Research

Strength in computer systems has been a pillar of our department since its earliest days. This focus has led to notable contributions, for example, in cyber-physical systems, compilers, grid computing, and computer architecture.

Cyber-physical Systems (CPS) and the Internet of Things have been identified by the National Academy of Sciences as national research priorities, critical to educating scientists and engineers for an increasingly cyber-enabled future. In response, we have created the multi-disciplinary Link Lab, bringing together researchers from the departments of CS, Electrical & Computer Engineering, Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering, and Engineering Systems & Environment.

The recent explosive growth in artificial intelligence (AI) and data mining demonstrates their vast potential to radically transform the norms and practices in every industry and every aspect of our society. Our department is advancing the state of the art in both fundamental algorithms as well as new algorithms to help users benefit from this revolution and provide new capabilities for the benefit of society.

UVA’s Department of Computer Science has a rapidly growing group of faculty working in the area of cyber security, including hardware, software, operating systems, networks, and cryptographic theory, working in close collaboration with other research groups such as the Link Lab, Software Engineering, and AI.

Software-intensive systems play a variety of critical roles throughout society: they support human decision making in medical, transportation, and legal domains and, over the coming years they will increasingly operate autonomously – without a human in the loop. Our department’s strength in formal methods and program analysis allows us to advance the state of the art in all these areas, ensuring that these systems operate correctly and securely.

With our recent successful faculty hires in the CS department, the areas of security/cryptography, algorithmic game theory, as well as network science have achieved critical mass that puts CS@UVA in a unique position to differentiate itself and serve as a catalyst for rapid growth in this area.

The Department of Computer Science at UVA is at the forefront of this exciting field, leveraging AI, computer vision, language, and foundation models to advance robot perception, decision-making, and control.