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

• 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. Ö zsu, 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 Honorable 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

• Past Graduate Courses

  • CS 638 - Principles of Data Management and Use (Fall 2015, Fall 2016)
  • 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)

  I taught versions of this course as Parallel and Distributed Databases at ETH Zürich (Winter 2006) and at National University of Singapore (Fall 2010)

  • CS 748T - Distributed Database Systems (Winter 2001)
  • CS 848 - 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

• Short biography
• Full CV (PDF Format)
• My academic geneology
• Some statistics
  • My Erdös number
  • My h-index
  • Scholar index
  • Google scholar

Publications

• Publications grouped by type
• Publications grouped by topic

Students, Research Staff and Visitors

• Current (Some pictures)
• Former

Current Activities

Books

• Principles of Distributed Database Systems, 3rd edition, Springer, 2011, ISBN 978-1-4419-8833-1.

  E-book version.
  Supplementary material (Presentation slides, JPEG figures, and solutions to some of the exercises. All of these, except for solutions to exercises, are also available from Springer site.
  You can also order it from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Chapters-Indigo.

  Chinese translation by Prof. Li-Zhu Zhou published by Tsinghua University Press.

• Encyclopedia of Database Systems, Springer, 2009, ISBN 978-0-387-35544-3. See the DBLP page.
• ACM Books, Editor-in-Chief Follow @ACMBooks
• Springer Book Series on Web Information Systems Engineering and Internet Technologies, Editorial Board Member

Journals

• World Wide Web Journal, Editorial Board Member
• Knowledge and Information Systems, Editorial Board Member
• International Journal of Next-Generation Computing, Advisory Board Member

Conferences

• PC Member, SIGMOD 2018- ACM SIGMOD International Conference on Management of Data, Houston, USA, June 10-15, 2018.
• General Co-Chair, 35th IEEE International Conference on Data Engineering, Macau, China, 8-12 April 2019.
• PVLDB Review Committee Member, Volume 12 (45th International Conference on Very Large Data Bases), Los Angeles, USA, August 26-30, 2019.

Board Memberships

• Board Member, CS-Can/Info-Can (2017-2020)
• Academic Advisory Committee Member, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, School of Engineering (2017-2020)
• 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)
• Technical Expert Advisory Committee Member, City University of Hong Kong, Multimedia Software Engineering Research Center (2014-1019)
• ACM SIGMOD Advisory Board Member (2015-present)
• Proceedings of VLDB Advisory Board Member, (2014-present)

Selected Past Activities

• Morgan & Claypool Synthesis Lectures on Data Management, Series Editor -- DBLP page for the series.
• Chair, ACM Special Interest Group on Management of Data (SIGMOD), 2001-2005.


• Trustee, VLDB Endowment, 1996-2002.


• ACM Publications Board (2003--2017)
• International Advisory Board Member, National Institute of Informatics, Japan (2011-2018)
• 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.