stanford cs
future data systems

As rising volumes of data play an increasingly central role in society, data-intensive computing systems must evolve. The mission of the Future Data Systems group (part of the Stanford DAWN project and the Stanford Infolab) is to 1.) design and build post-database systems that enable next-generation data-intensive applications and 2.) train world-class systems researchers.

We are interested in two types of systems:

1. Systems that are at least an order of magnitude better than the competition ("10x systems").
2. Systems that are the first of their kind ("0 to 1 systems").

10x systems are almost always powered by smart algorithms and/or clever use (or disuse) of hardware. 0 to 1 systems are enabled by creativity, audacity, and raw ambition. We build both.

We have a growing number of ongoing projects on topics including:

• A new analytics engine for prioritizing attention in large-scale fast data streams
• Efficient model search and optimization for fast training and inference
• Infrastructure for usable machine learning, from preprocessing to serving and monitoring

FDS includes Peter Bailis (Professor), Firas Abuzaid (PhD, co-advised with Matei Zaharia), Cody Coleman (PhD, co-advised with Matei Zaharia), Edward Gan (PhD), Daniel Kang (PhD, co-advised with Matei Zaharia), Peter Kraft (PhD), Kexin Rong (PhD, co-advised with Phil Levis), Sahaana Suri (PhD), Kai Sheng Tai (PhD), Stephanie Mallard (Stanford MSCS), Jialin Ding (Stanford BS), Hashem Elezabi (Stanford BS), Thao Nguyen (Stanford BS), and Karey Shi (Stanford BS).

Our amazing alumni include Vayu Kishore (MSCS, Google Spanner) and Vivek Jain (MSCS, Rubrik).

Our group's research is generously supported in part by the affiliate members and other supporters of the Stanford DAWN project—Ant Financial,Facebook, Google, NEC, and VMware—as well as Toyota and Northrop Grumman. If you are interested in sharing interesting data with us or supporting our research, please contact us.

We are always looking for talented, excitable, and hungry students who want to help shape the future of data-intensive computing. Interested? Apply to the Stanford CS department through the Stanford Graduate Admissions site. (More info.) If you are already a Stanford student, please send us an email.

Contact us at futuredata-hello@cs.stanford.edu.