Aaron Elmore

Aaron J. Elmore Associate Professor

About Aaron

Aaron J. Elmore is an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science, and the College of the University of Chicago. Aaron was previously a Postdoctoral Associate at MIT working with Mike Stonebraker on elastic and multitenant database systems, and Sam Madden on the DataHub project. Aaron's thesis on Elasticity Primitives for Database-as-a-Service was completed at the University of California, Santa Barbara under the supervision of Divy Agrawal and Amr El Abbadi. Prior to receiving a PhD, Aaron spent several years in industry and completed an MS at the University of Chicago. His recent research interests focus on building data systems that address the growing data deluge. This includes building a resource-efficent database system (CrocodileDB), new compression techniques for databases (DenseStore and EdgeTSD), bringing git-like functionality to Databases (Datahub, Decible, and OrpheusDB), and data discovery (DataSwamp and Relic). His previous projects included seminal work on polystores (BigDAWG), elastic databases (E-Store), and database migration (Squall and Zephyr).

Awards / Honors / Grants

  • 2024

    Google Data Analytics and Insights (DANI) Award

  • 2023

    Google Data Analytics and Insights (DANI) Award

  • 2022

    Google DAPA Gift

  • 2021

    NSF Career Award: Intermittent Query Processing

  • 2021

    Google DAPA Gift

  • 2020

    Google DAPA Gift

  • 2020

    NSF Accelerator Grant. The Data Hypervisor: Orchestrating Data and Models. (Sr Investigator)

  • 2019

    Intel Gift

  • 2019

    Google Gift

  • 2018

    Huawei’s Futurewei Gift Recipient

  • 2018

    ACM SIGMOD Distinguished PC Member

  • 2018

    ACM SIGMOD Best Demo Honorable Mention

  • 2018

    Google DIA Gift

  • 2017

    VLDB Best Paper Candidate

    For OrpheusDB: Bolt-on Versioning for Relational Databases, In best 5 papers.

