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Joseph M. Hellerstein

Jim Gray Professor of Computer Science
EECS Computer Science Division
UC Berkeley

Joseph M. Hellerstein

Biography

Joseph M. Hellerstein's work focuses on data-centric systems and the way they drive computing. He is the Jim Gray Professor of Computer Science at the University of California, Berkeley.

Hellerstein's research was recognized by ACM SIGMOD with the Codd Innovations Award. Additionally, Hellerstein is an ACM Fellow, an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellow, and the winner of three ACM-SIGMOD "Test of Time" awards, IEEE VIS "Test of Time" award, VLDB "Test of Time" award, PaPoC "Test of Time" award, VLDB Best Paper award, IBM Research Best Paper in Computer Science, NSF CAREER, NASA New Investigator, and an Okawa Foundation Fellowship. In 2010, Fortune Magazine included him in their list of 50 smartest people in technology. MIT's Technology Review included his work on cloud programming on their 2010 TR10 list of the 10 most important emerging technologies; in 1999 he was on their inaugural TR100 list of young innovators. Three of Hellerstein's Ph.D. students have been awarded the ACM-SIGMOD Jim Gray Best Dissertation Award, and one an honorable mention for the ACM Doctoral Dissertation Award.

Hellerstein is the founding editor-in-chief of the journal Foundations and Trends in Databases. He currently serves on the advisory boards of ACM SIGMOD and the ACM/IMS Journal of Data Science. In the past he has served on the Scientific Advisory Board (Fachbeirat) of the Max Planck Institute for Computer Science and the advisory board of ACM SOCC.

In addition to his role in academia, Hellerstein has been a leader in the technology industry. Hellerstein is a co-founder of Aqueduct, which is bringing new open source technology for Prediction Infrastructure to market. Hellerstein is also a Fellow at Sutter Hill Ventures. Previously he co-founded Trifacta, the pioneering company in Data Preparation, where he served as founding CEO and Chief Strategy Officer. Trifacta was acquired by Alteryx in 2022 and continues to power Google Cloud Dataprep by Trifacta. Hellerstein serves on the technical advisory boards of a number of computing and Internet companies including Dell EMC, SurveyMonkey, Captricity, Datometry, Acryl Data and Brim Data. 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 also a co-founder of Cohera (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 systems including Aqueduct, Trifacta, Google Cloud Dataprep, Apache MADlib, Captricity, SurveyMonkey, 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 projects, including TelegraphCQ, TinyDB, PIER, P2, MADlib, Data Wrangler, Bloom, Anna KVS, Cloudburst FaaS and Hydroflow.

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 on stage backing 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. His recording credits include horn tracks and arrangements on James Combs' 2022 Americana album Falling Under Spells.

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Last modified: $Date: 2022/06/14 22:47:22 $ by Joe Hellerstein