Surfers of the web: welcome! As of January 2021, I am an Associate Senior Instructional Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Chicago. I am also the computer science major advisor. Students with questions about the CS major, please look here as a starting point.

Computer science minors: minor advising is now handled by Jess Garza, whom you can reach at jdgarza@cs.uchicago.edu.

There are many Adam Shaws on the web; I'm the real one. More specifically, I am the one born at the (now shuttered) Mt. Sinai Medical Center in Cleveland, Ohio in 1972 (when David Gilmour, and countless others, looked pretty scruffy like this) and who grew up in North Branford, Connecticut.

I started programming BASIC on an Apple ][+ my parents bought around 1980, when I was 8 years old or thereabouts. I wrote programs on that machine to do things like print my name 1000 times. I thought to myself: this thing has possibilities.

Here I am receiving my doctoral degree in August 2011.


LEARN SML Looking for the best programming language? Here you go.


LOCKDOWN I made a short movie in May 2020 and frankly it's a little bonkers.


HERBERT An appreciation of Herbie Hancock, with musical examples.


I love music. A lot. And I also make it. Please check out selections of my own music here, many of which I created during pandemic homestay.

This is some of the music I've been listening to lately.


ADMIT IT my AI-generated artwork is awesome.


And these are some of the games I've been playing lately: