Professor Boncz’s research has transformed the way in which modern data systems are designed, including relational databases and systems such as Apache Spark. He has made significant contributions in the areas of data storage and compression, query processing and optimisation, and database benchmarking. In 2014, his distinguished body of work earned him a Humboldt Research Award. Boncz has been awarded the Fellowship specifically for his contributions to the design of columnar, main-memory and vectorised database systems. Only five other Dutch computer scientists have ever achieved the status of ACM Fellow. This select group includes VU emeritus professor Andrew Tanenbaum.
The ACM Fellowship programme was established to recognise outstanding members of the Association for Computing Machinery. This status is only conferred on the top one percent of ACM members. The Fellowship recognises outstanding achievements in computer science and information technology and/or outstanding service to ACM and the wider computing community.
Boncz is a professor at VU Amsterdam where he occupies the endowed chair of Large-Scale Analytical Database Systems and teaches a course in Large-Scale Data Engineering. He is also a researcher and member of the management team at CWI.