  • 2016

    Intel Science and Technology Center for BigData PI

Papers

CIDR
2025
Resource-Adaptive Query Execution with Paged Memory Management.
Riki Otaki, Jun Hyuk Chang, Charles Benello, Aaron J. Elmore, Goetz Graefe
CIDR
2024
Towards Resource-adaptive Query Execution in Cloud Native Databases.
Rui Liu, Jun Hyuk Chang, Riki Otaki, Zhe Heng Eng, Aaron J. Elmore, Michael J. Franklin, Sanjay Krishnan
ICDE
2024
AdaEdge: A Dynamic Compression Selection Framework for Resource Constrained Devices.
Chunwei Liu, John Paparrizos, Aaron J. Elmore
ICDE
2024
Riveter: Adaptive Query Suspension and Resumption Framework for Cloud Native Databases.
Rui Liu, Aaron J. Elmore, Michael J. Franklin, Sanjay Krishnan
ICDE
2023
Rotary: A Resource Arbitration Framework for Progressive Iterative Analytics.
Rui Liu, Aaron J. Elmore, Michael J. Franklin, Sanjay Krishnan
Proc. VLDB Endow.
2023
Accelerating Similarity Search for Elastic Measures: A Study and New Generalization of Lower Bounding Distances.
John Paparrizos, Kaize Wu, Aaron J. Elmore, Christos Faloutsos, Michael J. Franklin
DBTest@SIGMOD
2022
FuzzyData: A Scalable Workload Generator for Testing Dataframe Workflow Systems.
Mohammed Suhail Rehman, Aaron J. Elmore
ICDE
2022
Fast Adaptive Similarity Search through Variance-Aware Quantization.
John Paparrizos, Ikraduya Edian, Chunwei Liu, Aaron J. Elmore, Michael J. Franklin
UIST
2022
Summarizing Sets of Related ML-Driven Recommendations for Improving File Management in Cloud Storage.
Will Brackenbury, Kyle Chard, Aaron J. Elmore, Blase Ur
Proc. VLDB Endow.
2022
Volume Under the Surface: A New Accuracy Evaluation Measure for Time-Series Anomaly Detection.
John Paparrizos, Paul Boniol, Themis Palpanas, Ruey Tsay, Aaron J. Elmore, Michael J. Franklin
Proc. VLDB Endow.
2022
Data Station: Delegated, Trustworthy, and Auditable Computation to Enable Data-Sharing Consortia with a Data Escrow.
Siyuan Xia, Zhiru Zhu, Chris Zhu, Jinjin Zhao, Kyle Chard, Aaron J. Elmore, Ian T. Foster, Michael J. Franklin, Sanjay Krishnan, Raul Castro Fernandez
Proc. VLDB Endow.
2022
Theseus: Navigating the Labyrinth of Time-Series Anomaly Detection. (Demo)
Paul Boniol, John Paparrizos, Yuhao Kang, Themis Palpanas, Ruey S. Tsay, Aaron J. Elmore, Michael J. Franklin
CIDR
2021
VergeDB: A Database for IoT Analytics on Edge Devices.
John Paparrizos, Chunwei Liu, Bruno Barbarioli, Johnny Hwang, Ikraduya Edian, Aaron J. Elmore, Michael J. Franklin, Sanjay Krishnan
SoCC
2021
Version Reconciliation for Collaborative Databases.
Nalin Ranjan, Zechao Shang, Sanjay Krishnan, Aaron J. Elmore
ICDE
2021
CIAO: An Optimization Framework for Client-Assisted Data Loading.
Cong Ding 0002, Dixin Tang, Xi Liang 0002, Aaron J. Elmore, Sanjay Krishnan
SIGIR
2021
Files of a Feather Flock Together? Measuring and Modeling How Users Perceive File Similarity in Cloud Storage.
Will Brackenbury, Galen Harrison, Kyle Chard, Aaron J. Elmore, Blase Ur
DEEM@SIGMOD
2021
Understanding and optimizing packed neural network training for hyper-parameter tuning.
Rui Liu 0002, Sanjay Krishnan, Aaron J. Elmore, Michael J. Franklin
SIGMOD
2021
Good to the Last Bit: Data-Driven Encoding with CodecDB.
Hao Jiang, Chunwei Liu, John Paparrizos, Andrew A. Chien, Jihong Ma, Aaron J. Elmore
SIGMOD
2021
Resource-efficient Shared Query Execution via Exploiting Time Slackness.
Dixin Tang, Zechao Shang, William W. Ma, Aaron J. Elmore, Sanjay Krishnan
UIST
2021
KondoCloud: Improving Information Management in Cloud Storage via Recommendations Based on File Similarity.
Will Brackenbury, Andrew M. McNutt, Kyle Chard, Aaron J. Elmore, Blase Ur
Proc. VLDB Endow.
2021
Decomposed Bounded Floats for Fast Compression and Queries.
Chunwei Liu, Hao Jiang, John Paparrizos, Aaron J. Elmore
Proc. VLDB Endow.
2021
A Demonstration of Relic: A System for REtrospective Lineage InferenCe of Data Workflows. (Demo)
Mohammed Suhail Rehman, Silu Huang, Aaron J. Elmore
CIDR
2020
CrocodileDB: Efficient Database Execution through Intelligent Deferment.
