Luc Devroye's Home Page

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Disoriented Canadian moose after drinking two Belgian beers

Luc Devroye

☞ School of Computer Science
McGill University
3480 University Street
Montreal, La-La Land H3A 0E9
☏ +1(514) 398-3738 (broken since January 2020)
♂ lucdevroye@gmail.com
♂ (Note: My institutional emails should not be used)
☭ McConnell Eng. Bldg #300N

(Home)
3425 Redpath
Montreal, Canada H3G 2G2
☎ +1(514) 849-1564

Biography. Born in Tienen, Belgium, too long ago. Grew up in Tienen and went to the University of Leuven (Belgium). Got married to Bea. Studied for two years at Osaka University (Japan). Obtained a Ph.D. degree from the University of Texas in 1976 under the supervision of Terry Wagner. Joined the School of Computer Science at McGill University in 1977 as a young snotnose. Recognized by his peers as a slum dog in 2008, an inglorious basterd (sic) in 2009, an artist in 2012, and a parasite in 2019. Thanks to a wonderful bunch of students and colleagues all over the world, still hanging in there. Fighting against income inequality, bureaucracy and (internet) mob justice. Fighting for truly universal healthcare, and free education for all. Will never retire.

Research

✎ Scribbles ⦿ More scribbles ⦿ And more ⦿ ArXiv ⦿ Books
Analysis of Algorithms Home Page ⦿ AofA 2012 ⦿ Analysis of Algorithms 2022 Easychair ⦿ ⚒ Workshop and conference schedule ⦿ ❡ Type design (link pages)
Math institutes: CRM ⦿ ISM
NSERC ⦿ NSERC Login ⦿ CCV (Canadian Common CV) ⦿ EU Funding and Tenders Portal ⦿ FRNTQ ⦿ ORCID ID ⦿ Journal of Mathematical Statistics and Learning login ⦿ Mathematical Statistics and Learning ⦿ TheoretiCS dashboard ⦿ Research Gate ⦿ Scholar GPS ⦿ Google Scholar ⦿ Overleaf ⦿ Deepseek ⦿ IMS login ⦿ MathJobs login
✍ Gowers against Elsevier ⦿ Custodians online ⦿ Liberté, égalité, fraternité ⦿ No blind refereeing ⦿ Ten reasons why conference papers are bad (by Donald Geman) ⦿ Ten commandments ⦿ The postdoc tango ⦿ Thomas Cormen's rules of writing [PDF] ⦿ Abolish conference papers ⦿ Bring on the drugs ⦿ NSERC: Stop using the common CV
A model for research: Weizmann Institute / Daniel Zajfman
✞ Philippe Flajolet: 1948-2011

Feeding

Feed lots and manure collection:

Undergraduate roughage on algorithms and data structures: COMP 252. I fertilized this yard in the winter of 2025, and will do so again in January 2026. myCourses.

Undergraduate roughage on data structures and algorithms: COMP 251. I am not scheduled to collect manure from this yard in the 2025-2026 academic year or after that.

Graduate oats on probabilistic analysis of algorithms: COMP 690. These juicy bits are available every year. Next offering: January 2026. What to do if you want to take 690 as a U3 student.

♘ My current racehorses: Erin McLeish, Caelan Atamanchuk, Gavin McCracken
♙ My current ponies: William Zahary Henderson, Nikola Katov, Shan Gao.
♕ Retired racehorses: Tommy Reddad (Canada and USA), Xing Shi Cai (China), Claude Gravel (Canada), Nicolas Fraiman (USA and Uruguay), Omar Fawzi (France), Jamie King (Canada), Nicolas Broutin (France), Perouz Taslakian (Canada and Armenia), Ebrahim Malalla (Bahrein), Henning Sulzbach (Germany), Abbas Mehrabian (Iran and Canada).
♕ Retired ponies: Massimo Vicenzo (Waterloo), Marcel Goh (McGill), Anna Brandenberger (MIT), Rosie Zhao (Harvard), Jad Hamdan (Oxford).
▤Future ponies: McGill's admission system is broken. Please contact me by email if you are interested in working with me and have a strong mathematical and probability background.
▤USRA, SURA: I will not take on any USRA or SURA students in the foreseeable future.
▤ NII (internship program at National Institute of Informatics in Tokyo)
▤ The Aaron Swartz Library (open to all McGill herbivores)
▤ libgen, Anna's Archive
▤ PDF Drive

♘I am the pickup rider for the doctoral rodeo since 2022:

Official McGill page.
PhD Program Regulations (for Computer Science only).
Timeline.
Courses.
Managing student milestones (a supervisory committee, a letter of understanding, and progress tracking).
Letter of Understanding to be signed by student and supervisor for McGill University's bureaucrats..
Letter of Understanding filled in as an example for Luc's students.
Want to become a PhD student in our School? First, convince a professor to give you a saddle. Then apply to McGill. Not the other way around.