I'm Walter, a software engineer at Observe. Before Observe, I worked at Snowflake. I am an expert in the neverending problem of query optimization. I have a broad interest in data management with particular focus on multijoin processing, and data sketching. I make data systems less reliant on heuristics, instead favoring robust theoretical foundations.
Brief BioI graduated in 2021 with a PhD in query optimization from the University of Washington Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering where I was fortunate to be advised by Professors Dan Suciu, and Magdalena Balazinska. While at UW, I was a member of the databases research group. My thesis was titled Novel Data Summaries for Join Query Optimization.
Previously, I attended the University of Wisconsin completing a Master's in CS where I worked with Prof. AnHai Doan. Even earlier, I studied mathematics at Cornell University, graduating summa cum laude in 2014.