The Database Research Community: The success of the first 50 years, and some concerns for the future

Speaker:	Jeffrey F. Naughton
		John P. Morgridge Chair
		Professor and Chair, Computer Sciences Department
		University of Wisconsin-Madison

Title:		"The Database Research Community: The success of the
		 first 50 years, and some concerns for the future"

Date:		Thursday, 2 December 2010

Time:		4:00pm - 5:00pm

Venue:		Room 2306 (via lifts 17/18), HKUST

Abstract:

Some of the major themes in DBMS research appeared in the computer science
literature as early as 50 years ago. The community has had a very
productive time over the past 50 years exploring these themes, in the
process contributing to a major software industry and creating a large and
vibrant research community. While we will probably continue to be
productive over the next 50 years, I think there are some reasons for
concern going forward, some of which arise from the combination of an
overemphasis on paper counting and an underemphasis on quality reviewing.
While my personal experience is with the database community, feedback from
earlier versions of this talk suggest that these issues exist more broadly
in computer science research, so I hope this talk will be of interest to
non-database researchers as well.


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Biography:

Jeffrey F. Naughton earned a bachelor's degree in Mathematics from the
University of Wisconsin-Madison, and a PhD in Computer Science from
Stanford University.  He served as a faculty member in the Computer
Science Department of Princeton University before moving to the Computer
Sciences Department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he is
currently Professor and Chair. His research is in the broad area of
database management systems.  He has been a consultant for database
vendors including Greenplum, Microsoft, and Teradata. He received the
National Science Foundation's Presidential Young Investigator Award in
1991, was named an ACM Fellow in 2002, and was a member of the GAMMA team
that received the 2008 ACM Software Systems Award.