CSC News

January 22, 2013

Taming the Data Speaker Series Welcomes Dr. Richard Snodgrass

Please join us on Friday, January 25th at 11:00 a.m. in room 3211 in Engineering Building 2 (EB2) for the second talk of the Taming the Data invited-speaker series at NC State University.   Dr. Richard Snodgrass, professor of Computer Science at the University of Arizona, is our special guest speaker.  The title of his talk is “Database Ergalics:  Examining Suboptimality.”
 
Snodgrass joined the Computer Science Department at the University of Arizona in 1989.  He has written or edited six books as well as many journal and conference papers.  He is also an Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Fellow.
 
He was Editor-in-Chief of the ACM Transactions on Database Systems from 2001 to 2007, was ACM SIGMOD Chair from 1997 to 2001, and has chaired the ACM Publications Board, the ACM History Committee, the ACM SIG Governing Board Portal Committee, the ACM Outstanding Award Committee, and the program committees for SIGMOD and VLDB. His web page is http://www.cs.arizona.edu/people/rts/.
 
Snodgrass holds a B.A. degree in Physics from Carleton College and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon University.  His research interests include ergalics (the science of computing), temporal databases, query language design, query optimization and evaluation, storage structures, and database design.
 
Abstract:  In his talk, Snodgrass will apply the methodology of ergalics to database management systems, by articulating a model of database suboptimality: when a DBMS picks the wrong query execution plan. Along the way, he will develop a protocol for accurately measuring query time, a surprisingly difficult task. The goal is to make the case that computer science integrates three equally ascendant perspectives: mathematics, science, and engineering. He will look at how these three perspectives interact and the sources of endurance of ergalic theories.
 
This invited-speaker series has been made possible thanks to generous support from Cisco, EMC, Premier healthcare alliance, SAS, the NC State Computer Science ePartners Program and the NC State Engineering Foundation.
 
The event is free and open to the public.  For more information about the talk, click here.
 
Directions to Centennial Campus and parking information can be found here.
 
~coates~

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