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CIDR 2023 Keynote Speakers


Monday Keynote: 9:15 am-10:15 am

Gustavo Alonso (ETHZ)

Data Processing in the Hardware Era

 

Abstract:
Over the decades, the database research community has gone through different phases: the exciting years implementing and consolidating the relational model, the widening perspective on data management offered by search engines and the web, and now the challenges posed by the cloud, which is not only a shift in technology but also a change in the business model of the IT world. In this talk I will hypothesize that we are in a new period where most of the established assumptions, rules of thumb, and accumulated wisdom about data processing no longer hold and need to be revisited. Data processing in general, and databases in particular, are at the heart of all relevant applications and use cases these days. However, they are also disappearing into the infrastructure, with several layers of additional processing on top of them becoming more relevant and attracting more attention from industry and academia (web servers, diverse analytical applications, ML/AI tools, micro-services, etc.). As part of this process, the expectations and requirements on data processing are also changing, becoming far more demanding and often inseparable from those of the supporting hardware and software stack. In particular, the high degrees of specialization being driven by the cloud and the resulting fundamental changes in hardware cannot be ignored. In the talk I will present some such architectural developments, explain why they represent fundamental changes, and discuss how they are likely to affect data processing in the years to come.

Bio:
Gustavo Alonso is a professor in the Department of Computer Science of ETH Zurich where he is a member of the Systems Group. He graduated in Telecommunications Engineering from the Technical University of Madrid, Spain and did his MSc and PhD at the University of California at Santa Barbara. After graduation, he was a research scientists at the IBM Almaden Research Center in San Jose, California before joining ETH. His research interests include data management, distributed systems, cloud computing architecture, and hardware acceleration through reconfigurable computing. Gustavo has served as PC chair for conferences in several areas including VLDB, ICDE, EDBT, EuroSys, Middleware, and ICDCS and regularly serves in the Program Committee of CIDR, VLDB, SIGMOD, FPGA, ATC, EuroSys, OSDI, and MLSys. He was a member of the VLDB Endowment and the EDBT Executive Board and the Chair of EuroSys, the European Chapter of ACM SIGOPS. Gustavo has received 4 Test-of-Time Awards for his research in databases, software runtimes, middleware, and mobile computing. He is an ACM Fellow, an IEEE Fellow, and a Distinguished Alumnus of the Department of Computer Science of UC Santa Barbara.


Wednesday Keynote: 9:00 am-10:00 am

Hannes Mühleisen (CWI)

Developing Systems in Academia: The Good, the Bad, and the Not-so-Ugly Duckling

 

Abstract:
Our research community has created multiple popular data management systems. However, combining serious software development with the day-to-day realities of academic life can be challenging. From a research perspective, it can also be difficult to realize what users are actually struggling with most. In my talk, I will share our experiences of building DuckDB from its beginnings as a secret project within CWI to global reach and a successful spin-off company. I will also describe possible ways for institutions to encourage systems creation.

Bio:
Prof. Dr. Hannes Mühleisen is a creator of the DuckDB database management system and Co-founder and CEO of DuckDB Labs, a consulting company providing services around DuckDB. He is also a senior researcher of the Database Architectures group at the Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI) in Amsterdam and Professor of Data Engineering at Radboud Universiteit. Hannes' main interest is analytical data management systems.