I am an Assistant Professor at the University of Virginia, in the Department of Computer Science. I earned my PhD from Purdue University and my Bachelor's degree from Fudan University.
My research focuses on making differential privacy and machine learning privacy practical, reliable, and impactful in real-world systems.
Theory is the foundation, but deployment is the goal. I care about privacy methods that remain useful when data, compute, and product realities are no longer idealized.
DP Advisor
A custom GPT designed to help users evaluate whether differential privacy is appropriate for their use case and avoid common pitfalls. The tool does not collect personal information.
For critical decision-making settings, please consult with a human expert. Prompt and design details are available upon request.
PrivSyn
An interactive demo that walks users through generating synthetic tabular data with differential privacy guarantees. Currently tested on the Adult dataset.
Availability may vary due to free-tier cloud hosting constraints.
Personal
My wife, Xuejun Zhao, is an Assistant Professor in Information Systems and Operations Management at UNC Charlotte.
Last updated: Mar 10, 2026