I'm an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at the University of Iowa, where I research and teach experimental computer science. Previously, I was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Texas at Austin, a doctoral student at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and a graduate student at the Columbia University. If you really wind back the clock, you will find me writing system software at Cisco, ARM, and Ittiam.

I am an experimental computer scientist. I investigate how the design and operation of modern computer systems are influenced by external/societal factors, and then build system software to manage their impact. My current research focuses on lawful personal-data systems i.e., building software infrastructure to make it easy, efficient, and economical for organizations to comply with data protection regulations (such as GDPR and CCPA), and to enable people to fully exercise their personal-data rights. You can find an overview of my work here.

Openings: I'm looking to recruit two (fully funded) PhD students. If you have a strong background in computer systems and data management, and are excited by my group's research agenda, please reach out. Oh BTW, if you want to do a PhD in AI/ML, I am not the advisor you're looking for.


Recent Updates

Jun 2022: Happy to be included as an expert on the (European Data Protection Board)
May 2021: Excited that Chen Sun will be joining my group as the first doctoral student
Feb 2021: Our work on GDPR Anti-Patterns is published in the Communications of the ACM
Sep 2020: GDPRbench presented at VLDB2020 and publicly released at GDPRbench.org
Aug 2020: Joined Iowa CS as an assistant professor