Awards

• Maximilian Schleich received an Honourable Mention for the 2021 SIGMOD Jim Gray Doctoral Dissertation Award for his DPhil dissertation entitled "Structure-Aware Learning over Multi-Relational Databases". The award recognizes excellent research by doctoral candidates in the database field.

• Gabriel-Robert Inelus was awarded the 2019 Microsoft Prize for best 4th-year Computer Science project at the University of Oxford. His project investigates factorised learning of low-rank models (so-called quadratically regularised principal component analysis) over multi-relational databases. [ pdf ]

• Radu-Bogdan Berteanu received the 2018 Microsoft Prize for best 4th-year Computer Science Project at the University of Oxford. His project tackles the problem of computing covers, which are succinct, lossless, relational representations for query results in relational databases.

• Pierre-Yves Bigourdan was awarded the 2016 Hoare Prize for best MSc in CS project at the University of Oxford. His project investigates the problem of many-core and distributed regression learning over factorised joins.

• Maximilian Schleich received the honourable mention (2nd place) from Vienna Centre for Logic and Algorithms (VCLA) International Student Awards for Outstanding Master Thesis in 2016.

• Maximilian Schleich was awarded the 2015 Hoare Prize for best MSc in CS project at the University of Oxford. His project investigates the problem of learning linear regression models over factorised joins.

• Lo Po Tsui received the 2013 Hoare prize for best overall MSc in CS performance at the University of Oxford.

• Laura Draghici was awarded the 2013 Hoare Prize for best MSc in CS project at the University of Oxford. Her project investigates the problem of updates in factorised databases.

• Tomáš Kočiský was awarded the 2012 Gloucester Research Project Prize for best 4th year Maths&CS project at the University of Oxford. His project investigates the evaluation problem for queries with ORDER-BY and GROUP-BY clauses on factorised databases.

• Quentin Spencer-Harper was ranked 1st in undergraduate CS and received the 2012 Gloucester Research Prize for best 3rd year CS project at the University of Oxford. His project was on the design and implementation of a query engine for probabilistic databases.

• Larisa Han received the 2011 Hoare prize for best MSc in CS project at the University of Oxford. Her thesis investigated the problem of efficient inference for queries with aggregates in probabilistic databases using knowledge compilation.

• Narayan Kamath received the 2010 Hoare prize for best overall MSc in CS performance at the University of Oxford.

• Rasmus Wissmann received the 2009 Hoare prize for best overall MSc in CS performance at the University of Oxford.

• Jiewen Huang received the 2008 Hoare prize for best overall MSc in CS performance at the University of Oxford.

• Jiewen Huang received the 2008 Hoare prize for best MSc in CS project at the University of Oxford. His thesis investigated the problem of efficient inference for conjunctive queries with inequalities in probabilistic databases using knowledge compilation.

Paper " Declarative Probabilistic Programming with Datalog" (by Vince Bárány, Balder ten Cate, Benny Kimelfeld, Dan Olteanu, Zografoula Vagena) received the International Conference on Database Theory (ICDT) 2026 Test of Time Award. This award recognizes a paper presented 10 years prior at the ICDT conference that has best met the "test of time" and had the highest impact in terms of research, methodology, conceptual contribution, or transfer to practice over the past decade.

Dan Olteanu was named an ACM Distinguished Member 2025 for contributions to data management theory and systems.

The ACM Distinguished Member program recognizes up to 10 percent of the worldwide ACM membership based on professional experience and significant achievements in computing beyond the norm. To be nominated, a candidate must have at least 15 years of professional experience in the field and five years of Professional ACM Membership in the last 10 years, and must have achieved a significant level of accomplishment or made a significant impact in the field. Also, a Distinguished Member is expected to have served as a mentor and role model to younger professionals.

Our paper on the LpBound cardinality estimator received the SIGMOD 2025 Best Paper Award.

Our PODS 2024 work on the theory of cardinality estimation (overviewed here: Information Theory Strikes Back: New Development on the Theory of Cardinality Estimation) received the SIGMOD Research Highlights Award.

"SIGMOD Research Highlights are to showcase a set of research projects that exemplify core database research. In particular, these projects address an important problem, represent a definitive milestone in solving the problem, and have the potential of significant impact. SIGMOD Research Highlights also aim to make the selected works widely known in the database community, to our industry partners, and to the broader ACM community."

Prof. Olteanu delivered the Gems of PODS lecture at the ACM PODS 2024 conference held in Santiago, Chile in June 2024. Gems of PODS features topics and results in PODS that have been highly influential in the PODS community and beyond. The lecture primarily overviews the work of his team and collaborators on the Incremental View Maintenance problem.

• Article Join Size Bounds using Lp-Norms on Degree Sequences received the ACM PODS 2024 distinguished paper award.

• Article CHORUS: Foundation Models for Unified Data Discovery and Exploration was nominated for the best paper award at VLDB 2024 (15 out of 303 accepted papers were nominated)

Paper "Factorized Representations of Query Results: Size Bounds and Readability" (by Dan Olteanu and Jakub Závodný) received the International Conference on Database Theory (ICDT) 2022 Test of Time Award. This award recognizes a paper presented 10 years prior at the ICDT conference that has best met the "test of time" and had the highest impact in terms of research, methodology, conceptual contribution, or transfer to practice over the past decade. The 2022 FDB workshop highlights the impact of this work.

Paper Counting Triangles under Updates in Worst-Case Optimal Time received the best paper award at the International Conference on Database Theory (ICDT) 2019. The paper introduces the first fully dynamic worst-case optinal algorithm for counting triangles in graphs.

• Paper Tractable Conjunctive Queries over Static and Dynamic Relations was invited to ACM Transactions on Database Systems (TODS) special issue of best papers at International Conference on Database Theory (ICDT) 2025.

• Paper Conjunctive Queries with Free Access Patterns Under Updates was invited to Logical Methods in Computer Science (LMCS) special issue of selected papers at International Conference on Database Theory (ICDT) 2023. [Journal version].

• Article Functional collection programming with semi-ring dictionaries was invited to Journal of Functional Programming (JFP) special issue of best papers at Object-oriented Programming, Systems, Languages, and Applications (OOPSLA) 2022. Invite declined.

• Paper Functional Aggregate Queries with Additive Inequalities was invited to ACM Transactions on Database Systems (TODS) special issue of best papers at ACM Principles of Database Systems (PODS) 2019. [Journal version]

• Paper Counting Triangles under Updates in Worst-Case Optimal Time was invited to ACM Transactions on Database Systems (TODS) special issue of best papers at International Conference on Database Theory (ICDT) 2019. [Journal version]

• Paper In-Database Learning with Sparse Tensors was invited to ACM Transactions on Database Systems (TODS) special issue of best papers at ACM Principles of Database Systems (PODS) 2018. [Journal version]

• Paper Declarative Probabilistic Programming with Datalog was invited to ACM Transactions on Database Systems (TODS) special issue of best papers at International Conference on Database Theory (ICDT) 2016. [Journal version]

• Paper ENFrame: A Platform for Processing Probabilistic Data was invited to ACM Transactions on Database Systems (TODS) special issue of best papers at Extending Data Base Technology (EDBT) 2014. [Journal version]

Dan Olteanu received a prestigious ERC Consolidator grant 2015 for work on factorised databases

Dan Olteanu received a Google Faculty award 2014 for work on factorised databases.

• Distinguished Associate Editor award at Very Large Data Bases 2023
• Distinguished PC Member award at SIGMOD 2018
• Outstanding Teaching Award, University of Oxford 2009