Distinguished Speaker Series
Speaker Biography
Professor of Computer Science at the University of California, Berkeley
Joseph M. Hellerstein is a Professor of Computer Science at the
University of California, Berkeley. Hellerstein's work focuses on
data-centric systems and the way they drive computing.
Hellerstein is an ACM Fellow, and his research has been recognized by
multiple awards including an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship, two
ACM-SIGMOD "Test of Time" awards, 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.
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, P2
and Bloom.
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 including EMC and SurveyMonkey. 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.
Bio: http://db.cs.berkeley.edu/jmh/bio.html