Ihab Francis Ilyas

Short Biography

Books Data Cleaning, ACM Books Ihab F. Ilyas and Xu Chu
Startups and Software Release I'm fortunate to have a great group of grad students and collaborators to build systems based on industry problems. CEO, Co-founder, Inductiv, a Waterloo-based startup on using AI for Structured Data Cleaning, 2019 (acquired by Apple) Co-founder, Tamr, a leading startup in using machine learning for large-scale data integration, 2013 HoloClean on Github: an open-source platform for using machine learning in error detection and repair.
Blog Post: AI Should not Leave Structured Data Behind! (Medium - Towards Data Science) The Quest for High Quality Data (O'Rielly Media) How to Clean Noisy and Erroneous Big Data Using Machine Learning (Tamr Blog) Data Cleaning is a Machine Learning Problem that Needs Data Systems Help! (ACM SIGMOD Blog) Three Enablers for ML in Data Unification: Trust, Legacy and Scale (O'Rielly Media) HoloClean, a Machine Learning Approach to Data Cleaning
Surveys and Long Papers Probabilistic Ranking Techniques in Relational Databases (Synthesis Lectures on Data Management) March 2011, 71 pages, (doi:10.2200/S00344ED1V01Y201103DTM014 Ihab F. Ilyas and Mohamed A. Soliman Foundation and Trends Paper: Trends in Cleaning Relational Data: Consistency and Deduplication (Author Copy) November 2015, Foundations and Trends in Databases: Vol. 5: No. 4, pp 281-393 Ihab F. Ilyas and Xu Chu

CAREER HIGHLIGHTS

• Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, 2024
• IEEE Fellow, 2022
• ACM Fellow, 2020 
• Co-founder, Inductiv, a Waterloo-based startup on using AI for Structured Data Cleaning, 2019 (acquired by Apple)
• Co-founder, Tamr, a leading startup in using machine learning for large-scale data integration, 2013
• NSERC-Thomson Reuters Chair of Data Quality, 2018
• ACM SIGMOD vice-chair, 2017
• VLDB Endowment Board of Trustees, 2016
• Google Faculty Award, 2014
• ACM Distinguished Scientist, 2014
• NSERC Discovery Accelerator, 2014-2018, NSERC
• Cheriton Faculty Fellowship, 2013-2016, University of Waterloo
• ACM SIGMOD 2015 Best Demo Award
• Ontario Early Researcher Award, 2008, Government of Ontario
• IBM CAS Faculty Fellow, 2006-2010, IBM
• Taha Hussein Medal for top 10 high school students in the nation, 1990, Ministry of Education, Egypt

RESEARCH

Research Interests

Probabilistic and Uncertain Data Management; Machine Learning for Data Quality and Enrichment; Big Data; and Information Extraction

Students and Postdoctoral Fellows

Current:

Graduated:

• Aoqian Zhang (Postdoc, 2020)
• Shrinu Kushagra (Postdoc, 2020)
• Lanjun Wang (Postdoc, 2017)
• Alexandra Roatis (Postdoc, 2016)
  

• Chang Ge (PhD 2022) - Assistant Professor, University of Minnesota
• Alireza Heydari (PhD 2021)
• Hemant Saxena (PhD 2021) - SAP
• Mina Farid (PhD, 2020) - Inductiv (Apple)
• Xu Chu (PhD, 2017) - Assistant Professor, Georgia Institute of Technology
• Jeffrey Pound (co-supervised by Grant Weddell) (PhD 2013) - SAP
• George Beskales (PhD 2012) - Tamr Inc.
• Amr El-Helw (PhD 2012) - Greenplum
• Mohamed A. Soliman (PhD 2010) - Greenplum
  
  
• Sobhan Niknamian (Masters 2021)
• Omar Attia (Masters 2021) - Inductiv (Apple)
• Michael Azmy (Masters 2019)
• Jian Li (Masters 2018) - Google
• Anam Shadab (Masters 2018)
• John Morcos (Masters 2015) - Microsoft
• Hella Hoffmann (Masters 2015) - Thomson Reuters
• Artur Galiullin (Masters 2013)
• Mina Farid (Masters 2012) - Grad School
• Mina Saleeb (Masters 2012) - Oracle
• Hiren Patel (Masters 2010) - Microsoft
• Nan Jiang (Masters 2009)

