Databricks Co-Founder and CTO Wins ACM Doctoral Dissertation Award

SAN FRANCISCO, CA--(Marketwired - May 4, 2015) - Databricks, the company founded by the creators of the popular open-source big data processing engine Apache Spark with its flagship product, Databricks Cloud, today announced that Matei Zaharia, the company's co-founder and CTO and the creator of Spark, was awarded the Doctoral Dissertation Award from the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) for his dissertation "An Architecture for Fast and General Data Processing on Large Clusters." This marks the second time that a Databricks team member has received this award -- CEO Ion Stoica also received it in 2001.

Zaharia earned the Doctoral Dissertation Award for his design of the Apache Spark engine, specifically for designing cluster computing systems that can tackle the wide variety of data processing workloads in modern enterprises (e.g. batch applications, machine learning, stream processing and interactive queries). His work proposed a new architecture for cluster computing systems that achieves best-in-class performance in a variety of workloads while providing a simple programming model that lets users easily combine them.

"It's an honor to be a recipient of the Doctoral Dissertation Award. Pushing the envelope of large-scale computing systems is my passion, and I'm excited to continue applying this type of innovation for Apache Spark and Databricks in the years to come," said Matei Zaharia, Databricks.

Zaharia is an assistant professor at MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, as well as CTO of Databricks. He completed his dissertation at the University of California, Berkeley, which nominated him for this award.

ACM is the world's largest educational and scientific computing society, uniting computing educators, researchers and professionals to inspire dialogue, share resources and address the field's challenges. ACM strengthens the computing profession's collective voice through strong leadership, promotion of the highest standards, and recognition of technical excellence. ACM supports the professional growth of its members by providing opportunities for lifelong learning, career development, and professional networking

About Databricks:

Databricks was founded by the team that created and continues to drive Apache Spark, the most active open source project in the Big Data ecosystem. Apache Spark is a powerful open source data processing engine built for speed, ease of use, and sophisticated analytics. Databricks' vision is to dramatically simplify big data processing and free users to focus on turning data into value. Databricks Cloud is a hosted end-to-end data platform powered by Spark. It enables organizations to seamlessly transition from data ingest through exploration and production. Databricks is venture-backed by Andreessen Horowitz and NEA. For more information, visit https://www.databricks.com.