Zechao Shang, Xi Liang 0002, Dixin Tang, Cong Ding 0002, Aaron J. Elmore, Sanjay Krishnan, Michael J. Franklin
SIGMOD
2020
Fast and Reliable Missing Data Contingency Analysis with Predicate-Constraints.
Xi Liang 0002, Zechao Shang, Sanjay Krishnan, Aaron J. Elmore, Michael J. Franklin
SIGMOD
2020
Thrifty Query Execution via Incrementability.
Dixin Tang, Zechao Shang, Aaron J. Elmore, Sanjay Krishnan, Michael J. Franklin
SIGMOD
2020
Debunking Four Long-Standing Misconceptions of Time-Series Distance Measures.
John Paparrizos, Chunwei Liu, Aaron J. Elmore, Michael J. Franklin
Proc. VLDB Endow.
2020
PIDS: Attribute Decomposition for Improved Compression and Query Performance in Columnar Storage.
Hao Jiang, Chunwei Liu, Qi Jin, John Paparrizos, Aaron J. Elmore
Proc. VLDB Endow.
2020
CrocodileDB in Action: Resource-Efficient Query Execution by Exploiting Time Slackness. (Demo)
Dixin Tang, Zechao Shang, Aaron J. Elmore, Sanjay Krishnan, Michael J. Franklin
VLDB J.
2020
$\varvec{\textsc {Orpheus}}$DB: bolt-on versioning for relational databases (extended version).
Silu Huang, Liqi Xu, Jialin Liu, Aaron J. Elmore, Aditya G. Parameswaran
CIDR
2019
DeepLens: Towards a Visual Data Management System.
Sanjay Krishnan, Adam Dziedzic, Aaron J. Elmore
ICDE
2019
Mostly Order Preserving Dictionaries.
Chunwei Liu, McKade Umbenhower, Hao Jiang, Pranav Subramaniam, Jihong Ma, Aaron J. Elmore
ICML
2019
Band-limited Training and Inference for Convolutional Neural Networks.
Adam Dziedzic, John Paparrizos, Sanjay Krishnan, Aaron J. Elmore, Michael J. Franklin
Proc. VLDB Endow.
2019
MgCrab: Transaction Crabbing for Live Migration in Deterministic Database Systems.
Yu-Shan Lin, Shao-Kan Pi, Meng-Kai Liao, Ching Tsai, Aaron J. Elmore, Shan-Hung Wu
Proc. VLDB Endow.
2019
Intermittent Query Processing.
Dixin Tang, Zechao Shang, Aaron J. Elmore, Sanjay Krishnan, Michael J. Franklin
ACM SIGOPS Oper. Syst. Rev.
2019
Artificial Intelligence in Resource-Constrained and Shared Environments.
Sanjay Krishnan, Aaron J. Elmore, Michael J. Franklin, John Paparrizos, Zechao Shang, Adam Dziedzic, Rui Liu 0002
DaMoN
2018
Boosting data filtering on columnar encoding with SIMD.
Hao Jiang, Aaron J. Elmore
HILDA@SIGMOD
2018
Draining the Data Swamp: A Similarity-based Approach.
Will Brackenbury, Rui Liu 0002, Mainack Mondal, Aaron J. Elmore, Blase Ur, Kyle Chard, Michael J. Franklin
SIGMOD
2018
RushMon: Real-time Isolation Anomalies Monitoring.
Zechao Shang, Jeffrey Xu Yu, Aaron J. Elmore
SIGMOD
2018
DataDiff: User-Interpretable Data Transformation Summaries for Collaborative Data Analysis. (Demo)
Günce Su Yilmaz, Tana Wattanawaroon, Liqi Xu, Abhishek Nigam, Aaron J. Elmore, Aditya G. Parameswaran
USENIX Annual Technical Conference
2018
Toward Coordination-free and Reconfigurable Mixed Concurrency Control.
Dixin Tang, Aaron J. Elmore
Proc. VLDB Endow.
2018
CYADB: A Database that Covers Your Ask. (Demo)
Zechao Shang, Will Brackenbury, Aaron J. Elmore, Michael J. Franklin
CIDR
2017
Adaptive Concurrency Control: Despite the Looking Glass, One Concurrency Control Does Not Fit All.
Dixin Tang, Hao Jiang, Aaron J. Elmore
SoCC
2017
A robust partitioning scheme for ad-hoc query workloads.
Anil Shanbhag, Alekh Jindal, Samuel Madden, Jorge-Arnulfo Quiané-Ruiz, Aaron J. Elmore
HPEC
2017
BigDAWG version 0.1.
Vijay Gadepally, Kyle O'Brien, Adam Dziedzic, Aaron J. Elmore, Jeremy Kepner, Samuel Madden, Tim Mattson, Jennie Rogers, Zuohao She, Michael Stonebraker
MICRO
2017
UDP: a programmable accelerator for extract-transform-load workloads and more.
Yuanwei Fang, Chen Zou 0001, Aaron J. Elmore, Andrew A. Chien
SIGMOD
2017
OrpheusDB: A Lightweight Approach to Relational Dataset Versioning. (Demo)
Liqi Xu, Silu Huang, SiLi Hui, Aaron J. Elmore, Aditya G. Parameswaran
Proc. VLDB Endow.
2017
OrpheusDB: Bolt-on Versioning for Relational Databases.
Silu Huang, Liqi Xu, Jialin Liu, Aaron J. Elmore, Aditya G. Parameswaran
SoCC
2016
STeP: Scalable Tenant Placement for Managing Database-as-a-Service Deployments.
