Short Bio

I am an associate professor (hoofddocent) in computer science at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) and member of SOFT. My main research focus is on various aspects of modern, scalable big data systems, including query processing with formal optimality guarantees, high-available transaction processing, and querying data on the web.

I obtained a Ph.D. from Hasselt University in 2017 under the advice of Frank Neven and was a postdoctoral researcher at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL) where I worked with Christoph Koch. As a Ph.D. student, I did internships at the University of Washington in Seattle and the University of Wisconsin in Madison. My research has been awarded best paper awards at the ACM PODS Conference (the year 2014 and 2015), the 2018 European Association for Theoretical Computer Science distinguished dissertation award, and also the 2019 SIGMOD Jim Gray Doctoral Dissertation Award Honorable Mention.

More: Institutional Page · LinkedIn · Twitter · ResearchGate · ORCID · Math Genealogy

Team

  • Tim Baccaert (currently visiting UCBerkeley)
  • Dr. Heba Mohamed (FWO fellow)
  • Fernando Hechavarría Fajardo
  • Chiara Forresi (external collaborator)

I have open PhD and postdoc positions. If you are a talented student with a strong interest in formal theory ór with exceptional engineering skills, don't hesitate to reach out. We also welcome visitors.

Recent Publications (full list)

Author order depends on the collaboration; often alphabetical, or semi-alphabetical (with junior researcher first)

  • SIGMOD Record 2023
    Brecht Vandevoort, Bas Ketsman, Christoph Koch, Frank Neven. When is it safe to run a transactional workload under Read Committed?. In: SIGMOD Record. 2023. Volume 52 No 1. DOI:10.1145/3604437.3604446.
    • 2023 ACM SIGMOD Research Highlight Award
  • EDBT 2023
    Brecht Vandevoort, Bas Ketsman, Christoph Koch, Frank Neven. Detecting Robustness against MVRC for Transaction Programs with Predicate Reads. In: Proceedings 26th International Conference on Extending Database Technology. 2023. DOI:10.48786/EDBT.2023.48.
  • PODS 2023
    Tim Baccaert, Bas Ketsman. Distributed Consistency Beyond Queries. In: Proceedings of the 42nd ACM SIGMOD-SIGACT-SIGAI Symposium on Principles of Database Systems. 2023. DOI:10.1145/3584372.3588657.
  • PODS 2023
    Brecht Vandevoort, Bas Ketsman, Frank Neven. Allocating Isolation Levels to Transactions in a Multiversion Setting. In: Proceedings of the 42nd ACM SIGMOD-SIGACT-SIGAI Symposium on Principles of Database Systems. 2023. DOI:10.1145/3584372.3588672.
    • ACM SIGMOD - PODS 2023 Distinguished Paper Award
  • Foundations and Trends Databases
    Bas Ketsman, Paraschos Koutris. Modern Datalog Engines. In: Foundations and Trends in Databases. 2022. Volume 12 No 1. DOI:10.1561/1900000073.
  • LMCS 2022
    Bas Ketsman, Dan Suciu, Yufei Tao. A Near-Optimal Parallel Algorithm for Joining Binary Relations. In: Logical Methods in Computer Science. 2022. Volume 18 Issue 12 No . DOI:10.1007/s00224-019-09959-3.
  • SIGMOD Record 2022
    Bas Ketsman, Christoph Koch, Frank Neven, Brecht Vandevoort. Concurrency control for database theorists. In: SIGMOD Record. 2022. Volume 51 No 4. DOI:10.1145/3582302.3582304.
  • TODS 2022
    Bas Ketsman, Christoph Koch, Frank Neven, Brecht Vandevoort. Deciding Robustness for Lower {SQL} Isolation Levels. In: ACM Transactions on Database Systems. 2022. Volume 47 No 4. DOI:10.1145/3561049.
  • PODS 2022
    Brecht Vandevoort, Bas Ketsman, Christoph Koch, Frank Neven. Robustness against Read Committed: A Free Transactional Lunch. In: Proceedings of the 41th ACM SIGMOD-SIGACT-SIGAI Symposium on Principles of Database Systems. 2022. DOI:10.1145/3517804.3524162.
  • ICDT 2022
    Brecht Vandevoort, Bas Ketsman, Christoph Koch, Frank Neven. Robustness against Read Committed for Transaction Templates with Functional Constraints. In: 24th International Conference on Database Theory. 2022. DOI:10.4230/LIPIcs.ICDT.2022.16.
  • RuleML+RR 2021
    Bart Bogaerts, Bas Ketsman, Younes Zeboudj, Heba Aamer, Ruben Taelman, Ruben Verborgh. Link Traversal with Distributed Subweb Specifications. In: 5th International Joint Conference on Rules and Reasoning proceedings. 2021. DOI:10.1007/978-3-030-91167-6_5.
  • VLDB 2021
    Brecht Vandevoort, Bas Ketsman, Christoph Koch, Frank Neven. Robustness against Read Committed for Transaction Templates. In: Proceedings of the VLDB Endowment. 2021. DOI:10.14778/3476249.3476268.
See also: DBLP · Google Scholar

