Education

Ph.D, Brown University, 1999
M.S., Concordia University, 1992
B.Ed., McGill University, 1984

Publications

Research Interests

My primary interests are in Database Systems, though I also have interest in Software Engineering and Programming Languages. I presently am working on three projects:

• The Aurora/Borealis project is joint work with Mike Stonebraker and Hari Balakrishnan of MIT and Ugur Cetintemel and Stan Zdonik of Brown University. The goal of this project is the development of a database system supporting large scale continuous and historical queries over streaming (incl. sensor-generated) data.

• The Data Centers project is joint work with Stan Zdonik and Steve Reiss of Brown University, and Michael Franklin of University of California, Berkeley. The goal of this project is to support profile-driven data management of large-scale, autonomous data sources (e.g., the web). While a traditional database relies on an omniscient database administrator to make intelligent choices about data storage (e.g., indexes, clustering), this approach does not scale to large systems for which appropriate choices are difficult to determine, nor to autonomous systems which limit the authority of external administrators. We are building a framework for middleware service providers that provide efficient access to data held at or copied from external data sources, making data storage decisions on the basis of user profiles: formal specifications of user data interests.

• The goal of the COKO-KOLA project is to address the inherent difficulty in building correct query optimizers. I.e., optimizers that generate plans that are guaranteed to deliver the data specified in input queries. Our approach is to apply formal methods to the design of the query optimizer, thereby permitting its verification with an automated theorem prover.

If you think you might be interested in working on any of these projects as a graduate student, please send me mail at mfc@cs.brandeis.edu.

Support

• National Science Foundation, ITR Award (with Mike Stonebraker, Ugur Cetintemel and Stan Zdonik), 2003

• National Science Foundation, CAREER Award, 2000

• National Science Foundation, ITR Award (with Stan Zdonik and Mike Franklin), 2000

Database Community

I am one of the founders and organizers of NEDS: the [N]ew [E]ngland [D]atabase [S]ociety. Please consult the NEDS web page for more information.

I am also a co-founder of and consultant for two startups: Streambase (a commercialization of Aurora) and Vertica (a commercialization of C-Store).

Courses

Spring '02: CS128a: Modern Database Systems

Fall '01: CS21a: Introduction to Data Structures and Algorithms

Spring '01, Spring '03: CS227b: Advanced Topics in Database Systems

Spring '00: CS120a: Topics in Systems: Querying the Web

Fall '99, Fall '04, Fall '05: CS31a: Computer Structures and Organization

Spring '99, Fall '00, Fall '02, Spring '05: CS127b: Introduction to Database Systems

Personal

Prior to my academic career, I was a high school and elementary school teacher in Quebec, Canada. I first taught elementary school in a small isolated village named Bradore Bay on Quebec's Lower North Shore near Labrador. I then spent 5 years teaching at a high school in Montreal.

Quick Links

• Brandeis University
• Brandeis University, Department of Computer Science
• Streambase Systems
• Vertica Systems

• DBLP
• Brown University, Department of Computer Science
• Concordia University, Department of Computer Science
• McGill University, Faculty of Education
• Broomstones Curling Club

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