# Barzan Mozafari

> Barzan Mozafari is a University of Michigan computer science associate professor and Keebo co-founder, former CEO, and board member. His research spans approximate analytics, database performance prediction, cloud optimization, and self-verifying AI, with projects including BlinkDB, DBSeer, VerdictDB, GenRewrite, and DAGSmith.

- **Role:** Co-founder and Board Member at Keebo; Associate Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Michigan
- **Organizations:** Keebo, University of Michigan, MIT CSAIL, SnappyData
- **Education:** B.S. in Computer Engineering, Shahid Beheshti University, M.S. in Computer Science, University of California, Los Angeles, Ph.D. in Computer Science, University of California, Los Angeles
- **Known for:** ACM SIGMOD Best Paper Award, 2012., EuroSys Best Paper Award for BlinkDB, 2013., NSF CAREER Award, 2016.

## Career timeline

- **2011** — Completed his computer science Ph.D. at UCLA.
- **2011–2013** — Postdoctoral associate at MIT CSAIL.
- **2013** — Joined the University of Michigan as an assistant professor; co-authored the EuroSys BlinkDB paper.
- **2016** — Received an NSF CAREER Award.
- **2017–2018** — Held the Morris Wellman Faculty Development Assistant Professorship.
- **2019** — Promoted to associate professor with tenure at Michigan; co-founded Keebo with Yongjoo Park.
- **2023** — Co-authored Keebo’s SIGMOD system demonstration paper; received the EuroSys Test-of-Time Award.
- **2026** — Became Keebo board member as Eric Shoemaker succeeded him as CEO; GenRewrite appeared at SIGMOD and DAGSmith was released as a preprint.

## Achievements

- ACM SIGMOD Best Paper Award, 2012.
- EuroSys Best Paper Award for BlinkDB, 2013.
- NSF CAREER Award, 2016.
- EuroSys Test-of-Time Award, 2023.
- Research contributions to BlinkDB, DBSeer, DBSherlock, and VerdictDB.
- Helped commercialize BlinkDB ideas through SnappyData, acquired by TIBCO in 2019.
- Co-founded Keebo with former Michigan doctoral advisee Yongjoo Park.

## Latest updates

- **2026-09** — Published Why Slower SQL Can Make Your dbt Pipeline Faster on September 14.
- **2026-08** — Released the DAGSmith preprint with Jie Liu and Lin Ma on August 23.
- **2026-06** — Photographed presenting at Databricks Data + AI Summit 2026; listed as speaker for a session on reinforcement learning and warehouse optimization.
- **2026-05** — His website announced GenRewrite’s appearance at SIGMOD 2026 on May 31.
- **2026-03** — Keebo announced Eric Shoemaker’s appointment as CEO on March 2, identifying Mozafari as co-founder and board member.

## Links

- Website: https://barzanmozafari.com/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/barzan-mozafari
- Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/BarzanMozafari

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Profile page: https://yespress.io/barzan-mozafari
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-10-09