About
Hi, I’m David. I’ll be joining IST Austria as a postdoctoral researcher with Monika Henzinger. I was a PhD student in Computer Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) where I was 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, or if you prefer Google Scholar or DBLP.
Research
My interests lie in theoretical computer science, predominantly in algorithms and data structures pertaining to geometry or graphs.
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 2026, SOSA 2026, ESA 2025, SoCG 2025 (Outstanding Reviewer Award), 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, JCST, 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 2022-2025.
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.
[Aug 2025] I recieved the CCCG 2025 PhD Dissertation Award!
[July 2025] “Truly Subquadratic Time Algorithms for Diameter and Related Problems in Graphs of Bounded VC-dimension” coauthored with Timothy M. Chan, Hsien-Chih Chang, Jie Gao, Sándor Kisfaludi-Bak, and Hung Le gave the first subquadratic algorithm for diameter in unit-disk graphs was accepted to FOCS 2025.
[May 2025] I graduated! Thanks David Eppstein for serving as my external examiner and mentioning me in his blog.
[May 2025] UIUC ICPC team Ippatsu got first place at the North American Championships! Congrats to Dilhan Salgado, Yuuki Sawanoi, and Zhikun Wang.
[Mar 2025] I recieved an Outstanding Reviewer Award for SoCG 2025.
[Jan 2025] “Fully Dynamic Euclidean Bi-Chromatic Matching in Sublinear Update Time” coauthored with Gramoz Goranci, Peter Kiss, Neel Patel, Martin Seybold, and Eva Szilagyi recieved an oral presentation slot (given to ~1% of accepted papers) at ICML 2025 where it was presented by Eva.
[Oct 2024] “Subquadratic algorithms in minor-free digraphs: (weighted) distance oracles, decremental reachability, and more” coauthored 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 where the team got 51st place.
[Jul 2024] Started news section.