Christoph Koch

Christoph Koch is a Full Professor of Computer Science at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), leading the Data Analysis Theory and Applications Laboratory (DATA). His academic journey includes previous roles as Associate Professor at Cornell University (2007-2010) and Saarland University (2005-2007), with academic foundations from TU Vienna (PhD 2001, Habilitation 2004) and research at CERN.

• Education: PhD in Artificial Intelligence (TU Vienna & CERN, 2001), Habilitation (TU Vienna, 2004)
• Appointments: EPFL (2010-present), Cornell University (2007-2010), Saarland University (2005-2007), TU Vienna (2003-2005)

His research focuses on database theory and systems, with recent work spanning query optimization, transaction processing, and parallel data management. His publications address topics like robustness under SQL isolation levels, quantifier elimination for query optimization, and Datalog extensions. Articles trend toward high-dimensional data cubes, transactional concurrency, and embedded DSLs for performance-critical systems.

Scientific accolades include:

• Best Paper Awards:
  • PODS (2002)
  • ICALP (2005)
  • SIGMOD (2011)
  • VLDB (2014)
  • GPCE (2017)
• ERC Consolidator Grant (2011)
• Google Research Award (2009)
• ACM SIGLOG Alonzo Church Award (2021)

He has advised numerous PhD students including Immanuel Trummer (now at Cornell), Milos Nikolic (Edinburgh), and Lionel Parreaux (HKUST). His lab contributes to query engine architectures, parallel processing systems, and quantum computing applications in database optimization.