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS  [DBLP] 

• Fact Ranking over Large-Scale Knowledge Graphs with Reasoning Embedding Models
  Hongyu Ren, Ali Mousavi, Anil Pacaci, Shihabur Rahman Chowdhury, Jason Mohoney, Ihab F. Ilyas, Yunyao Li, Theodoros Rekatsinas
  in IEEE Data Eng. Bull. 46(2): 126-139 (2023)
  
  
• High-Throughput Vector Similarity Search in Knowledge Graphs. [arxiv]
  Jason Mohoney, Anil Pacaci, Shihabur Rahman Chowdhury, Ali Mousavi, Ihab F. Ilyas, Umar Farooq Minhas, Jeffrey Pound, Theodoros Rekatsinas
  in SIGMOD 2023, . Proc. ACM Manag. Data 1(2): 197:1-197:25
  
  
• FLEEK: Factual Error Detection and Correction with Evidence Retrieved from External Knowledge
  Farima Fatahi Bayat, Kun Qian, Benjamin Han, Yisi Sang, Anton Belyi, Samira Khorshidi, Fei Wu, Ihab F. Ilyas, Yunyao Li
  in EMNLP (Demos) 2023
  
  
• Increasing Coverage and Precision of Textual Information in Multilingual Knowledge Graphs
  Simone Conia, Min Li, Daniel Lee, Umar Farooq Minhas, Ihab F. Ilyas, Yunyao Li
  in EMNLP 2023
  
  
• Real-Time LSM-Trees for HTAP Workloads [arxiv]
  Hemant Saxena, Lukasz Golab, Stratos Idreos, Ihab F. Ilyas
  in ICDE 2023
  
  
• Growing and Serving Large Open-domain Knowledge Graphs [Apple ML]
  Ihab F. Ilyas, J. P. Lacerda, Yunyao Li, Umar Farooq Minhas, Ali Mousavi, Jeffrey Pound, Theodoros Rekatsinas, Chiraag Sumanth
  in SIGMOD 2023

• Saga: A Platform for Continuous Construction and Serving of Knowledge At Scale [Apple ML]
  Ihab F. Ilyas, Theodoros Rekatsinas, Vishnu Konda, Jeffrey Pound, Xiaoguang Qi, Mohamed Soliman
  in SIGMOD 2022
  
  
• Data Errors: Symptoms, Causes and Origins
  Ihab F. Ilyas, Felix Naumann
  in IEEE Data Eng. Bull. 45(1): 4-9 (2022)
  
  
• Machine Learning and Data Cleaning: Which Serves the Other?
  Ihab F. Ilyas, Theodoros Rekatsinas
  in ACM J. Data Inf. Qual. 14(3): 13:1-13:11 (2022)
  
  
• Ember: No-Code Context Enrichment via Similarity-Based Keyless Joins (arXiv)
  Sahaana Suri, Ihab F. Ilyas, Christopher Ré, Theodoros Rekatsinas
  in VLDB 2021 – PVLDB 15(3)
  
  
• Kamino: Constraint-Aware Differentially Private Data Synthesis.
  Chang Ge, Shubhankar Mohapatra, Xi He, Ihab F. Ilyas
  in VLDB 2021 - PVLDB 14(10)
  
  
• Properties of Inconsistency Measures for Databases
  Ester Livshits, Rina Kochirgan, Segev Tsur, Ihab F. Ilyas, Benny Kimelfeld, Sudeepa Roy
  in SIGMOD 2021 
  
  
• PCOR: Private Contextual Outlier Release via Differentially Private Search
  Masoumeh Shafieinejad, Florian Kerschbaum, Ihab F. Ilyas
  in SIGMOD 2021
  
