Nikolay Yakovets

Assistant Professor of Computer Science
Eindhoven University of Technology
hush@tue.nl
MF7.061
+31 40 247 4270

I am an Assistant Professor at the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, Information Systems WSK&I at Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e). My main area of study  is databases and data intensive systems. I am particularly interested in foundations of databases, efficient data analytics and engineering of high-performance data processing systems. My current focus is on design and implementation of core database technologies, management of massive graph data, and efficient processing of queries on graphs. My educational activities focus on data modelling and databases, data management for data analytics, database technology, data engineering, seminar databases, and capita-selecta databases.

Highlights

• I am currently concentrating on research and development of the next-generation open-source graph analytics engine AvantGraph.
• I am pleased to have won the Teacher of the Year Award in Computer Science (GEWIS, 2019)!
• We have PhD / postdoc positions available in the area of graph data management! If you are a talented individual with a MSc / PhD degree, please contact me for details.
• I am pleased to announce the release of our first book on processing of queries on graphs.
• If you are interested in doing research with TU/e Database Group, please check out our promo blurb.

Research

I am interested in foundations of databases, efficient data analytics and engineering of high-performance data processing systems. My current focus is on design and implementation of core database technologies, management of massive graph data, and efficient processing of queries on graphs.

• Thomas Mulder, Nikolay Yakovets, George Fletcher: Towards Planning of Regular Queries with Memory. In Proceedings of the 21st International Conference on Extending Database Technology, EDBT 2020
• Kaijie Zhu, George H. L. Fletcher, Nikolay Yakovets, Odysseas Papapetrou, Yuqing Wu: Scalable temporal clique enumeration. SSTD 2019: 120-129
• Jochem Kuijpers, George H. L. Fletcher, Nikolay Yakovets, Tobias Lindaaker: An Experimental Study of Context-Free Path Query Evaluation Methods. SSDBM 2019: 121-132
• Nikolay Yakovets, Li Wang, George Fletcher, Craig Taverner, and Alexandra Poulovassilis. Histogram domain ordering for path selectivity estimation. In Proceedings of the 19th International Conference on Extending Database Technology, EDBT 2018, pages 493-496, 2018
• Angela Bonifati, George Fletcher, Hannes Voigt, and Nikolay Yakovets. Querying graphs. Morgan & Claypool Publishers, 2018
• Semih Salihoglu and Nikolay Yakovets. Graph query processing. In Encyclopedia of Big Data Technologies. Springer, 2018
• Zahid Abul-Basher, Nikolay Yakovets, Parke Godfrey, Shadi Ghajar-Khosravi, and Mark Chignell. TASWEET: optimizing disjunctive regular path queries in graph databases. In Proceedings of the 18th International Conference on Extending Database Technology, EDBT 2017, pages 470-473, 2017
• George HL Fletcher, Hannes Voigt, and Nikolay Yakovets. Declarative graph querying in practice and theory tutorial abstract. In Proceedings of the 18th International Conference on Extending Database Technology, EDBT 2017, pages 598-601, 2017
• Wilco van Leeuwen, Angela Bonifati, George HL Fletcher, and Nikolay Yakovets. Stability notions in synthetic graph generation: a preliminary study. In Proceedings of the 18th International Conference on Extending Database Technology, EDBT 2017, pages 486– 489, 2017
• Parke Godfrey, Nikolay Yakovets, Zahid Abul-Basher, and MH Chignell. Wireframe: two-phase, cost-based optimization for conjunctive regular path queries. In 11th Alberto Mendelzon International Workshop on Foundations of Data Management and the Web (AMW 2017), June 5-9, 2017, Montevideo, Uruguay. CEUR-WS. org, 2017
• Nikolay Yakovets, Parke Godfrey, and Jarek Gryz. Query planning for evaluating SPARQL property paths. In ACM SIGMOD/PODS International Conference on Management of Data, pages 1875–1889, San Francisco, 2016
• Zahid Abul-Basher, Nikolay Yakovets, Parke Godfrey, and Mark H Chignell. SwarmGuide: Towards multiple-query optimization in graph databases. In 10th Alberto Mendelzon International Workshop on Foundations of Data Management and the Web (AMW 2016), 2016
• Nikolay Yakovets, Parke Godfrey, and Jarek Gryz. Query planning for evaluating SPARQL property paths. In 10th Alberto Mendelzon International Workshop on Foundations of Data Management and the Web (AMW 2016), 2016
• Zahid Abul-Basher, Mark H Chignell, Parke Godfrey, and Nikolay Yakovets. TGDB: towards a benchmark for graph databases. In Proceedings of the 26th Annual International Conference on Computer Science and Software Engineering, pages 257–267. IBM Corp., 2016
• Nikolay Yakovets, Parke Godfrey, and Jarek Gryz. WAVEGUIDE: Evaluating SPARQL Property Path Queries. In Proceedings of the 16th International Conference on Extending Database Technology, EDBT 2015, pages 525–528, 2015
• Nikolay Yakovets, Parke Godfrey, and Jarek Gryz. Evaluation of SPARQL property paths via recursive SQL. In 7th Alberto Mendelzon International Workshop on Foundations of Data Management and the Web (AMW 2013), 2013
• Nikolay Yakovets and Ameeta Agrawal. Simple: Lexical simplification using word sense disambiguation. In Computational Approaches to Assistive Technologies for People with Disabilities, 2013
• Nikolay Yakovets, Jarek Gryz, Stephanie Hazlewood, and Paul van Run. From MDM to DB2: a case study of security enforcement migration. In IFIP Annual Conference on Data and Applications Security and Privacy, pages 207–222. Springer, 2012
• Bahareh Sarrafzadeh, Nikolay Yakovets, Nick Cercone, and Aijun An. Cross-lingual word sense disambiguation for languages with scarce resources. In Canadian Conference on Artificial Intelligence, pages 347–358. Springer, 2011
• Bahareh Sarrafzadeh, Nikolay Yakovets, Nick Cercone, and Aijun An. Towards automatic acquisition of a fully sense tagged corpus for persian. In International Symposium on Methodologies for Intelligent Systems, pages 449–455. Springer, 2011

