About
Hi, I’m David. I’m a PhD student in Computer Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). I am fortunate enough to be advised by Timothy M. Chan. I completed a BSc in Combined Honours Computer Science and Mathematics and a MSc in Computer Science at the University of British Columbia (UBC) with Will Evans.
You can see a complete list of my papers here and my CV here.
I plan on graduating May 2025 and I’m currently looking for academic positions and postdocs.
Research
My interests lie in theoretical computer science, predominantly in algorithms and data structures. I enjoy thinking about problems involving graphs or geometry.
I enjoyed some early success with geometric optimization challenges (CG:SHOP 2020, CG:SHOP 2021, CG:SHOP 2022). Since then, I’ve worked on geometric data structures, (Hopcroft’s problem, cuttings, simplex semi-algebraic range searching, Voronoi diagrams), and data structures for combinatorial optimization (matchings, submodular optimization). Lately I’ve been thinking about problems in geometric graphs (UDGs, matchings), planar graphs (MPC, steiner trees), and minor-free graphs (diameter and distance oracles).
Service. I’ve been a subreviewer for the conferences: SODA 2025, SOSA 2025, ALENEX 2025, ESA 2024, ICALP 2024, STACS 2024, SoCG 2024, APPROX 2023, ESA 2023, ICALP 2023, SODA 2023, ESA 2022, and SoCG 2022.
I’ve also reviewed for the journals CGTA, JEA, and Operation Research Letters.
Other Activities
I was involved in competitive programming at UBC. I went to ICPC World Finals 2018 and 2019, and was the coach of UBC teams 2019-2021. I coached UIUC teams 2022-2024.
I started playing in some Capture the Flag (CTF) events for fun in 2021-2022. You can see some of my writeups here.
News
Inspired by others, I’ve started updating my website with news.
[Oct 2024] The paper I wrote with Adam Karczmarz got accepted to SODA25! The paper is about subquadratic algorithms in minor-free graphs.
[Aug 2024] Coached UIUC team at ICPC WF 2024 in Kazakhstan.
[Jul 2024] Started news section.