| CARVIEW |
Eleni Tzirita Zacharatou
Assistant Professor
Hasso Plattner Institute
Office: F-E.03
August-Bebel-Str. 88
D-14482 Potsdam
I am a W2 Assistant Professor at the Hasso Plattner Institute (HPI), where I lead the Spatial Analytics and Large-Scale Data Processing research group. Since 2021, I have also been a Junior Fellow at the Berlin Institute for the Foundations of Learning and Data (BIFOLD). My research focuses on designing core components for advanced data processing systems, with an emphasis on spatial data processing, hardware acceleration, and data management in heterogeneous distributed computing environments.
Before joining HPI, I was an Assistant Professor at the IT University of Copenhagen (ITU). From 2019 to 2202, I was a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Technical University of Berlin (TUB). I received my PhD (2019) from the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), where I worked on query processing for spatial and temporal data exploration with Anastasia Ailamaki. Additionally, in 2016, I was a visiting PhD researcher at New York University (NYU). I obtained a Diploma M.Eng. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the National Technical University of Athens (NTUA) in 2013.
I regularly serve on the program committees of leading international database conferences and have co-organized several conferences and workshops in various roles (currently serving as Diversity and Inclusion co-chair for EDBT 2026 and as Program co-chair for DOLAP 2026-2027).
News (all)
- [12.2025]
- Wrapping up the year with a pre-Christmas visit and invited talk at EPFL.
- [11.2025]
- I contributed a short reflection to the September issue of SIGMOD Record, as part of the Reminiscences on Influential Papers column (thanks Pinar for the invite!). You can read it here.
- [10.2025]
- Serving on the PC of ACM SIGMOD 2027.
- [09.2025]
- I am very honored to receive the VLDB 2025 Distinguished Reviewer Award.
- [08.2025]
- Looking forward to presenting our work on automated Earth observation pipelines at Big Data from Space (BiDS) 2025 in Latvia!
- [08.2025]
- This month's reviewing activity: SIGSPATIAL PhD and Graduate Studies Workshop & SRC
- [07.2025]
- My manuscript "GPU Rasterization for Spatial Aggregate Join Queries" has been accepted for publication in the third edition of the Encyclopedia of GIS. Looking forward to seeing it in print soon!
- [07.2025]
- New paper "GPU-Accelerated Stochastic Gradient Descent for Scalable Operator Placement in Geo-Distributed Streaming Systems" accepted at the ADMS 2025 Workshop (co-located with VLDB).
- [06.2025]
- Visited Snowflake in Berlin to present an overview of past and current research—great environment and insightful exchanges with Snowflake engineers.
- [06.2025]
- Excited to be speaking at the Soapbox Science Event in Berlin, an open-air scientific showcase.
- [03.2025]
- Just wrapped up a week in beautiful Barcelona at EDBT! I had the opportunity to give the talk, "Efficient Aggregation in a Heterogeneous World," at Huawei’s "Next-Generation Data Management Systems" event. Beyond research, I also led the conference’s DEI activities, including chairing an engaging DEI panel.
- [03.2025]
- 🌟 Exciting news! I have joined the Hasso Plattner Institute (HPI) and the University of Potsdam as an Assistant Professor. I will be leading the Spatial Analytics and Large-Scale Data Processing group. Here you can read the press release. Looking forward to the new opportunities ahead!
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See all past news and events.
Employment
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Present03/2025
Assistant Professor
Lead of Research Group Spatial Analytics and Large Scale Data Processing
Hasso Plattner Institute (HPI), University of Potsdam, Germany
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02/202505/2022
Assistant Professor
IT University of Copenhagen, Denmark
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04/202210/2019
Postdoctoral Researcher
Technical University of Berlin, Germany
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10/201607/2016
Visiting Researcher
New York University, USA
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08/201909/2013
Doctoral Assistant
EPFL, Switzerland
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08/201301/2013
Research Intern
EPFL, Switzerland
Education
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Ph.D. 2019
Ph.D. in Computer Science
EPFL, Switzerland
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Diploma M. Eng.2013
Diploma M. Eng. in Electrical and Computer Engineering
National Technical University of Athens, Greece
