David Zuckerman is an American

theoretical computer scientist Theoretical computer science is a subfield of computer science and mathematics that focuses on the abstract and mathematical foundations of computation. It is difficult to circumscribe the theoretical areas precisely. The ACM's Special Inter ...

whose work concerns randomness in computation. He is a professor of computer science at the

University of Texas at Austin The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin, UT, or Texas) is a public university, public research university in Austin, Texas, United States. Founded in 1883, it is the flagship institution of the University of Texas System. With 53,082 stud ...

Biography

Zuckerman received an A.B. in mathematics from

Harvard University Harvard University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the History of the Puritans in North America, Puritan clergyma ...

in 1987, where he was a

Putnam Fellow The William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition, often abbreviated to Putnam Competition, is an annual mathematics competition for undergraduate college students enrolled at institutions of higher learning in the United States and Canada (regar ...

in 1986. He went on to earn a Ph.D. in computer science from the

University of California at Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California), is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California, United States. Founded in 1868 and named after the Anglo-Irish philosopher George Berkele ...

in 1991 advised by

Umesh Vazirani Umesh Virkumar Vazirani is an Indian–American academic who is the Roger A. Strauch Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the University of California, Berkeley, and the director of the Berkeley Quantum Computation Center. ...

. He then worked as a postdoctoral fellow at the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a Private university, private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Established in 1861, MIT has played a significant role in the development of many areas of moder ...

and

Hebrew University of Jerusalem The Hebrew University of Jerusalem (HUJI; ) is an Israeli public university, public research university based in Jerusalem. Co-founded by Albert Einstein and Chaim Weizmann in July 1918, the public university officially opened on 1 April 1925. ...

before joining the University of Texas in 1994. Zuckerman was named a Fellow of the ACM in 2013, and a

Simons Investigator The Simons Foundation is an American private foundation established in 1994 by Marilyn and James Harris Simons, Jim Simons with offices in New York City. As one of the largest charitable organizations in the United States with assets of over $5 ...

in 2016.

Research

Most of Zuckerman's work concerns randomness in computation, and especially

pseudorandomness A pseudorandom sequence of numbers is one that appears to be statistically random, despite having been produced by a completely deterministic and repeatable process. Pseudorandom number generators are often used in computer programming, as tradi ...

. He has written over 80 papers on topics including

randomness extractor A randomness extractor, often simply called an "extractor", is a function, which being applied to output from a weak entropy source, together with a short, uniformly random seed, generates a highly random output that appears Independent and identic ...

s, pseudorandom generators,

coding theory Coding theory is the study of the properties of codes and their respective fitness for specific applications. Codes are used for data compression, cryptography, error detection and correction, data transmission and computer data storage, data sto ...

, and

cryptography Cryptography, or cryptology (from "hidden, secret"; and ''graphein'', "to write", or ''-logy, -logia'', "study", respectively), is the practice and study of techniques for secure communication in the presence of Adversary (cryptography), ...

. Zuckerman is best known for his work on randomness extractors. In 2015 Zuckerman and his student Eshan Chattopadhyay solved an important open problem in the area by giving the first explicit construction of two-source extractors. The resulting paper won a best-paper award at the 2016 ACM

Symposium on Theory of Computing The Annual ACM Symposium on Theory of Computing (STOC) is an academic conference in the field of theoretical computer science. STOC has been organized annually since 1969, typically in May or June; the conference is sponsored by the Association for ...

, and in 2025, the

Gödel Prize The Gödel Prize is an annual prize for outstanding papers in the area of theoretical computer science, given jointly by the European Association for Theoretical Computer Science (EATCS) and the Association for Computing Machinery Special Inter ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Zuckerman, David University of Texas at Austin faculty American theoretical computer scientists Living people Harvard College alumni Simons Investigator UC Berkeley Graduate School of Education alumni Year of birth missing (living people) Putnam Fellows