Educational activities

My educational activities focus on data modelling and databases, data management for data analytics, database technology, data engineering, seminar databases, and capita-selecta databases.

Current courses

• Database technology (2IMD10): engineering foundations of data management systems, MSc level.

  • 2020, 2019, 2018, and 2017

• Data engineering (2IMD20): data intensive systems for data science applications, MSc level.

  • 2018 and 2017

• Data modeling and databases (2ID50): introduction to database systems, BSc level.

  • 2020, 2019, 2018, and 2017

• Data management for data analytics (JBI050): data modelling and intro to databases, BSc level.

  • 2020, 2019

• MSc thesis seminar, Database Group (2IMD00). MSc level.

  • 2020, 2019, 2018, and 2017

Supervision

• PhD thesis (co-)advisor

  • Kaijie Zhu, 2018–current.
  • Wilco van Leeuwen, 2017–current.
  • Xuming Meng, 2016–current.

• MSc thesis (co-)advisor

  • Rik Huijzer, 2019. Automatically responding to customers.
  • Xiayang Hao, 2018. Intermediate result compression of processing query on graph data.
  • Giedo Mak, 2017. Telepath: A path-index based graph database engine. Collaboration with Birkbeck, Univ. London. thesis, open source code.
  • Li Wang, 2017. On histograms for path selectivity estimation in graph data. Collaboration with Birkbeck, Univ. London, and Neo Technology. thesis, EDBT'18 paper.
  • Stefano Antonio Martinelli, 2017. Query rewriting and stored queries for XACML policy enforcement. thesis.
  • Wilco van Leeuwen, 2017. Improving data quality in schema-driven synthetic graph generation. Collaboration with Univ Lyon 1. thesis, EDBT'17 paper.

Updated: January 2020