Dave Sullivan grew up in the Boston area, and was an undergraduate physics concentrator at Harvard. After graduation, he taught physics and math at the secondary-school level for six years. During that time, he took several courses at the Extension School to prepare for graduate studies in computer science. Sullivan received both his master's and doctoral degrees in computer science from Harvard. In his doctoral thesis, he developed a methodology for using probabilistic-reasoning techniques to automate software tuning. Since the fall of 2007, Sullivan has served as a full-time lecturer in computer science in the College of Arts and Sciences at Boston University, where he teaches courses in computer programming, database systems, and data mining. He has taught at the Harvard Summer School since 2000, and the Extension School since 2004.