Aref Named IEEE Fellow

12-06-2017

Professor Walid Aref has been named a 2017 Fellow of the Institute for Electronic and Electrical Engineers (IEEE), the world’s largest technical professional association. He was cited by IEEE for his contributions to spatio-temporal database indexing and query processing.

The IEEE grade of fellow is conferred upon members with extraordinary records of accomplishments in any of the IEEE fields. The total number selected in any one year never exceeds one-tenth of one percent of the total voting membership.

Aref’s research focuses on extending the functionality of database systems in support of emerging applications. He is also interested in query processing, indexing, data streaming and geographic information systems (GIS). 

Aref is the holder of 13 U.S. and international patents. He has previously won the CAREER award from the National Science Foundation and was named a Purdue Faculty Scholar. He is a member of CERIAS at Purdue.

His work has been supported by the National Science Foundation, the National Institute of Health, Purdue Research Foundation, Qatar National Research Foundation, Panasonic and Microsoft.

He is an associate editor of the ACM Transactions of Database Systems (ACM TODS) and the ACM Transactions of Spatial Algorithms and Systems (ACM TSAS), and has been an editor of the VLDB Journal. He has won several best paper awards, including the 2016 VLDB ten-year best paper award.