Every year, one researcher is invited to give the keynote talk at PODS, as a recognition of his/her outstanding contribution to database theory. Here we provide a list of the PODS keynote speakers since 1992.
2026
Jan Van den Bussche : Models are data too: Towards expressive querying of machine-learning models
2025
Virginia Vassilevska Williams : A Fine-grained Approach to Algorithms and Complexity
2024
Marcelo Arenas : A Data Management Approach to Explainable AI
2023
Jure Leskovec : Databases as Graphs: Predictive Queries for Declarative Machine Learning
2022
Frank Neven: Robustness Against Read Committed: a Free Transactional Lunch
2021
Rajeev Alur: Synchronization Schemas [video]
2020
Martin Grohe: Towards a Theory of Vector Embeddings of Structured Data
2019
Cynthia Dwork: Differential Privacy and the US Census
2018
Michael Benedikt: How Can Reasoners Simplify Database Querying (And Why Haven’t They Done It Yet)?
2017
Susan Davidson: Data Citation: a Computational Challenge
2016
Moshe Y. Vardi: A Theory of Regular Queries
2015
Michael I. Jordan: Computational Thinking, Inferential Thinking and “Big Data”
2014
Leonid Libkin: Incomplete Data: What Went Wrong, and How to Fix It
2013
Diego Calvanese: Foundations of data-aware process analysis: a database theory perspective
2012
Surajit Chaudhuri: What Next? A Half-Dozen Data Management Research Goals for Big Data and Cloud
2011
Tova Milo: A Quest for Beauty and Wealth (or, Business Processes for Database Researchers)
2010
Joe Hellerstein: Datalog Redux: Experience and Conjecture
2009
Raghu Ramakrishnan: A Web of Concepts
2008
Peter Buneman: Curated Databases
2007
Dan Suciu: Management of Probabilistic Data: Foundations and Challenges
2006
Alon Y. Halevy: Principles of Dataspace Systems
2005
Phokion G. Kolaitis: Schema Mappings, Data Exchange, and Metadata Management
2004
Georg Gottlob: The Lixto Data Extraction Project – Back and Forth between Theory and Practice
2003
Richard Hull: E-services: A Look Behind the Curtain
2002
Rajeev Motwani: Models and Issues in Data Stream Systems
2001
Victor Vianu: A Web Odyssey: From Codd to XML
2000
Prabhakar Raghavan: The Web as a Graph
1999
Serge Abiteboul: On Views and XML
1998
Ronald Fagin: Fuzzy Queries in Multimedia Database Systems
1997
Abraham Silberschatz: Multimedia Support for Databases
1996
Alfred V. Aho: Accessing Information from Globally Distributed Knowledge Repositories
1995
Christos H. Papadimitriou: Database Metatheory: Asking the Big Queries
1994
David Harel: Will I be Pretty, Will I be Rich? Some Thoughts on Theory vs. Practice in Systems Engineering
1993
David Maier: A Call to Order
1992
Catriel Beeri: New Data Models and Languages – the Challenge