Rebecca Taft, Willis Lang, Jennie Duggan, Aaron J. Elmore, Michael Stonebraker, David J. DeWitt
HPEC
2016
Data transformation and migration in polystores.
Adam Dziedzic, Aaron J. Elmore, Michael Stonebraker
HPEC
2016
The BigDAWG polystore system and architecture.
Vijay Gadepally, Peinan Chen, Jennie Duggan, Aaron J. Elmore, Brandon Haynes, Jeremy Kepner, Samuel Madden, Tim Mattson, Michael Stonebraker
HPEC
2016
Integrating real-time and batch processing in a polystore.
John Meehan, Stan Zdonik, Shaobo Tian, Yulong Tian, Nesime Tatbul, Adam Dziedzic, Aaron J. Elmore
Proc. VLDB Endow.
2016
Decibel: The Relational Dataset Branching System.
Michael Maddox, David Goehring, Aaron J. Elmore, Samuel Madden, Aditya G. Parameswaran, Amol Deshpande
Proc. VLDB Endow.
2016
Clay: Fine-Grained Adaptive Partitioning for General Database Schemas.
Marco Serafini, Rebecca Taft, Aaron J. Elmore, Andrew Pavlo, Ashraf Aboulnaga, Michael Stonebraker
CIDR
2015
DataHub: Collaborative Data Science & Dataset Version Management at Scale.
Anant P. Bhardwaj, Souvik Bhattacherjee, Amit Chavan, Amol Deshpande, Aaron J. Elmore, Samuel Madden, Aditya G. Parameswaran
SIGMOD
2015
Squall: Fine-Grained Live Reconfiguration for Partitioned Main Memory Databases.
Aaron J. Elmore, Vaibhav Arora, Rebecca Taft, Andrew Pavlo, Divyakant Agrawal, Amr El Abbadi
TaPP
2015
Towards a Unified Query Language for Provenance and Versioning.
Amit Chavan, Silu Huang, Amol Deshpande, Aaron J. Elmore, Samuel Madden, Aditya G. Parameswaran
Proc. VLDB Endow.
2015
A Demonstration of the BigDAWG Polystore System. (Demo)
Aaron J. Elmore, Jennie Duggan, Mike Stonebraker, Magdalena Balazinska, Ugur Çetintemel, Vijay Gadepally, Jeffrey Heer, Bill Howe, Jeremy Kepner, Tim Kraska, Samuel Madden, David Maier 0001, Timothy G. Mattson, Stavros Papadopoulos 0001, Jeff Parkhurst, Nesime Tatbul, Manasi Vartak, Stan Zdonik
Proc. VLDB Endow.
2015
Collaborative Data Analytics with DataHub. (Demo)
Anant P. Bhardwaj, Amol Deshpande, Aaron J. Elmore, David R. Karger, Sam Madden, Aditya G. Parameswaran, Harihar Subramanyam, Eugene Wu 0002, Rebecca Zhang
SIGMOD Rec.
2015
The BigDAWG Polystore System.
Jennie Duggan, Aaron J. Elmore, Michael Stonebraker, Magdalena Balazinska, Bill Howe, Jeremy Kepner, Sam Madden, David Maier 0001, Tim Mattson, Stanley B. Zdonik
Proc. VLDB Endow.
2014
E-Store: Fine-Grained Elastic Partitioning for Distributed Transaction Processing.
Rebecca Taft, Essam Mansour 0001, Marco Serafini, Jennie Duggan, Aaron J. Elmore, Ashraf Aboulnaga, Andrew Pavlo, Michael Stonebraker
SIGMOD
2013
Characterizing tenant behavior for placement and crisis mitigation in multitenant DBMSs.
Aaron J. Elmore, Sudipto Das, Alexander Pucher, Divyakant Agrawal, Amr El Abbadi, Xifeng Yan
Proc. VLDB Endow.
2013
Towards Database Virtualization for Database as a Service. (Tutorial or Abstact)
Aaron J. Elmore, Carlo Curino, Divyakant Agrawal, Amr El Abbadi
Int. J. Comput. Sci. Eng.
2012
The evolving landscape of data management in the cloud.
Divyakant Agrawal, Amr El Abbadi, Beng Chin Ooi, Sudipto Das, Aaron J. Elmore
Proc. VLDB Endow.
2012
Serializability, not Serial: Concurrency Control and Availability in Multi-Datacenter Datastores.
Stacy Patterson, Aaron J. Elmore, Faisal Nawab, Divyakant Agrawal, Amr El Abbadi
Proc. VLDB Endow.
2012
InfoPuzzle: Exploring Group Decision Making in Mobile Peer-to-Peer Databases. (Demo)
Aaron J. Elmore, Sudipto Das, Divyakant Agrawal, Amr El Abbadi
login Usenix Mag.
2012
14th International Workshop on High Performance Transaction Systems (HPTS).
Michael Armbrust, Yingyi Bu, Aaron J. Elmore, Rik Farrow, Eugenia Gabrielova, Hatem Mahmoud, Andy Pavlo, Stephen Revilak, Pinar Tözün
DASFAA
2011
Database Scalability, Elasticity, and Autonomy in the Cloud - (Extended Abstract).
Divyakant Agrawal, Amr El Abbadi, Sudipto Das, Aaron J. Elmore
SIGMOD
2011
Zephyr: live migration in shared nothing databases for elastic cloud platforms.
Aaron J. Elmore, Sudipto Das, Divyakant Agrawal, Amr El Abbadi

