Speaker: Prof. Volker Markl, Technical University of Berlin

Abstract:

The global database research community has greatly impacted the functionality and performance of data storage and processing systems along the dimensions that define “big data”, i.e., volume, velocity, variety, and veracity. Although much progress has been made, when looking at the overall big data stack, a major challenge for the database research community still remains. That is, how to maintain the ease-of-use despite the increasing heterogeneity and complexity of data analytics, involving a complex environment that stresses various aspects of an end-to-end data analytics pipeline.  In particular, to operate in a massively distributed environment, processing thousands of concurrent, continuous queries on millions of streaming data sources.

At TU Berlin, DFKI, and the Berlin Institute for Foundations of Learning and Data (BIFOLD) we currently aim to advance research in this field via the NebulaStream project. Our goal is to remedy some of the heterogeneity challenges that hamper developer productivity and limit the use of data science technologies to just the privileged few, who are coveted experts. In this talk, we will outline how state-of-the-art SPEs have to change to exploit the new capabilities of the IoT and showcase how we tackle specific challenges.  We will present our vision for the NebulaStream system, provide an overview of its architecture, and discuss several of our key research challenges. Furthermore, we will present its current status as well as our steps towards establishing a thriving open-source community around the system.

Bio:

Volker Markl is a German Professor of Computer Science. He leads the Chair of Database Systems and Information Management at TU Berlin and the Intelligent Analytics for Massive Data Research Department at DFKI. In addition, he is Director of the Berlin Institute for the Foundations of Learning and Data (BIFOLD). He is a database systems researcher, conducting research at the intersection of distributed systems, scalable data processing, and machine learning. Volker led the Stratosphere project, which resulted in the creation of Apache Flink. Volker has received numerous honors and prestigious awards, including best paper awards at ACM SIGMOD, VLDB, and ICDE as well as the ACM SIGMOD Systems Award. In 2014, he was elected one of Germany‘s leading “Digital Minds“ (Digitale Köpfe) by the German Informatics Society and is a member of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences. He was elected an ACM Fellow for his contributions to query optimization, scalable data processing, and data programmability. He served as President of the VLDB Endowment, and serves as advisor to academic institutions, governmental organizations, and technology companies. Volker holds eighteen patents and has been co-founder and mentor to several startups.

References:

• Website:  https://www.tu.berlin/en/dima/about-us/prof-dr-volker-markl
• NebulaStream website

Host:  Shel Finkelstein (shel@ucsc.edu)

Zoom: https://ucsc.zoom.us/j/93080726653?pwd=bWFiRzJTZVluNGJXSVJLb2pXdGhCUT09