Short Bio

Amir is an Assistant Professor (Lecturer) in the School of Informatics at the University of Edinburgh. His research focuses on the design and implementation of data-analytics systems by using techniques from the databases, programming languages, compilers, and machine learning communities. Prior to that, he was a Departmental Lecturer at Oxford. He earned his Ph.D. from EPFL in 2018, for which he was awarded a Google Ph.D. Fellowship in structured data analysis, as well as a Ph.D. thesis distinction award. He has won the Best Paper Award at GPCE 2017 and the Most Reproducible Paper Award at SIGMOD 2017. He (co-)chaired the program committees of DBPL 2021, Scala 2022, and GPCE 2023.

Positions

If you are interested in a Ph.D. position at the intersection of compilers, databases, and machine learning, please contact me: firstname [dot] lastname [at] ed [another_dot] ac [yet_another_dot] uk

Recent News

  • June 2023. The demonstration for OpenDBML accepted to appear at VLDB 2023.
  • May 2023. I was selected for a Best Reviewer Award in SIGMOD 2023.
  • April 2023. The demonstration for SDQL.py accepted to appear at SIGMOD 2023.
  • March 2023. I will serve as the PC Chair of GPCE 2023; consider submitting a paper.
  • February 2023. Our work on combining prefetching with vectorization for hash tables accepted to appear at ECOOP 2023.
  • January 2023. I will be co-chairing DRAGSTERS’23. Consider submitting a paper.
  • December 2022. Two papers accepted in CC 2023: BayesTensor and SDQL.py.
  • November 2022. Our work on using machine learning for data structure selection accepted to appear at CGO 2023.
  • October 2022. Our work on Deep Loop Fusion accepted to appear at GPCE 2022.
  • August 2022. STOREL for tensor processing on flexible storage accepted to SIGMOD 2023.

Publications

  • Demonstration of OpenDBML, a Framework for Democratizing In-Database Machine Learning; M. Ghorbani, A. Shaikhha, to appear in VLDB’23 (demo).
  • Compiling Discrete Probabilistic Programs for Vectorized Exact Inference; J. Pan, A. Shaikhha, CC’23.
  • Building a Compiled Query Engine in Python; H. Shahrokhi, A. Shaikhha, CC’23.
  • An Efficient Vectorized Hash Table for Batch Computations; H. Shahrokhi, A. Shaikhha, ECOOP’23.
  • Fine-Tuning Data Structures for Query Processing; A. Shaikhha, M. Kelepeshis, M. Ghorbani, CGO’23.
  • Efficient Query Processing in Python Using Compilation; H. Shahrokhi, A. Shaikhha, SIGMOD’23 (demo).
  • Optimizing Tensor Programs on Flexible Storage; M. Schleich, A. Shaikhha, D. Suciu, SIGMOD’23.
  • Functional Collection Programming with Semi-ring Dictionaries; A. Shaikhha, M. Huot, J. Smith, D. Olteanu, OOPSLA’22.
  • Hinted Dictionaries: Efficient Functional Ordered Sets and Maps; A. Shaikhha, M. Ghorbani, H. Shahrokhi, ECOOP’22.
  • Deep Fusion for Efficient Nested Recursive Computations; A. Shaikhha, GPCE’22.
  • An Intermediate Representation for Hybrid Database and Machine Learning Workloads; A. Shaikhha, M. Schleich, D. Olteanu, VLDB’21 (Demo).
  • Scalable Querying of Nested Data; J. Smith, M. Benedikt, M. Nikolic, A. Shaikhha, VLDB’21.
  • Multi-Stage Programming in the Large with Staged Classes; L. Parreaux, A. Shaikhha, GPCE’20.
  • Synthesis of Incremental Linear Algebra Programs; A. Shaikhha, M. El Seidy, D. Espino, S. Mihaila, C. Koch, TODS’20.
  • Multi-Layer Optimizations for End-to-End Data Analytics; A. Shaikhha, M. Schleich, A. Ghita, D. Olteanu, CGO’20.
  • BayesCard: Revitilizing Bayesian Frameworks for Cardinality Estimation; Z. Wu, A. Shaikhha, Rong Zhu, Kai Zeng, Yuxing Han, Jingren Zhou, CoRR’20.
  • Compiler Generation for Performance-Oriented Embedded DSLs; A. Shaikhha, V. Jovanovic, C. Koch, GPCE’19 (Short Paper).
  • Polymorphic Extractors for Semantic and Portable Pattern Matching; A. Shaikhha, GPCE’19 (Short Paper).
  • Efficient Differentiable Programming in a Functional Array-Processing Language; A. Shaikhha, A. Fitzgibbon, S. Peyton-Jones, D. Vytiniotis, ICFP’19.
  • Finally, a Polymorphic Linear Algebra Language; A. Shaikhha, L. Parreaux, ECOOP’19.
  • Building Efficient Query Engines in a High-Level Language; A. Shaikhha, Y. Klonatos, C. Koch, TODS’18.
  • Push vs. Pull-Based Loop Fusion in Query Engines; A. Shaikhha, M. Dashti, C. Koch, JFP’18.
  • Unifying Analytic and Statically-Typed Quasiquotes; L. Parreaux, A. Voizard, A. Shaikhha, and C. Koch, POPL’18.
  • Quoted Staged Rewriting: a Practical Approach to Library-Defined Optimizations; L. Parreaux, A. Shaikhha, and C. Koch, GPCE’17 (Best Paper Award).
  • Repairing Transaction Conflicts in Optimistic Multi-Version Concurrency Control; M. Dashti, S. John, A. Shaikhha, C. Koch, SIGMOD’17 (Most Reproducible Paper Award).
  • How to Architect a Query Compiler; A. Shaikhha, Y. Klonatos, L. Parreaux, L. Brown, M. Dashti, C. Koch, SIGMOD’16.
  • Yin-Yang: Concealing the Deep Embedding of DSLs; V. Jovanovic, A. Shaikhha, S. Stucki, V. Nikolaev, C. Koch, M. Odersky, GPCE’14.
  • DBToaster: Higher-order Delta Processing for Dynamic, Frequently Fresh Views; C. Koch, Y. Ahmad, O. Kennedy, M. Nikolic, A. Noetzli, D. Lupei, A. Shaikhha, VLDBJ’14.

Awards

  • Best Reviewer Award, SIGMOD 2023.
  • Nominated for Best Supervisor of the Year, University of Edinburgh, 2022.
  • Ph.D. Thesis Distinction Award, EPFL, 2018.
  • Service Award, IC EPFL, 2018.
  • Best Paper Award, GPCE 2017.
  • Most Reproducible Paper Award, SIGMOD 2017.
  • Google Ph.D. Fellowship, 2017.
  • Teaching Assistant Award, IC EPFL, 2016.

Services

  • Chairing: GPCE’23 (PC Chair), DRAGSTERS’23 (Co-Chair), Scala’22 (PC Chair), DBPL’21 (Co-Chair).
  • Organization: CGO’24 (Finance Chair), VLDB’23 (PC), SIGMOD’23 (PC), GPCE’22 (PC), TFP’22 (PC), DBAI’21 (PC), BICOD’21 (PC), ASPLOS’20 (ERC), DBPL’19 (PC).
  • Reviewer: TODS 2023, TODS 2021, VLDBJ 2020, TODS 2018.
  • PhD Students’ Representative: IC EPFL, 2017-2018.
  • Member of EPIC PhD Student Association: IC EPFL, 2017.