Teaching & Services

Teaching at VUB

  • Databases - Master (spring 2020 - now)
  • Databanken - Bachelor (spring 2020 - now)
  • Scalable Data Management Systems - Master (spring 2020, autumn 2020 - now)
  • Open Information Systems - Master (autumn 2020 with Bart Bogaerts, autumn 2021)
  • Data and Information Management - Master (autumn 2022)
  • Advanced Topics in Big Data - Master (spring 2022 with Beat Signer)

Conference and Workshop Organization

International Services

  • PC membership
    PODS (2020,2023,2025), ICDT (2020,2023), Doctoral Consortium @ RuleML+RR (2024)
  • Other reviewing
    PODS (2017,2018), VLDBJ (2018), TOCS (2018), ACM TODS (2015, 2016, 2021), Elsevier IS (2015)

Talks

  • UC Berkeley, 2023
    Negation, Coordination and Monotonicity. Sky Computing. Berkeley, CA, USA [online talk]. 12 April 2023.
  • EDBT, 2023
    Detecting Robustness against MVRC for Transaction Programs with Predicate Reads. International Conference on Extending Database Technology. Ioannina, Greece [online talk]. 31 March 2023.
  • Northeastern University, 2022
    Datalog with Negation and Monotonicity. DATA Lab @ Northeastern. online. 28 July 2022.
  • ICDT, 2020
    Datalog with Negation and Monotonicity. International Conference on Database Theory. Copenhagen, Denmark [online talk due to the COVID-19 pandemy]. 30 March 2020.
  • UC San Diego, 2018
    Datalog, Coordination and Monotonicity. University of California. San Diego, CA, USA. 4 October 2018.
  • ICDT, 2018
    Distribution Policies for Datalog. International Conference on Database Theory. Vienna, Austria. 26 March 2018.
  • Stanford University, 2017
    Coordination-free query evaluation and multi-query optimization in parallel and distributed systems. Stanford University. Stanford, CA, USA. 18 October 2017.
  • UC Berkeley, 2017
    Coordination-free query evaluation and multi-query optimization in parallel and distributed systems. University of California. Berkeley, CA, USA. 14 August 2017.
  • PODS, 2017
    A Worst-Case Optimal Multi-Round Algorithm for Parallel Computation of Conjunctive Queries. Principles of Database Systems Conference. Chicago, IL, USA. 17 May 2017.
  • UW Madison, 2017
    A Worst-Case Optimal Multi-Round Algorithm for Parallel Computation of Conjunctive Queries. University of Wisconsin. Madison, WI, USA. 10 April 2017.
  • DBDBD, 2016
    A Worst-Case Optimal Multi-Round Algorithm for Parallel Computation of Conjunctive Queries on Graphs. Dutch Belgian Database Day. Mons, Belgium. 28 October 2016.
  • UW Seattle, 2016
    Single-Round Multi-Join Evaluation. University of Washington. Seattle, WA, USA. 8 April 2016.
  • PODS, 2015
    Parallel-Correctness and Transferability for Conjunctive Queries. Principles of Database Systems Conference. Melbourne, VIC, Australia. 1 June 2015.
  • ICDT, 2015
    Optimal Broadcasting Strategies for Conjunctive Queries over Distributed Data. International Conference on Database Theory. Brussels, Belgium. 25 March 2015.
  • PODS, 2014
    Weaker Forms of Monotonicity for Declarative Networking: a more fine-grained answer to the CALM-conjecture. Principles of Database Systems Conference. Snowbird, Utah, USA. 22 June 2014.
  • DBDBD, 2014
    How to Stay CALM While Seeing What is not There?. Dutch Belgian Database Day. Antwerp, Belgium. 17 October 2014.