  
• Secure Multi-Party Functional Dependency Discovery
  Chang Ge, Ihab F. Ilyas, and Florian Kerschbaum
  in VLDB 2020 - PVLDB 13 (2)
  
  
• Approximate Denial Constraints (arXiv)
  Ester Livshits, Alireza Heidari, Ihab F. Ilyas and Benny Kimelfeld
  in VLDB 2020 - PVLDB 13 (10)
  
  
• Attention-based Learning for Missing Data Imputation in HoloClean
  Richard Wu, Aoqian Zhang, Ihab F. Ilyas, and Theodoros Rekatsinas
  in MLSys 2020
  
  
• HoloDetect: Few-Shot Learning for Error Detection (arXiv)
  Alireza Heidari, Joshua McGrath, Ihab F. Ilyas and Theodoros Rekatsinas
  in SIGMOD 2019
  
  
• Distributed Implementations of Dependency Discovery Algorithms
  Hemant Saxena, Lukasz Golab and Ihab F. Ilyas
  in VLDB 2019, Los Angeles, USA - PVLDB 12(11): 1624-1636 (2019)
  
  
• Approximate Inference in Structured Instances with Noisy Categorical Observations
  Alireza Heidari, Ihab F. Ilyas and Theodoros Rekatsinas
  in UAI 2019
  
  
• Semi-supervised Clustering for De-duplication (arXiv)
  Shrinu Kushagra, Shai Ben-David and Ihab F. Ilyas
  in AISTATS 2019
  
  
• APEx: Accuracy-Aware Differentially Private Data Exploration (arXiv)
  Chang Ge, Xi He, Ihab F. Ilyas and Ashwin Machanavajjhala
  in SIGMOD 2019
  
  
• A Formal Framework For Probabilistic Unclean Databases (arXiv)
  Christopher De Sa, Ihab F. Ilyas, Benny Kimelfeld, Christopher Re and Theodoros Rekatsinas
  in ICDT 2019
  
  
• A Framework of Clustering Selection for De-duplication
  Shrinu Kushagra, Hemant Saxena, Shai Ben-David and Ihab F. Ilyas
  in ICDE 2019
  
  
• Unsupervised String Transformation Learning for Entity Consolidation
  Dong Deng, Guoliang Li, Wenbo Tao, Ziawasch Abedjan, Ahmed Elmagarmid, Ihab F. Ilyas, Samuel Madden, Mourad Ouzzani, Michael Stonebraker, and Nan Tang
  in ICDE 2019
  
  
• Data Integration: The Current Status and the Way Forward
  Michael Stonebraker, Ihab F. Ilyas
  in IEEE Data Eng. Bull. 41(2): 3-9 (2018)
  
  
• Seeping Semantics: Linking Datasets using Word Embeddings for Data Discovery
  Raul Castro Fernandez*, Essam Mansour, Abdulhakim Qahtan, Ahmed Elmagarmid, Ihab F. Ilyas, Samuel Madden, Mourad Ouzzani, Michael Stonebraker, Nan Tang
  in ICDE 2018
  
  
• HoloClean: Holistic Data Repairs with Probabilistic Inference
  Theodoros Rekatsinas, Xu Chu, Ihab F. Ilyas, Christopher Re
  CoRR abs/1702.00820 (2017)
  in VLDB 2017 - PVLDB 10(11): 1190-1201 (2017)
  
  
• The Data Civilizer System
  Dong Deng, Raul Castro Fernandez, Ziawasch Abedjan, Sibo Wang, Michael Stonebraker, Ahmed K. Elmagarmid, Ihab F. Ilyas, Samuel Madden, Mourad Ouzzani, Nan Tang:
  in CIDR 2017
  
  
• Effective Data Cleaning with Continuous Evaluation
  Ihab F. Ilyas
  in IEEE Data Engineering Bulletin, 39(2): 38-46 (2016)
  
  
• Distributed Data Deduplication
  Xu Chu, Ihab F. Ilyas, and Paraschos Koutris
  in VLDB 2016 - PVLDB 9(11): 864-875 (2016)
  
