Alexander Renz-Wieland
Computer Scientist
Since May 2023, I work as a Database System Engineer at RelationalAI.
Previously, I was a Research Associate and PhD candidate in the Database Systems and Information Management (DIMA) group at Technische Universität Berlin, working on efficient large-scale machine learning. I was supervised by Volker Markl and Rainer Gemulla.
Prior to that, I completed a M. Sc. Business Informatics with a specialization in Data and Web Science
at Universität Mannheim,
with a semester at VU Amsterdam (with courses from CWI).
In my Master's thesis, I worked on scalable sequential pattern mining,
supervised by Rainer Gemulla
and Kaustubh Beedkar
I obtained my B. Sc. in a dual program at DHBW Mannheim with a semester at Universidad Carlos III Madrid. In this program, I worked for HP in Germany and the U.S.
Publications
Full Research Papers
Good Intentions: Adaptive Parameter Management via Intent SignalingA. Renz-Wieland, A. Kieslinger, R. Gericke, R. Gemulla, Z. Kaoudi, V. Markl. CIKM '23.
pdf. arXiv. source code.
NuPS: A Parameter Server for Machine Learning with Non-Uniform Parameter Access
A. Renz-Wieland, R. Gemulla, Z. Kaoudi, V. Markl. SIGMOD '22.
pdf. arXiv. slides. recording. source code.
Dynamic Parameter Allocation in Parameter Servers
A. Renz-Wieland, R. Gemulla, S. Zeuch, V. Markl. PVLDB, 13(11): 1877-1890, 2020.
pdf. arXiv. slides. source code. interactive demo.
Scalable Frequent Sequence Mining With Flexible Subsequence Constraints
A. Renz-Wieland, M. Bertsch, R. Gemulla. ICDE '19.
pdf. slides. poster. source code.
Misc
Adaptive Parameter ServersA. Renz-Wieland. Ph.D. thesis, Technische Universität Berlin, December 2022.
library. pdf. slides. source code.
Just Move It! Dynamic Parameter Allocation in Action
A. Renz-Wieland, T. Drobisch, R. Gemulla, Z. Kaoudi, V. Markl. PVLDB, 14(12): 2707-2710, 2021 (demo).
pdf. website.
The DESQ Framework for Declarative and Scalable Frequent Sequence Mining
K. Beedkar, R. Gemulla, A. Renz-Wieland. INFORMATIK '19 (extended abstract).
pdf. slides. source code.
Distributed frequent sequence mining with declarative subsequence constraints
A. Renz-Wieland. Master's Thesis, Universität Mannheim, April 2017.
pdf. slides. source code.
Airport quality: holding and go-arounds
A. Renz-Wieland, H. Wallenburg. Project report for the 2016 LSDE course.
pdf. website.
Awards
I was a recipient of a Software Campus grant for my PhD research. I.e., the BMBF provided funding for a team of assistant researchers, hardware, and other things.
My M.Sc. faculty honored my master's degree (best 2016/17 degree) and master's thesis (best 2016/17 thesis)
Teaching
Courses
- Winter semester 2022/23: Database laboratory (DBPRA)
- Summer semester 2022: Database laboratory (DBPRA)
- Winter semester 2021/22: Big Data Analytics Project (BDAPRO)
- Summer semester 2021: Information systems and data analysis (ISDA) and Database seminar (DBSEM)
- Winter semester 2020/21: Database laboratory (DBPRA)
- Summer semester 2020: Information systems and data analysis (ISDA)
- Winter semester 2019/20: Database laboratory (DBPRA)
- Summer semester 2019: Information systems and data analysis (ISDA)
- Winter semester 2018/19: Database laboratory (DBPRA)
- Summer semester 2018: Database laboratory (DBPRA)
- Winter semester 2017/18: Database laboratory (DBPRA)
Thesis supervision
- Analysing Dynamic Parameter Allocation in Distributed Machine Learning
- Dynamic parallelism in large-scale graph processing
- Lock-Free Data Structures for Locality-Aware Parameter Servers
- Benchmarking Probabilistic Programming Languages
Climate impact
Different aspects of research activity contribute to the climate crisis. One is long-distance travel. Thus, I try to limit travel.
Like others, I think it is reasonable that academics report the climate impact of their work. As a step in this direction, please find below a list of flights I have taken during my time in academia.
| Year | Flight | Reason | CO2 (kg) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2019 | Berlin-Beijing, Macau-Beijing, Beijing-Berlin |
Talk and poster presentation at ICDE, Talk at ECNU Shanghai |
4,259 |
| 2017 | Berlin-Munich, Munich-Berlin |
Meetings with industry partners | 216 |
The CO2 emission estimates are taken from atmosfair. If you have tips on how to estimate other emissions of research (e.g., computer and cluster usage, office construction and heating), please let me know.
