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Meet Luke Evans, Assistant Professor, Computer Science

POSTED ON: August 17, 2026

Luke Evans

This fall, The Cooper Union welcomes several new full-time faculty members to its academic programs. Luke Evans joins the Albert Nerken School of Engineering as an assistant professor of computer science. He will also be working jointly as an associate research scientist in the Center for Computational Mathematics at the Simons Foundation’s Flatiron Institute. Evans received his B.A. in mathematics at Hendrix College, his M.A. in mathematics at San Francisco State University, and his Ph.D. in scientific computing at the University of Maryland, College Park.

Tell us about your research interests.

My main research interests are in scientific computing, machine learning, and uncertainty quantification for noisy and high-dimensional data in the physical sciences. In application, my work has involved inverse problems and dynamical systems from chemistry and biology. I love the interface of computational science with domain expertise in natural sciences and helping to bridge gaps between scientists in these areas.

What brought you to The Cooper Union?

I was excited about several things! For one, I am excited to be a part of the new computer science department. Another is the school’s size. I got my undergraduate degree at a school that was about the size of The Cooper Union, and I am so thankful for the small-class instruction. I am also excited to teach in a school with that same format, and with such a strong reputation for the students. The emphasis on project-based courses at Cooper and the strong recommendations from people I’ve met across the country for the school’s different programs drew me here.

What aspects of teaching are you most excited about in the coming academic year at Cooper?

For the fall, I am excited to work with students in CS101/102 on developing their own generative capacity to solve problems—and formulate problems to solve—with a computer. In practice, this can feel like it changes so much with technology, but there is still a lot of fundamental cognition here to develop, and I am very much looking forward to it.
 

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