  
• Detecting Data Errors: Where are we and what needs to be done?
  Ziawasch Abedjan, Xu Chu, Dong Deng, Raul Castro Fernandez, Ihab F. Ilyas, Mourad Ouzzani, Paolo Papotti, Michael Stonebraker, and Nan Tang
  in VLDB 2016 - PVLDB 9(12): 993-1004 (2016)
  
  
• DataXFormer: A Robust Transformation Discovery System
  Ziawasch Abedjan, John Morcos, Ihab F. Ilyas, Mourad Ouzzani, Paolo Papotti, and Michael Stonebraker
  in ICDE 2016: 1134-1145
  
  
• KATARA: A Data Cleaning System Powered by Knowledge Bases and Crowdsourcing
  Xu Chu, John Morcos, Ihab F. Ilyas, Mourad Ouzzani, Paolo Papotti, Nan Tang, and Yin Ye
  in SIGMOD 2015
  
  
• BigDansing: A System for Big Data Cleansing
  Zuhair Khayyat, Ihab F. Ilyas, Alekh Jindal, Samuel Madden, Mourad Ouzzani, Paolo Papotti, Jorge Quiane-Ruiz, Nan Tang, and Si Yin
  in SIGMOD 2015
  
  
• ataxformer: Leveraging the Web for Semantic Transformations
  Ziawasch Abedjan, John Morcos, Michael N. Gubanov, Ihab F. Ilyas, Michael Stonebraker, Paolo Papotti, Mourad Ouzzani
  in CIDR 2015
  
  

• Descriptive and Prescriptive Data Cleaning
  Anup Chalamalla, Ihab F. Ilyas, Mourad Ouzzani, and Paolo Papotti
  in SIGMOD 2014
  
  
• Discovering Denial Constraints
  Xu Chu, Ihab F. Ilyas, and Paolo Papotti
  in VLDB 2014 - PVLDB 6(13): 1498-1509 (2013)
  
  
• Sampling from Repairs of Conditional Functional Dependency Violations
  George Beskales, Ihab F. Ilyas, Lukasz Golab, and Artur Galiullin
  in the VLDB Journal, Volume 23, Number 1, February 2014, pp. 103-128
  
  
• NADEEF: A Commodity Data Cleaning System
  Michele Dallachiesa, Amr Ebaid, Ahmed Eldawy, Ahmed Elmagarmid, Ihab F. Ilyas, Mourad Ouzzani ,and Nan Tang
  in SIGMOD 2013
  source code
  
  
• On the Relative Trust between Inconsistent Data and Inaccurate Constraints
  George Beskales, Ihab F. Ilyas, Lukasz Golab, and Artur Galiullin
  in ICDE 2013
  
  
• Holistic Data Cleaning: Putting Violations into Context
  Xu Chu, Ihab F. Ilyas, and Paolo Papotti
  in ICDE 2013
  
  
• Data Curation at Scale: The Data Tamer System
  Michael Stonebraker, Daniel Bruckner, Ihab F. Ilyas, George Beskales, Mitch Cherniack, Stan Zdonik, Alexander Pagan, Shan Xu
  in CIDR 2013
  
  
• Interpreting Keyword Queries over Web Knowledge Bases
  Jeffrey Pound, Alexander K. Hudek, Ihab F. Ilyas, and Grant E. Weddell
  in CIKM 2012
  
  
• Ranking with Uncertain Scoring Functions: Semantics and Sensitivity Measures
  Mohamed A. Soliman, Ihab F. Ilyas, Davide Martinenghi and Marco Tagliasacchi
  in SIGMOD 2011
  
  
• Guided Data Repair
  Mohamed Yakout, Ahmed K. Elmagarmid , Jennifer Neville , Mourad Ouzzani and Ihab F. Ilyas
  in VLDB, 2011 - PVLDB 4(5): 297-289 (2011)
  
  
• Sampling the Repairs of Functional Dependency Violations under Hard Constraints
  George Beskales, Ihab F. Ilyas, and Lukasz Golab
  in VLDB 2010 - PVLDB 3(1): 197-207 (2010)
  
