Nikolay Yakovets - Assistant Professor

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.

News

Our paper “Algorithm Support for Graph Databases, Done Right” by Daan de Graaf, Robert Brijder, Soham Chakraborty, George Fletcher, Bram van de Wall and Nikolay Yakovets has been accepted at ACM SIGMOD 2027!

Sep 2026

Wilco van Leeuwen defends his PhD thesis on cardinality estimation for complex graph query patterns on 17 September 2026. Congratulations, Wilco!

Sep 2026

Our short paper “Even Faster Geosocial Reachability Queries” by Rick van der Heijden, Thekla Hamm and Nikolay Yakovets has been accepted at ACM SIGSPATIAL 2026!

Aug 2026

Our paper “Entities, Identifiers and Identification: Knowledge Graph Design Implications from a Qualitative Study within Industrial Manufacturing” by Zeno van Cauter, George Fletcher, Mykola Pechenizkiy, Sepehr Sadoughi and Nikolay Yakovets has been accepted at EKAW 2026 (Turin, Italy)!

Jul 2026

Our demonstration “GraphAlg Playground: An Online Platform for Learning and Experimenting with the GraphAlg Language” by Daan de Graaf, Robert Brijder, Soham Chakraborty, George Fletcher, Bram van de Wall and Nikolay Yakovets has been accepted at VLDB 2026 (Boston, USA)!

Jun 2026

I gave an invited keynote at the NHR4CES “Data Engineering and AI” event organised by RWTH Aachen University and TU Darmstadt.

May 2026

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 and knowledge graph data, and efficient processing of queries on property graphs. I am currently concentrating on research and development of AvantGraph, the next-generation open-source graph analytics engine, and on GraphAlg, a language for expressing graph algorithms inside the database.

I collaborate with industrial (ASML, Marel, PwC, ING, DPD, and previously Oracle Labs and Neo4j), academic and governmental (Netherlands Forensic Institute) partners. See my full publication list at DBLP or Google Scholar.

Current Projects

SciLake (2023–2026)

Democratising and making sense out of heterogeneous scholarly content

Horizon Europe · Co-PI, team lead

MATTER (2022–2027)

Maintenance Assistant for Time-bound Troubleshooting and Event Resolution

Netherlands Enterprise Agency (RVO) · Co-PI

SEAL (2024–2028)

Compute-in-Memory architecture for self-healing GNNs

EAISI EMDAIR programme, TU/e · Primary co-investigator

SQL Valley (2025)

Skill-tree based learning of SQL and data management

TU/e DRIVE educational innovation grant · Co-investigator

Past Projects

SmartDataLake (2018–2022)

Sustainable Data Lakes for Extreme-Scale Analytics

Horizon 2020 · Co-investigator

Efficient recursive graph queries (2016–2020)

Cost-based optimisation of recursive graph queries

Oracle Labs · Co-PI

Selected Publications

SIGMOD 2027Algorithm Support for Graph Databases, Done Right (to appear)
D. de Graaf, R. Brijder, S. Chakraborty, G. Fletcher, B. van de Wall, N. Yakovets
VLDB 2026GraphAlg Playground: An Online Platform for Learning and Experimenting with the GraphAlg Language (demonstration)
D. de Graaf, R. Brijder, S. Chakraborty, G. Fletcher, B. van de Wall, N. Yakovets
VLDB J. 2026On Topology and Time: Efficient Evaluation for Temporal-clique Subgraph Queries
K. Zhu, D. Chen, S. Ding, G. Fletcher, N. Yakovets
EDBT 2026Meta-Property Graphs in Practice: Implementation and Evaluation
S. Nooijen, S. Sadoughi, N. Yakovets
VLDB 2025Property Graph Standards: State of the Art & Open Challenges (tutorial)
H. Kondylakis, S. Dumbrava, M. Lissandrini, N. Yakovets, A. Bonifati, V. Efthymiou, G. Fletcher, D. Plexousakis, R. Tommasini, G. Troullinou, E. Ymeralli
VLDB J. 2025Optimizing Navigational Graph Queries
T. Mulder, G. Fletcher, N. Yakovets
IEEE TKDE 2022A General Cardinality Estimation Framework for Subgraph Matching in Property Graphs
W. van Leeuwen, G. Fletcher, N. Yakovets
VLDB 2022AvantGraph Query Processing Engine (demonstration)
W. van Leeuwen, T. Mulder, B. van de Wall, G. Fletcher, N. Yakovets
ICDE 2021Leveraging Temporal and Topological Selectivities in Temporal-clique Subgraph Query Processing
K. Zhu, G. Fletcher, N. Yakovets
EDBT 2021Answer Graph: Factorization Matters in Large Graphs (Best Short Paper Award)
Z. Abul-Basher, N. Yakovets, P. Godfrey, S. Clark, M. H. Chignell
Book, 2018Querying Graphs (Morgan & Claypool)
A. Bonifati, G. Fletcher, H. Voigt, N. Yakovets
SIGMOD 2016Query Planning for Evaluating SPARQL Property Paths
N. Yakovets, P. Godfrey, J. Gryz

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. Since joining TU/e in 2016 I have (co-)supervised over 40 MSc theses, 30 internships and several capita selecta and bachelor projects, many in collaboration with academic, industrial and governmental partners.

Current Courses

Engineering Data-Intensive Systems (2IMD10)

engineering foundations of data management systems, MSc level

2017–present

Data Management for Data Analytics (JBI050)

data modelling and intro to databases, BSc level

2019–present

MSc thesis seminar, Database Group (2IMD00)

research seminar on database systems, MSc level

2017–present

Past Courses

Data Engineering (2IMD20)

engineering foundations of data management systems, MSc level

2017–2018

Data Modeling and Databases (2ID50)

data modelling and intro to databases, BSc level

2017–2020

Teaching Awards

2025–2026Excellence in Teaching, Engineering Data-Intensive Systems (2IMD10)
2024–2025Teacher of the Year nomination (MSc DS&AI), D.S.A. Pattern
2024–2025Excellence in Teaching, Joint BSc Data Science
2022–2023Excellence in Teaching, Joint BSc Data Science
2021–2022Teacher of the Year nomination (BSc Electives & MSc DS&AI), D.S.A. Pattern
2019–2020Teacher of the Year award, GEWIS student association
2018–2019Teacher of the Year nomination, GEWIS student association