Alfons Kemper (born 1958) is a German

computer scientist A computer scientist is a scientist who specializes in the academic study of computer science. Computer scientists typically work on the theoretical side of computation. Although computer scientists can also focus their work and research on ...

and a full professor for

database systems In computing, a database is an organized collection of Data (computing), data or a type of data store based on the use of a database management system (DBMS), the software that interacts with end users, Application software, applications, and ...

at the

Technical University of Munich The Technical University of Munich (TUM or TU Munich; ) is a public research university in Munich, Bavaria, Germany. It specializes in engineering, technology, medicine, and applied and natural sciences. Established in 1868 by King Ludwig II ...

Education and career

Kemper studied computer science at the

Technical University of Dortmund TU Dortmund University () is a technical university in Dortmund, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany with over 35,000 students, and over 6,000 staff including 300 professors, offering around 80 Bachelor's and master's degree programs. It is situate ...

from 1977 to 1981 ( Vordiplom) and the

University of Southern California The University of Southern California (USC, SC, or Southern Cal) is a Private university, private research university in Los Angeles, California, United States. Founded in 1880 by Robert M. Widney, it is the oldest private research university in ...

Los Angeles Los Angeles, often referred to by its initials L.A., is the List of municipalities in California, most populous city in the U.S. state of California, and the commercial, Financial District, Los Angeles, financial, and Culture of Los Angeles, ...

(

Master of Science A Master of Science (; abbreviated MS, M.S., MSc, M.Sc., SM, S.M., ScM or Sc.M.) is a master's degree. In contrast to the Master of Arts degree, the Master of Science degree is typically granted for studies in sciences, engineering and medici ...

) and finished his

PhD A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, DPhil; or ) is a terminal degree that usually denotes the highest level of academic achievement in a given discipline and is awarded following a course of graduate study and original research. The name of the deg ...

in 1984 under the supervision of Ellis Horowitz. From 1984 to 1991 he worked with Peter Lockemann at the

University of Karlsruhe The Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT; ) is both a German public university, public research university in Karlsruhe, Baden-Württemberg, and a research center of the Helmholtz Association. KIT was created in 2009 when the University of Ka ...

and

habilitated Habilitation is the highest university degree, or the procedure by which it is achieved, in Germany, France, Italy, Poland and some other European and non-English-speaking countries. The candidate fulfills a university's set criteria of excellen ...

there. In 1991 he became associate professor at the Chair of Computer Science III at

RWTH Aachen RWTH Aachen University (), in German ''Rheinisch-Westfälische Technische Hochschule Aachen'', is a German public research university located in Aachen, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. With more than 47,000 students enrolled in 144 study prog ...

, and two years later he joined the

University of Passau The University of Passau (''Universität Passau'' in German) is a public research university located in Passau, Lower Bavaria, Germany. Founded in 1973, it is the youngest university in Bavaria and consequently has the most modern campus in the ...

as a full professor. There, Kemper was dean of the ''Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science'' from October 2001 to October 2003. Since 2004, he is leading the database group at the TU Munich as successor of

Rudolf Bayer Rudolf Bayer (born 3 March 1939) is a German computer scientist. He is a professor emeritus of Informatics at the Technical University of Munich where he has been employed since 1972. He is noted for inventing three data sorting structures: the ...

. The group is involved in the Bavarian elite study program in software engineering. Kemper was dean of the Faculty of Informatics from winter term 2006 to summer term 2010 and will be ''Head of Computer Science'' of the newly founded ''School of Computation, Information and Technology'' from October 2022. From November 2010 to March 2017, Kemper was spokesperson for the database systems division of the

German Informatics Society The German Informatics Society (GI) () is a German professional society for computer science, with around 20,000 personal and 250 corporate members. It is the biggest organized representation of its kind in the German-speaking world. History The G ...

(GI) and was appointed fellow of the GI in 2015.

Research

For a time, Kemper's research was focusing on

object-oriented database An object database or object-oriented database is a database management system in which information is represented in the form of objects as used in object-oriented programming. Object databases are different from relational databases which are ...

s. Meanwhile, main memory database systems are the focus of his research. Together with Thomas Neumann, he designed the main memory database system HyPer, which was sold to

Tableau Software Tableau Software, LLC is an American interactive data visualization software company focused on business intelligence. It was founded in 2003 in Mountain View, California, and is currently headquartered in Seattle, Washington. In 2019, the com ...

in 2016, and is working on its successor system Umbra.

Awards

* 2021 ICDE Ten-Year Influential Paper Award * 2022

ACM Fellow ACM Fellowship is an award and fellowship that recognises outstanding members of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). The title of ACM Fellow A fellow is a title and form of address for distinguished, learned, or skilled individuals ...

Books

* with Eickler: ''Datenbanksysteme - Eine Einführung''.

De Gruyter Walter de Gruyter GmbH, known as De Gruyter (), is a German scholarly publishing house specializing in academic literature. History The roots of the company go back to 1749 when Frederick the Great granted the Königliche Realschule in Be ...

(tenth edition), 2015 * with Wimmer: ''Übungsbuch Datenbanksysteme''. Oldenbourg (third edition), 2011

References

External links

Homepage of Alfons Kemper

indexed in the

Digital Bibliography & Library Project DBLP is a computer science bibliography website. Starting in 1993 at Universität Trier in Germany, it grew from a small collection of HTML files and became an organization hosting a database and logic programming bibliography site. Since Novemb ...

(DBLP)
HyPer: Hybrid OLTP&OLAP High-Performance Database System

Umbra: A Disk-Based System with In-Memory Performance
{{DEFAULTSORT:Kemper, Alfons 1958 births German computer scientists Database researchers Living people Academic staff of the Technical University of Munich Academic staff of RWTH Aachen University Academic staff of the University of Passau University of Southern California alumni Technical University of Dortmund alumni Karlsruhe Institute of Technology alumni 2022 fellows of the Association for Computing Machinery