  
• Expressive and Flexible Access to Web-Extracted Data: A Keyword-based Structured Query Language
  Jeffrey Pound, Ihab F. Ilyas, and Grant Weddell
  in SIGMOD 2010
  
  
• Supporting Ranking Queries on Uncertain and Incomplete Data
  Mohamed A. Soliman, Ihab F. Ilyas, and Shalev Ben-David
  in the VLDB Journal, Volume 19, Number 4, 2010, pp. 477 - 501
  
  
• StatAdvisor: Recommending Statistical Views
  Amr El-Helw, Ihab F. Ilyas and Calisto Zuzarte
  in VLDB 2009 - PVLDB 2(2): 1306-1317 (2009)
  
  
• Modeling and Querying Possible Repairs in Duplicate Detection
  George Beskales, Mohamed A. Soliman, Ihab F. Ilyas and Shai Ben-David
  in VLDB 2009 - PVLDB 2(1): 598-609 (2009)
  
  
• Creating Competitive Products
  Qian Wan, Raymond Chi-Wing Wong, Ihab F. Ilyas, M. Tamer Ozsu and Yu Peng
  in VLDB 2009 - PVLDB 2(1): 898-909 (2009)
  
  
• Ranking with Uncertain Scores
  Mohamed A. Soliman and Ihab F. Ilyas
  in ICDE 2009
  
  
• PSALM: Cardinality Estimation in the Presence of Fine-grained Access Controls
  Huaxin Zhang, Ihab F. Ilyas, and Kenneth Salem
  in ICDE 2009
  
  
• Probabilistic Top-k and Ranking-Aggregate Queries
  Mohamed A. Soliman, Ihab F. Ilyas, and Kevin C.-C. Chang
  in TODS, Volume 33, Issue 3, September 2008, Article 13
  
  
• A Survey of Top-k Query Processing Techniques in Relational Database Systems
  Ihab F. Ilyas, George Beskales, and Mohamed A. Soliman
  in the ACM Computing Surveys, Volume 40, Issue 4, October 2008, Article 11
  
  
• Top-k Query Processing in Uncertain Databases
  Mohamed A. Soliman, Ihab F. Ilyas, and Kevin C.-C. Chang
  in ICDE 2007
  
  
• Collecting and Maintaining Just-in-Time Statistics
  Amr El-Helw, Ihab F. Ilyas, Wing Lau, Volker Markl, Calisto Zuzarte
  in ICDE 2007
  
  
• Adaptive Rank-aware Query Optimization in Relational Databases
  Ihab F. Ilyas, Walid G. Aref, Ahmed K. Elmagarmid, Hicham Elmongui, Rahul Shah and Jeffrey S. Vitter
  in TODS, Volume 31, Issue 4, December 2006, pp. 1257 - 1304
  
  
• Supporting Ad-hoc Ranking Aggregates
  Chengkai Li, Kevin. C.-C. Chang,  and Ihab F. Ilyas
  in SIGMOD 2006, Chicago, Illinois, pp. 61-72
  
  
• RankSQL: Query Algebra and Optimization for Relational Top-k Queries
  Chengkai Li, Kevin. C.-C. Chang, Ihab F. Ilyas, and Sumin Song
  in SIGMOD 2005
  
  
• Rank-aware Query Optimization
  Ihab F. Ilyas, Rahul Shah, Walid G. Aref, Jeffrey S. Vitter, and Ahmed K. Elmagarmid
  in SIGMOD 2004
  
  
• CORDS: Automatic Discovery of Correlations and Soft Functional Dependencies
  Ihab F. Ilyas, Volker Markl, Peter Haas, Paul Brown, and Ashraf Aboulnaga
  in SIGMOD 2004
  
  
• Supporting Top-k Join Queries in Relational Databases
  Ihab F. Ilyas, Walid G. Aref, and Ahmed K. Elmagarmid
  in VLDB 2003 (selected among best papers for the VLDB Journal Volume 13, Number 3 (207-221), 2004