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 was an Assistant Professor and Graduate Studies Chair in the School of Engineering and Computer Science at WSU Vancouver. He later joined the Puget Sound faculty, where he's held appointments as Assistant Professor (2014), Associate Professor (2017), and Professor (2022). He also completed a rotation as Department Chair (2019-2022).
David works closely with undergraduate students on research projects in database systems, cloud computing, and high-performance computing. He has supervised numerous students in these areas. He also serves on organizational and program committees for conferences in these fields. His research has received Best Paper Awards and nominations at international conferences, including BDCAT’19, ITCC’04, and ITE’04.
David received the Influential Faculty of Color Award (2024), the President’s Award for Excellence in Teaching (2022), and the Bartanen Research Award (2017) from the University of Puget Sound. He also received the Eleanor Quinlan Memorial Award for Graduate Student Teaching Excellence (2009) from The Ohio State University. He is a member of Upsilon Pi Epsilon, as well as the ACM and the IEEE (Senior Member).
Recent Activities
- (04/2026) Congrats to Lily Gustafson on receiving a Summer Research Award. I’ll be co-advising Lily with Professor Marissa Masden.
- (08/2025) Chair, Academic Standards Committee, 2025-26.
- (08/2025) Board Member, Faculty Development Center (FDC), 2025-26.
- (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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