Volker Markl

Volker Markl is a full professor and Chair of Database Systems and Information Management at Technische Universität Berlin. He also serves as Director of the Berlin Institute for the Foundations of Learning and Data, Chief Scientist at DFKI, and holds adjunct roles at the University of Toronto. His research focuses on distributed systems, scalable data processing, and machine learning, with over 200 publications. He has been recognized with prestigious awards including ACM Fellow and European IST Prize. Volker earned his PhD in Computer Science from TU München in 1999 under Prof. Rudolf Bayer.

Education: PhD in Computer Science (1999, TU München).

Research Interests: Volker’s work bridges distributed systems, scalable data processing, and machine learning. He emphasizes systems-oriented research, data programmability, and innovation in data-driven technologies like Apache Flink, fostering collaborations with industry leaders such as IBM, SAP, and Microsoft.

Awards:

• ACM Fellow
• European IST Prize (2004)
• Humboldt Innovation Award (2019)

Advising & Grants: Led the DFG-funded Stratosphere project (2010–2019) creating Apache Flink. Holds 18 patents, including UB-Tree indexing. Co-founded startups like dataArtisans and Parstream. Advises German Federal Government and EU on AI/big data policies.

Labs/Teams: Leads the Intelligent Analytics for Massive Data Research Group at DFKI and directs the Berlin Institute for Learning and Data systems.