magazine, Chronicle, m o r e ...) and cs387: Applied Cryptography (according to InformationWeek, this the #1 Online Class To Pump Up IT Careers, although it is more meant as a fun introduction to cryptography).
I've also taught some short external courses:
Dorina cs101
Students
Blog
Publications
Talks
Funded Projects
Awards
Press
I have the privilege of working with a team of extraordinary students, including both graduate and undergraduate students.
We are part of the NSF Frontier Center for Trustworthy Machine Learning (with the University of Wisconsin, UC Berkeley, UC San Diego, and Stanford) and the NSF AI Institute for Agent-based Cyber Threat Intelligence and Operation (ACTION) (led by UC Santa Barbara).
If you are a UVA undergraduate or graduate student interested in joining my research group, please look over our project pages (linked below), browse our group blog, and send me email to arrange a meeting or drop by my office hours.
If you are considering applying to our PhD program, please read my advice for prospective research students. If you think you are ready for graduate school, you may also want to try our previous pre-qualification exam [PDF].
Everyone is welcome at the Security Research Group meetings. To get announcements, join our Teams Group (any @virginia.edu email address can join themsleves, or email me to request an invitation).
Our research is primarily funded by National Science Foundation research grants. We are also grateful for industrial research awards from Lockheed Martin, Oracle, Google, and Intel and in-kind support from Amazon and Microsoft.
I've been at UVA since fall 1999, after completing my PhD, SM and SB degrees at MIT.
My most visited page is my Advice for Prospective Research Students. I have also written some advice for new (and disgruntled) professors on How to Live in Paradise, and collected my favorite advice from others.
My academic genealogy traces back to Gottfried Wilheim Leibniz.
I have taken some pictures including: Yellowstone, Glacier, Death Valley, Yosemite, Lawn Lighting, Nature near Charlottesville, China, and Bletchley Park. I also have pictures from my trips to World Cups: France 1998, Korea 2002, South Africa 2010. Now, I mostly take pictures of my son and daughter.
I live in Charlottesville, VA with my wife, two children, and mother-in-law.
Our daughter, Dorina Michelle, was born in June 2012. She made her first original computer science contribution at only eight months old, discovering the non-equivalence of the Kleene-* and Kleene-X operators. Since then, she has been focusing on languages, but hasn't completely neglected theoretical computer science or robotics.
Our son, Maxwell Nicholas was born in March 2015. His early accomplishments focused on minimizing interruptions in distributed systems processes, collision-free hashing, odor-optimized garbage collection, and balanced climbing trees.
Family pages:
