Biography

Joseph M. Hellerstein is a Professor of Computer Science at the University of California, Berkeley. Hellerstein's research focuses on data management and distributed systems, including database systems, sensor networks, cluster computing, and peer-to-peer networks.

Hellerstein is an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellow, and a recipient of multiple awards, including two ACM-SIGMOD "Test of Time" awards, VLDB Best Paper, IBM's Best Paper in Computer Science, NSF CAREER, NASA New Investigator, and an Okawa Foundation Fellowship. In 1999, MIT's Technology Review named him one of the top 100 young technology innovators worldwide in their inaugural "TR100" list.

In addition to his role in academia, Hellerstein has been a leader in the technology industry. From 2003-2005 he was Director of Intel Research, Berkeley, where he led research in networking and query processing for the Internet and for sensor networks. Hellerstein was a co-founder of Cohera Corporation (now part of Oracle), where he served as Chief Scientist from 1998-2001. Key ideas from his research have been incorporated into commercial and open-source database systems including IBM's DB2 and Informix, Oracle's PeopleSoft Catalog Management, and the open-source PostgreSQL system. He has also led a number of open-source systems projects at Berkeley, including TelegraphCQ, TinyDB, PIER and P2.

Hellerstein is the founding editor-in-chief of the journal Foundations and Trends in Databases. He currently serves on the Scientific Advisory Board (Fachbeirat) of the Max Planck Institute for Computer Science, as well as the technical advisory boards of a number of software and Internet companies. In the past he has served as a member of the advisory boards of ACM SIGMOD and Ars Digita University.

Hellerstein received his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin, a masters degree from UC Berkeley, and a bachelor's degree from Harvard. He spent a pre-doctoral internship at IBM Almaden Research Center, and a post-doctoral internship at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.

Hellerstein is a jazz enthusiast and part-time trumpeter. As an undergraduate he helped bring jazz onto the Internet via the Usenet group rec.music.bluenote. During his Ph.D. studies at Wisconsin he minored in music under the direction of Richard Davis and Joan Wildman. He has performed as a sideman with notable musicians including Carla Bley, Jane Ira Bloom, Lester Bowie, Benny Carter, Rosemary Clooney, Buck Clayton, Harry Connick, Jr., Harry "Sweets" Edison, Joe Henderson, Vijay Iyer, Illinois Jacquet, Geoff Keezer, Joshua Redman, Anton Schwartz, and Steve Swallow.