I am an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Virginia. I received my PhD from Purdue University and my Bachelor's degree from Fudan University.
My group studies differential privacy, private machine learning, and synthetic data, with an emphasis on methods that can survive contact with real systems, real users, and real constraints.
I care about research that connects theory to deployment: algorithms with defensible guarantees, systems that remain usable, and evaluations that hold up beyond idealized benchmarks.
Selected projects and demos
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.
DPLab-UVA
The group GitHub organization collects shared lab repositories, public code releases, demos, and supporting infrastructure for ongoing privacy projects.
Browse the organization: github.com/DPLab-UVA
Personal
My wife, Xuejun Zhao, is an Assistant Professor in Information Systems and Operations Management at UNC Charlotte.
Last updated: Mar 19, 2026