Events Calendar

CS Distinguished Lecture: Michael Stonebraker (MIT) - We Are Often Working on the Wrong Problem (10 Misconceptions About What is Important)

Speaker: Michael Stonebraker, MIT

Talk Title: We Are Often Working on the Wrong Problem (10 Misconceptions About What is Important)

Series: Computer Science Distinguished Lecture Series

Abstract: In the DBMS/Data Systems area, many of us seem to have lost our way. This talk discusses 10 different problem areas in which there is considerable current research. Then, I present why I believe much of the work is misguided, either because our assumptions about these problems are incorrect or because we are not paying attention to real users. Topics considered include machine learning (deep and conventional), public blockchain, data warehouses, schema evolution and the cloud.

This lecture satisfies requirements for CSCI 591: Research Colloquium.


Biography: Dr. Stonebraker has been a pioneer of data base research and technology for more than forty years. He was the main architect of the INGRES relational DBMS, and the object-relational DBMS, POSTGRES. These prototypes were developed at the University of California at Berkeley where Stonebraker was a Professor of Computer Science for twenty five years. More recently at M.I.T. he was a co-architect of the Aurora/Borealis stream processing engine, the C-Store column-oriented DBMS, the H-Store transaction processing engine, the SciDB array DBMS, and the Data Tamer data curation system. Presently he serves as Chief Technology Officer of Paradigm4 and Tamr, Inc.

Professor Stonebraker was awarded the ACM System Software Award in 1992 for his work on INGRES. Additionally, he was awarded the first annual SIGMOD Innovation award in 1994, and was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 1997. He was awarded the IEEE John Von Neumann award in 2005 and the 2014 Turing Award, and is presently an Adjunct Professor of Computer Science at M.I.T.


Host: Shahram Ghandeharizadeh

Location: Henry Salvatori Computer Science Center (SAL) - 101

Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

Contact: Computer Science Department