Database Column contributor: David DeWitt

David J. DeWitt joined the Computer Sciences Department at the University of Wisconsin in September 1976 after receiving his Ph.D. degree from the University of Michigan. He served as department chair for five years from July 1999 to July 2004 and is currently the John P. Morgridge Professor of Computer Sciences. In 1995 Professor DeWitt was selected to be an ACM Fellow and received the 1995 SIGMOD Innovation Award for his contributions to the database systems field. He was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 1998. His research program has focused on the design and implementation of database management systems including parallel, object-oriented, and object-relational database systems. In the late 1980s the Gamma parallel database system project produced many of key pieces of technology that form the basis for today's generation of large parallel database systems, including products from IBM, Informix, NCR/Teradata, and Oracle.

Throughout his career, Professor DeWitt has also been interested in database system performance evaluation. He developed the first relational database system benchmark in the early 1980s, which became known as the Wisconsin benchmark. More recently, his research program has focused on the design and implementation of distributed database techniques for executing complex queries against the content of the Internet. Professor DeWitt has authored over 100 technical publications and served on numerous program committees and National Science Foundation (NSF) review panels.

He was a member of the NSF CISE Advisor Committee from 2000 to 2003 and has served on several NRC study panels. He was the program chair of the 1983 SIGMOD Conference, program co-chair of the 1988 VLDB Conference, and general chair of the 2002 SIGMOD Conference. He has graduated 30 Ph.D. students.