Contact & Links

aelmore [at] cs [dot] uchicago [dot] edu
ChiData (Research Group)

PhD Students / Postdocs Advised

Jun Hyuk Chang

Riki Otaki

Former PhD Students / Postdocs

Rui Liu (w/Franklin). Postdoc at Lawrence Berkeley

Suhail Rehman. Assistant Instructional Professor University of Chicago

John Paparrizos (Postdoc w/Franklin). Ohio State University

Chunwei Liu. Postdoc at MIT

Will Brackenbury (w/Blase Ur). VetCove

Zechao Shang (Postdoc w/Franklin). Snowflake

Dixin Tang. Postdoc at UC Berkeley. Now at UT Austin.

Hao Jiang. Postdoc at Harvard. Now at Databricks

News

  • Dr. Rui Lui

    Dr. Rui Lui has received his PhD and joins Lawrence Berkeley lab as a postdoctoral scholar.

  • 2024
  • Prof. Dixin Tang

    Prof. Dixin Tang joins Univ. Texas at Austin as a Assistant Professor.

  • Prof. Suhail Rehman

    Prof. Suhail Rehman has received his PhD and joins UChicago as a Assistant Instructional Professor.

  • 2023
  • Dr. Chunwei Liu

    Chunwei Liu has received his PhD and joins MIT DSAIL as a Postdoc.

  • Prof. John Paparrizos

    Postdoc Dr. John Paparrizos (co-advised with Mike Franklin) joins the Ohio State University as an Assistant Professor.

  • Dr. Will Brackenbury

    Will Brackenbury (co-advised with Blase Ur) has received his PhD and joins PetCove.

  • 2022
  • Tenured

    The University of Chicago has approved Aaron's tenure and promotion to Associate Professor effective June 2022. Link to article.

  • NSF Early Career Award

    Aaron receives the NSF early career award. Link to award.

  • Dr. Hao Jiang

    Hao Jiang has received his PhD and joined as a postdoc with Stratos Idreos at Harvard.

  • 2021
  • Dr. Dixin Tang

    Dixin Tang has received his PhD and joined as a postdoc with Aditya Parameswaran at UC Berkeley.

  • Zechao Shang

    Postdoc Dr. Zechao Shang (co-advised with Mike Franklin) joins Snowflake.

  • 2020
  • SIGMOD Record Associate Editor

    Aaron joined as an associate editor for SIGMOD Record

  • VLDB Publicity Chair

    Aaron is Publicity chair for VLDB 2021.

  • Raul Castro Fernandez joins

    Raul Castro Fernandez joins Univ. of Chicago

  • 2019
  • NSF Reu Site

    Aaron is a mentor for a NSF REU site on Big Data.

  • Ocient

    Aaron joins the technical advisory board for Ocient.

  • Sanjay Krishnan joins

    Sanjay Krishnan joins Univ. of Chicago!

  • 2018
  • SIGMOD SRC Co-Chair

    Aaron and Alvin Cheung co-chair the innagrual SIGMOD student research competition.

  • 3PM

    Aaron joins the technical advisory board for 3PM Solutions.

  • 2017
  • VLDB Proceedings Co-Chair

    Aaron and Alvin Cheung are the proceedings editors for PVLDB.

  • SIGMOD Demo Co-Chair

    Aaron and Jennie Rogers co-chair the SIGMOD Demo Track.

  • Mike Franklin joins

    Mike Franklin joins Univ. of Chicago!

  • 2016
  • Joins UChicago

    Aaron joined Univ. of Chicago

  • 2015

Student FAQ

Can I do research with you as an undergraduate?

I frequently work with undergraduate students who have either taken (and done well) in my Intro to Database course, or students who were accepted to the NSF REU site on Big Data.

Will you admit more students in Intro to DB or 14100?

If the course has not begun, please sign up for the centralized waitlist managed by the department. If the course has already started, and you were on the waitlist there is usually a chance you will get in the class if you are a 4th year student. On occasion a 3rd year student will be added. If you were not on the centralized waitlist I will not add you to the class.

Are you looking for new PhD students? Should I email you about this?

For the academic year 2025-2026 I am NOT looking for any new students.

I took your class, can you write me a letter of rec?

On rare occasion I do write letters for students who did exceptional in class. However, honestly for me to be able to write a strong letter it is extremely helpful to have worked together on research, a practicum, or related project. Good letters need details and it can be hard without significant interactions. If you are interested in graduate school please reach out for research opportunities after taking Intro to DB.