About
Prof. Dan Olteanu is a full professor at the Department of Informatics, University of Zurich, leading the Data Systems and Theory (DaST) group. He holds visiting professorships at the University of Oxford and is an emeritus fellow of St Cross College. His academic journey includes a PhD from Ludwig Maximilian University (2005), postdoctoral roles at Saarland University and Cornell University, and prior faculty positions at Oxford (2007–2020). He has also worked in industry with companies like LogicBlox and RelationalAI, focusing on database systems and AI.
- Education:
- Bachelor’s in Computer Science, Politehnica University of Bucharest (2000)
- PhD in Computer Science, Ludwig Maximilian University (2005)
- Professional Roles:
- Full Professor, University of Zurich (since 2020)
- Visiting Professor, University of Oxford
- Emeritus Fellow, St Cross College
- Editorial Roles: ACM TODS, VLDBJ, SIGMOD
- Conference Chair: ICDT Council (since 2022)
His research focuses on data systems theory, including query optimization, probabilistic databases, factorized databases, and in-database machine learning. He co-authored the seminal book Probabilistic Databases (2011) and has pioneered algorithms for efficient machine learning over relational data and incremental maintenance of analytical workloads. His work emphasizes scalable, theoretically grounded solutions for real-world data challenges.
Awards:
- ICDT 2019 Best Paper Award
- ACM SIGMOD 2018 Distinguished PC Member Award
- ERC Consolidator Grant (2016)
- Oxford Outstanding Teaching Award (2009)
Grants & Funding: Supported by Google, Microsoft Azure, Amazon AWS, EPSRC, and the European Commission. His research bridges academia and industry, with contributions to commercial systems like LogicBlox and RelationalAI.
Labs & Teams: Heads the DaST group at Zurich, focusing on data systems theory and applications. Collaborates widely in the database and AI communities.
