# ACM names Khuzaima Daudjee Distinguished Member

**Source**: https://cs.uwaterloo.ca/computer-science/news/acm-names-khuzaima-daudjee-distinguished-member
**Parent**: https://cs.uwaterloo.ca/about/international-national-provincial-and-institutional-awards

Thursday, December 15, 2022

The
Association
for
Computing
Machinery
has
named
Cheriton
School
of
Computer
Science
Professor
[Khuzaima
Daudjee](https://cs.uwaterloo.ca/~kdaudjee/)
a
Distinguished
Member
for
his
outstanding
scientific
contributions
to
computing.

“On
behalf
of
ACM
and
the
Distinguished
Member
Committee,
I
am
delighted
that
you
are
among
the
inductees
honored
with
this
designation
and
congratulate
you
on
this
well-deserved
recognition,”
wrote
Geraldine
Fitzpatrick,
Chair
of
the
ACM
Distinguished
Member
Committee,
in
her
letter
to
Professor
Daudjee.

Professor
Daudjee
conducts
systems-oriented
research
and
is
a
member
of
two
research
groups
at
the
Cheriton
School
of
Computer
Science:
[Data
Systems](https://uwaterloo.ca/data-systems-group/)
and
[Systems
and
Networking](https://syn.uwaterloo.ca).

Under
the
ACM
category
of
outstanding
scientific
contributions
to
computing,
to
which
Professor
Daudjee’s
recognition
belongs,
[56
distinguished
scientists
were
elected
in
2022](https://www.acm.org/media-center/2022/december/distinguished-members-2022).

“Congratulations
to
Khuzaima
on
receiving
this
significant
and
well-deserved
honour
from
ACM,”
said
Raouf
Boutaba,
Professor
and
Director
of
the
Cheriton
School
of
Computer
Science.
“He
is
among
an
esteemed
group
of
researchers
at
the
School
of
Computer
Science,
as
well
as
nationally
and
internationally,
who
not
only
conduct
transformative
research
but
also
train,
mentor
and
inspire
students
to
do
the
same.”

Professor
Daudjee
designs
and
develops
systems
that
store
and
manage
data.
His
research
thrusts
are
in
three
main
areas:
large-scale
and
adaptive
data
management,
storage,
and
provision
of
systems-level
support
for
applications
such
as
stream
and
graph
processing.
His
work
on
large-scale
and
adaptive
systems
ranges
from
building
systems
such
as
*ConfluxDB*
that
scale
through
data
replication
and
partitioning
to
those
such
as
*MorphoSys*
and
*Dendrite*
that
generate
on-the-fly,
autonomous,
physical
designs
and
impart
adaptivity
to
improve
system
performance
by
understanding
workload
data
access
patterns.

Professor
Daudjee’s
work
on
storage
systems
has
resulted
in
designs
that
pave
the
way
for
self-driving
data
systems
such
as
*Proteus*
that
can
adapt
their
distributed
design
to
different
workloads,
and
*ChronoCache*
that
can
predictively
cache
results
for
future
queries.
The
*EC-Store*
system
shows
how
cloud-scale
erasure-coded
storage
has
the
potential
to
outperform
replicated
storage.
In
streaming
systems,
understanding
the
progress
and
distribution
of
data
streams
has
led
to
the
design
of
an
efficient
scheduler
called
*Klink*
built
into
the
open-source
Apache
Flink
streaming
engine.

Professor
Daudjee
performed
a
first
comprehensive
study
of
graph
processing
systems.
The
[Barrierless
Asynchronous
Parallel
model](https://cs.uwaterloo.ca/sites/default/files/uploads/documents/cs-2015-04.pdf)
that
followed,
built
into
the
open-source
Giraph
system,
splits
graph
computation
into
smaller
logical
steps
allowing
computation
to
progress
while
minimizing
delays
from
stragglers.
His
work
on
the
design
of
*Hermes*,
a
distributed
graph
system
on
top
of
the
centralized
Neo4j
open-source
system,
looks
at
incoming
workload
requests
and
selects
a
data
layout
over
multiple
machines
to
minimize
graph
traversals.
He
also
contributed
to
the
*HDRF*
graph
partitioning
technique
that
generates
efficient
graph
data
layouts
and
has
become
influential
in
the
design
and
evaluation
of
graph
partitioners.

A
key
focus
of
Professor
Daudjee’s
work
is
on
building
scalable
and
elastic
systems,
leading
to
evaluation
and
benchmarking
on
large
clusters
of
machines.
For
example,
his
work
on
graph
processing
systems
was
deployed
and
benchmarked
on
more
than
100
machines.

Professor
Daudjee
and
his
graduate
and
undergraduate
students
received
the
ACM
SIGMOD
Best
Demonstration
Award
in
[2020](https://cs.uwaterloo.ca/node/2514)
and
again
in
[2021](https://cs.uwaterloo.ca/node/2581),
as
well
as
a
Best
Paper
Award
at
the
ACM
Symposium
on
Cloud
Computing
in
2015.
He
is
most
proud
of
the
achievements
of
his
students,
one
of
whom
has
received
a
[Governor
General’s
Gold
Medal](https://cs.uwaterloo.ca/node/2236)
—
the
top
university-wide
award
—
and
another
who
received
a
[Facebook
Emerging
Scholar
Award](https://cs.uwaterloo.ca/node/2337).

“I
am
grateful
to
all
my
wonderful
students,
collaborators
and
mentors,”
says
Professor
Daudjee.
“They
have
provided
an
environment
driven
by
intellectual
curiosity
and
insight
that
is
conducive
to
developing
novel
system
solutions
to
meet
research
challenges.”

He
is
the
eleventh
faculty
member
at
the
Cheriton
School
of
Computer
Science
to
be
recognized
as
a
Distinguished
Member
by
ACM,
following
Professors
Florian
Kerschbaum
(2019),
Ian
Goldberg
(2017),
Kenneth
Salem
(2017),
Jo
Atlee
(2016),
Charles
Clarke
(2015),
Ihab
Ilyas
(2014),
Mark
Giesbrecht
(2013),
Don
Cowan
(2010),
Anna
Lubiw
(2009),
and
Jeffrey
Shallit
(2008).

The
[Association
for
Computing
Machinery](https://www.acm.org)
is
the
world’s
largest
and
most
well-known
scientific
and
educational
computing
society.
To
be
recognized
as
an
ACM
Distinguished
Member,
awardees
must
have
achieved
a
significant
research
accomplishment
or
made
a
substantial
impact
in
computing,
computer
science,
or
information
technology.

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  →
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  →
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