Andrew Pavlo Associate Professor Website CMU Scholars Page Office 9019 Gates and Hillman Centers Email pavlo@cs.cmu.edu Phone (412) 268-3057 Department Computer Science Department Research Interests Systems Data-Intensive and Cloud Computing Databases Distributed Systems Advisees Sam Arch Wan Shen Lim William Zhang CSD Courses Taught 15445 - Fall, 2025 15645 - Fall, 2025 15799 - Spring, 2025 15445 - Fall, 2024 15645 - Fall, 2024 15721 - Spring, 2024 Biography Andy Pavlo is an Associate Professor of Databaseology in the Computer Science Department at Carnegie Mellon University. His (unnatural) infatuation with database systems has inadvertently caused him to incur several distinctions, such as the NSF CAREER (2019), a Sloan Fellowship (2018), and the ACM SIGMOD Jim Gray Dissertation Award (2014). He is also the CEO & co-founder of the OtterTune database tuning start-up (2020). I only care about databases. Publications Conference Automated Database Tuning vs. Human-Based Tuning in a Simulated Stressful Work Environment: A Demonstration of the Database Gym 2025 • Proceedings / ACM-SIGMOD International Conference on Management of Data. ACM-Sigmod International Conference on Management of Data • 247-250 Wang P, Lim WS, Zhang W, Arch S, Pavlo A Journal Article Hit the Gym: Accelerating Query Execution to Efficiently Bootstrap Behavior Models for Self-Driving Database Management Systems 2024 • Proceedings of the VLDB Endowment • 17(11):3680-3693 Lim WS, Ma L, Zhang W, Butrovich M, Arch S, Pavlo A Conference NULLS!: Revisiting Null Representation in Modern Columnar Formats 2024 1-10 Zeng X, Meng R, Pavlo A, McKinney W, Zhang H Journal Article The Holon Approach for Simultaneously Tuning Multiple Components in a Self-Driving Database Management System with Machine Learning via Synthesized Proto-Actions 2024 • Proceedings of the VLDB Endowment • 17(11):3373-3387 Zhang W, Lim WS, Butrovich M, Pavlo A Conference The Key to Effective UDF Optimization: Before Inlining, First Perform Outlining 2024 • Proceedings of the VLDB Endowment • 18(1):1-13 Arch S, Liu Y, Mowry TC, Patel JM, Pavlo A
Conference Automated Database Tuning vs. Human-Based Tuning in a Simulated Stressful Work Environment: A Demonstration of the Database Gym 2025 • Proceedings / ACM-SIGMOD International Conference on Management of Data. ACM-Sigmod International Conference on Management of Data • 247-250 Wang P, Lim WS, Zhang W, Arch S, Pavlo A
Journal Article Hit the Gym: Accelerating Query Execution to Efficiently Bootstrap Behavior Models for Self-Driving Database Management Systems 2024 • Proceedings of the VLDB Endowment • 17(11):3680-3693 Lim WS, Ma L, Zhang W, Butrovich M, Arch S, Pavlo A
Conference NULLS!: Revisiting Null Representation in Modern Columnar Formats 2024 1-10 Zeng X, Meng R, Pavlo A, McKinney W, Zhang H
Journal Article The Holon Approach for Simultaneously Tuning Multiple Components in a Self-Driving Database Management System with Machine Learning via Synthesized Proto-Actions 2024 • Proceedings of the VLDB Endowment • 17(11):3373-3387 Zhang W, Lim WS, Butrovich M, Pavlo A
Conference The Key to Effective UDF Optimization: Before Inlining, First Perform Outlining 2024 • Proceedings of the VLDB Endowment • 18(1):1-13 Arch S, Liu Y, Mowry TC, Patel JM, Pavlo A
