M. Tamer Özsu

University Professor
Data Systems Research Group
David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science
University of Waterloo
Waterloo, Ontario N2L 3G1
Canada

Distinguished Visiting Professor
Tsinghua University
Beijing
China

Office: DC 3350

tamer.ozsu AT uwaterloo.ca

+1 (519) 888-4043

Administrative Coordinator: Yibei Zhao
y263zhao AT uwaterloo.ca
+1 (519) 888-4567 x. 38217

My Calendar

General Information

Undergraduate internships: I am not going to be admitting any international interns for the foreseeable future. Please do not write to me about internship as I will not be able to respond to individual emails.
Graduate students: I am not going to be admitting any more graduate student next academic year. I am full right now.
Driving directions to Waterloo
Campus map; Please park in the M lot.

Honours and Awards

IEEE Innovation in Societal Infrastructure Award (2022)
CS-Can/Info-Can Lifetime Achievement Award (2019)
University Professor, University of Waterloo (2018)
Fellow, American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) (2017)
Fellow, Royal Society of Canada (2016)
Elected Member, The Science Academy, Turkey (2013)
Fellow, Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) (2006)
Fellow, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) (2010)
University Research Chair, University of Waterloo (2004-2011)
ACM Distinguished Lecturer (2007-present)
IBM CAS Canada Research Faculty Fellow (2010-present)
Cheriton Faculty Fellow, Faculty of Mathematics, University of Waterloo (2013-2016; 2018-2021)
Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) of Canada Discovery Accelerator Award (2013)
University of Waterloo Outstanding Performance Award (2004, 2009, 2014)
Ohio State University College of Engineering Distinguished Alumni Award (2008)
ACM SIGMOD Contributions Award (2006)
Faculty Fellow, Faculty of Mathematics, University of Waterloo (2000-2003)
McCalla Professor, University of Alberta (1993-1994)
Sigma Xi – Scientific Research Society Member (1994-present)
NATO Ph.D. scholarship through TÜ̈BITAK–The Scientific and Technical Research Council of Turkey (1979–1983)

Paper Awards

Test-of-Time Award, ACM SIGMOD (2015) for paper
- L. Chen, M. T. Özsu, and V. Oria. "Robust and Fast Similarity Search for Moving Object Trajectories," In Proc. ACM SIGMOD International Conference on Management of Data, 2005, pages 491-502.
Best Paper Award, 44th International Conference on Very Large Data Bases (2018) for paper
- S. Sahu, A. Mhedhbi, S. Salihoglu, J. Lin and M. T. Özsu. "The Ubiquity of Large Graphs and Surprising Challenges of Graph Processing", Proc. VLDB Endowment, 11(4): 420-431, 2018.
Best Paper Award, 23rd International Conference on Database Systems for Advanced Applications (2018) for paper
- P. Peng, L. Zou, M. T. Özsu, and D. Zhao. "Multi-Query optimization in Federated RDF Systems," In Proc. 23rd International Conference on Database Systems for Advanced Applications, 2018, pages 745–765.
Best Paper Award Honourable Mention, 29th International Conference on Data Engineering (2013) for paper
- C. Balkesen, J. Teubner, G. Alonso, and M. T. Özsu. "Main-Memory Hash Joins on Multi-Core CPUs: Tuning to the Underlying Hardware," In Proc. 29th IEEE International Conference on Data Engineering, 2013, pages 362–373.

Research

My research is on data management. Although I have done work in basic database technologies such as query processing, transaction processing, and database integration, the main focus of my research follows two threads: (1) application of database technology to non-traditional data types, and (2) distributed & parallel data management.
For more information click here.

Teaching

Current and Upcoming

CS 638 - Principles of Data Management and Use

Past Graduate Courses

CS 638 - Principles of Data Management and Use (Fall 2015, Fall 2016, Fall 2018, Fall 2019)
CS 755 - System and Network Architectures and Implementation (Fall 2013)
CS 655 - System and Network Architectures and Implementation (Spring 2012, Fall 2012) - Same course as above; this is the previous number.
CS 742 - Distributed and Parallel Database Systems (Winter 2013); Versions of this course were taught at ETH Zürich (Winter 2006) and at National University of Singapore (Fall 2010)
CS 748T - Distributed Database Systems (Winter 2001)
CS 848 - Advanced Topics in Databases: Big Data Management Platforms (Winter 2019)
CS 848 - Advanced Topics in Databases: Modern Database Systems (Winter 2015)
CS 856 - Web Data Management (Fall 2002, Winter 2005)
CS 856 - Internet-Scale Distributed Data Management (Fall 2005)

Past Undergraduate Courses
- CS 348 - Introduction to Database Management (Fall 2012, Winter 2018)
- CS 338 - Computer Applications in Business: Databases (Fall 2013)
- CS 448/648 - Introduction to Database Management (Winter 2001)
- CS 454/654 - Distributed Systems (Winter 2002, Fall 2002, Winter 2004, Spring 2004, Fall 2004)

