Biosketch
David Chiu is a Professor of Computer Science at the University of Puget Sound. He is the inaugural Director and Advisor to the Mosaic Residential Community.
David holds a PhD in Computer Science and Engineering from The Ohio State University, completed under the direction of Gagan Agrawal. A member of Ohio State's Systems Group, David's dissertation was on the dynamic composition of scientific workflows and distributed data management. Prior to Ohio State, he worked under Paul S. Wang on protocols and tools supporting the web transmission of math-education modules.
From 2010 to 2014, David served as an Assistant Professor and Graduate Studies Chair in the School of Engineering and Computer Science at WSU Vancouver. He later joined the faculty at Puget Sound, where he was appointed Assistant Professor in 2014, Associate Professor in 2017, and Professor in 2022. At Puget Sound, he has taken on numerous leadership roles, including a rotation as department chair and chairing major faculty-governance committees.
David works closely with undergraduate students on research projects in database systems, cloud computing, and high-performance computing. He has supervised numerous research students in these areas. He also serves on organizational and program committees for conferences in these fields. His research has received recognition, including Best Paper Awards at BDCAT’23, ITCC’04, and ITE’04.
He received the Influential Faculty of Color Award (2024), the President’s Excellence in Teaching Award (2022), and the Bartanen Faculty Research Award (2017) all from the University of Puget Sound. In addition, he was awarded the Eleanor Quinlan Memorial Award for Graduate Student Teaching (2009) and was named a PFF Fellow at The Ohio State University. He is a member of Upsilon Pi Epsilon, the ACM, and is a senior member of the IEEE.
Recent Activities
- (04/2026) Congrats to Lily Gustafson on receiving a Summer Research Award. Co-advised with Marissa Masden.
- (08/2025) Chair, Academic Standards Committee, 2025-26.
- (08/2025) Board Member, Faculty Development Center (FDC), 2025-present.
- (08/2025) Led a panel on supporting underrepresented students @ Peer Advisor Training.
- (06/2025) Led a summer course at Tunghai University International College, Taiwan.
- (05/2025) Congrats to Alex Kirner on receiving a Summer Research Award. Work starts on optimizing join execution.
- (04/2025) Completed a site visit to DIS Study Abroad in Scandinavia (Stockholm and Copenhagen campuses).
- (02/2025) External Search Committee Member, Communications Studies, University of Puget Sound.
- (08/2024) Co-chair, International Education Committee, University of Puget Sound, 2024-25.
- (09/2024) Serving on the PC for BDCAT 2024.
- (09/2024) Serving as a New Faculty Mentor for 2024.
- (06/2024) I will be speaking at the 2024 Puget Sound Alumni College: “Bitmap Indexing for Database Systems”
- (05/2024) I will be serving on the program committee for HiPC 2024.
- (05/2024) I’m honored to receive the 2024 Influential Faculty of Color Award, University of Puget Sound.
- (05/2024) My research student, Julia Kaeppel, has been named the Goman Outstanding Senior in Computer Science.
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