Manos Athanassoulis

Manos Athanassoulis is an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the College of Arts and Sciences, Boston University. He is the Founder and Director of the BU Data-intensive Systems and Computing (DiSC) lab and a member of the BU MiDAS group. His research focuses on data systems, particularly cloud data management, hybrid transactional/analytical workloads, and integration with emerging hardware such as non-volatile memory and heterogeneous computing.

His educational background includes a PhD from EPFL (2014), an MSc in Computer Systems Technology, and a BSc in Informatics and Telecommunications from the University of Athens, Greece. Prior to BU, he was a Postdoctoral Researcher and Research Associate at Harvard University, supported by a SNSF Postdoc Mobility Fellowship.

His research interests span data systems, database architectures, LSM trees, indexing, storage systems, and performance optimization. He explores how novel hardware can be leveraged to improve data management efficiency and scalability, especially in cloud environments.

His recent publications (2021–2025) predominantly focus on LSM trees, covering topics such as compaction policies, Bloom filter tuning, DPU offloading, adversarial resilience, and sustainable caching. Earlier works include foundational contributions on access methods (RUM Conjecture) and optimal key-value stores (Monkey). The trend shows a consistent focus on data system efficiency, adaptability, and robustness under varying workloads and hardware constraints.

Scientific Awards:

• NSF CAREER Award (2022)
• Facebook Faculty Research Award (2020)
• NSF CRII Award (2019)
• Best of VLDB 2017 and Best of SIGMOD 2017
• SIGMOD Most Reproducible Paper Award (2017)
• Multiple ACM SIGMOD Distinguished PC Member recognitions (2018–2025)
• VLDB 2023 Best Demo Award
• RedHat Collaboratory Research Incubation Awards (multiple, 2021–2023)
• SNSF Postdoc Mobility Fellowship (2015–16)
• IBM PhD Fellowship (2011–12)

Dr. Athanassoulis has advised numerous students and collaborators, evident from his co-authorship on works with researchers such as Niv Dayan, Stratos Idreos, and A. Ailamaki. His grants include major awards from NSF, Facebook, and RedHat, supporting research in robust data systems, hardware-software co-design, and learned cost models. He has also been recognized for teaching excellence at Harvard University.

He leads the DiSC lab at Boston University, which focuses on data-intensive computing and systems research. The lab explores next-generation data architectures, particularly in cloud and hardware-aware environments. Collaborations with the BU MiDAS group enhance interdisciplinary research in data science and AI.