Vita

Publications

Recent Presentations

A Systematic View of Data Science, Distinguished Seminar at Istanbul Technical University Artificial Intelligence and Data Science Application and Research Center, June 2021. Also given at Polytechnic University of Hong Kong Research Centre on Data Science and AI (June 2021).
Distributed RDF Data Management and SPARQL Query Processing, Talk at Stanford Knowledge Graph Seminar, April 2021.
Streaming Graph Processing and Analytics, Keynote at 14th International Conference on Distributed and Event-Based Systems, 2020.
Graph Processing: A Panaromic View and Some open Problems, Keynote at 45th International Conference on Very Large Data Bases, 2019. A shorter version at Dagstuhl Workshop on Big Graph Processing Systems (2019), Peking University (2020), and Tsinghua University (2020). The video is of the Peking University presentation.
An Introduction to Graph Analytics Platform - Very Short Version, Keynote at VLDB 2018 workshop on Advances in Mining Large-Scale Time-Dependent Graphs, 2018.
Web Data Management in RDF Age, Keynote at IEEE International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems, 2017.
Approaches to RDF Data Management and SPARQL Query Processing, INRIA, 2017.

Students, Research Staff and Visitors

Current (Some pictures)
Former

Current Activities

Books

Principles of Distributed Database Systems, 4th edition, Springer, 2020, ISBN 978-3-030-26252-5; eText ISBN: 978-3-030-26253-2.

Digital version.
Supplementary material (Presentation slides, JPEG figures, and solutions to some of the exercises.
You can also order it from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Chapters-Indigo, and of course Springer

Chinese translation of third edition by Prof. Li-Zhu Zhou published by Tsinghua University Press.
Encyclopedia of Database Systems, 2nd edition, Springer, 2019, ISBN 978-1-4899-7993-3. See the DBLP page.

Springer Book Series on Web Information Systems Engineering and Internet Technologies, Editorial Board Member

Journals

ACM Transactions on Internet Technologies, Associate Editor
World Wide Web Journal, Editorial Board Member
Frontiers of Computer Science, Editorial Board Member
International Journal of Next-Generation Computing, Advisory Board Member

Conference

Vice-Chair, ICDE 2022 - 38th IEEE International Conference on Data Engineering, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, 9-12 May 2022.
Senior PC Member, EDBT 2022 - 25th International Conference on Extending Database Technology, Edinburgh, UK, 29 March-1 April 2022.
PVLDB Review Committee Member, Volume 14 (VLDB 2021 - 47th International Conference on Very Large Data Bases), Copenhagen, Denmark, August 16-20, 2021.
Area Chair, SIGMOD 2021 - ACM SIGMOD International Conference on Management of Data, Xi'an, China, June 2021.
Vice-Chair, ICDE 2021 - 37th IEEE International Conference on Data Engineering, Chania, Greece, 19-23 April 2021.
Senior PC Member, EDBT 2021 - 24th International Conference on Extending Database Technology, 23-26 March 2021.

Board Memberships

Advisory/Steering Committee Chair, Polytechnic University of Hong Kong Research Centre on Data Science and AI (2021-present)
Academic Advisory Committee Member, Istanbul Technical University Artificial Intelligence and Data Science Application and Research Centre (2020-present)
Advisory Board Member, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Department of Computer Science and Engineering (2020-present)
Technical Advisory Board Member, Tsinghua University National Engineering Laboratory for Big Data Software (2017–present)
Advisory Board Member, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Big Data Institute (2017-present)
Proceedings of VLDB Advisory Board Member, (2014-present)

Selected Past Activities

ACM Books, Founding Editor-in-Chief
Morgan & Claypool Synthesis Lectures on Data Management, Founding Series Editor
Chair, ACM Special Interest Group on Management of Data (SIGMOD), 2001-2005.
Trustee, VLDB Endowment, 1996-2002.
Board Member, CS-Can/Info-Can (2017-2019)
Technical Expert Advisory Committee Member, City University of Hong Kong, Multimedia Software Engineering Research Center (2014-1019)
ACM Publications Board (2003--2017)
International Advisory Board Member, National Institute of Informatics, Japan (2011-2018)
Academic Advisory Committee Member, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, School of Engineering (2009 - 2014 & 2017-2020)
Advisory Board Chair, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Department of Computer Science and Engineering (2014-2017)
Coordinating Editor-in-Chief, The VLDB Journal, 2001-2005 (Co-EIC: 1997-2001).
Associate Editor, ACM Computing Surveys (2005-2009).
Springer Book Series on Advanced Information & Knowledge Processing, Editorial Board Member (2002 - 2013)
Information Technology and Management, Editorial Board Member (2000-2013)
CRA Board of Directors, Canadian Association of Computer Science (CACS) Representative (2010-2013)

Personal Stuff & Hobbies

Some pictures: Aklan, Allison-Umut-Emma, Nuran, Nuran, Nuran-Shina, Umut-Shina, Shina, Emma
I collect pens. For a partial list of the pens I own, click here.
- Some of these are for sale. Click here to find out which ones.
For a listing of important pen sites on the Web click here.