M. Tamer Özsu named Distinguished Visiting Professor at Tsinghua University

University Professor M. Tamer Özsu has been named a Distinguished Visiting Professor at Tsinghua University in Beijing, China. This honorary title is awarded to leading professors and scholars of the highest international reputation.

At the virtual ceremony, University Professor Özsu was presented with a certificate signed by Professor Qiu Yong, President of Tsinghua University. The title of Distinguished Visiting Professor, the highest awarded to visiting professors, confers to holders the privilege to explore their research interests with faculty and students at Tsinghua University.

As part of the virtual ceremony, University Professor Özsu gave a presentation titled “Graph Processing: A Panoramic View and Some Open Problems,” the current focus of his research. The presentation to his colleagues at Tsinghua University was a revised version of the keynote address he gave at VLDB 2019, the 45^th International Conference on Very Large Data Bases.

University Professor Özsu’s three-year appointment at Tsinghua University as a Distinguished Visiting Professor began on October 23, 2020.

About University Professor M. Tamer Özsu

University Professor M. Tamer Özsu has contributed to fundamental advances in the field of databases and data management, has provided leadership in professional and academic communities to which he belongs, and has mentored countless students, many of whom have become accomplished researchers and industry leaders.

University Professor Özsu’s research on data management has two broad themes — distributed data management and application of database technology to interesting application domains with complex data management requirements, with frequent interplay between these themes. He is a pioneer in distributed data management, a field he has contributed to and shaped since its early days. Important advances include the earliest understanding of distributed concurrency control algorithms. His book, Principles of Distributed Database Systems, now in its fourth edition, is the standard graduate textbook on this topic and is used worldwide.

University Professor Özsu’s research accomplishments have been lauded at the highest national and international levels, including recognition as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Association for Computing Machinery, and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. He is an elected member of the Science Academy in Turkey. He holds the rank of University Professor at the University of Waterloo, the highest distinction awarded to faculty, for his exceptional scholarly achievement and international pre-eminence. In 2019, he received the CS-Can/Info-Can Lifetime Achievement Award.

Professor Özsu’s dedication to serving the profession and the community has benefitted countless students and colleagues. Among his most notable activities include chairing ACM SIGMOD (the primary professional organization of database professionals) for two terms, representing CACS/AIC on the CRA Board, serving for 15 years on the ACM Publications Board, serving as a trustee of the Endowment for Very Large Databases and as the editor-in-chief of the VLDB journal.

He co-edited the Encyclopedia of Database Systems, a five-volume, 4,100-page collection. Within the University of Waterloo, Professor Özsu has had a transformative impact on computer science research and education, serving as Director of the Cheriton School of Computer Science from 2007 to 2010 and as Associate Dean of Research for the Faculty of Mathematics from 2014 to 2017.