2007 SIGMOD Contributions Award
Hans-Jörg Schek
Professor Hans-Jörg Schek is the recipient of the 2007 SIGMOD
Contributions Award for his significant service to the database
research community, as well as the broader scientific community, as a
scholar, an educator, a supervisor, a referee of and advisor for large
collaborative research projects in Europe, and as an organizer of
conferences, journals, and other community activities. He has also
served the community through his pioneering research efforts in nested
relational data management and database support for advanced
applications such as office automation, engineering information
management, and digital libraries.
Professor Schek's contributions are numerous. As one notable example,
Professor Schek served as the founding Editor-in-Chief of the VLDB
Journal, which according to Thomson's Science Citation Index,
currently stands as the computer science journal with the highest
impact factor. Professor Schek served as a Trustee of the VLDB
Endowment, the organization that sponsors and oversees the annual VLDB
Conference and its associated activities, from 1998-2006. As a
teacher, Professor Schek graduated several generations of students,
many of whom are today highly recognized database professors
themselves. He thus played a major role in growing the European
database research community. Over the years Professor Schek rang the
warning bell of potential irrelevance, urging the database community
to "get out of its box", engage with other communities, and
move from traditional databases to more general, diverse, and
universal data management. He modeled this philosophy through his
research and worked to broaden the scope of the VLDB Conference and
the VLDB Journal. He served and continues to serve as a role model
for numerous young scientists, both his own students and others in our
field, with his dedication to community service, to database research,
and to the continued vitality of the field.
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