Hannes Mühleisen is being recognized for his main contribution, the DuckDB system. DuckDB is an open source column-oriented relational database management system that performs complex queries on large databases and focuses on online analytical processing. It was developed as part of ongoing research in database architectures at CWI with former student Mark Raasveldt.
The impact of DuckDB is impressive: the system is simple and is downloaded more than 10 million times a month. It is in active production use at Fortune 500 companies. Also DuckDB is at the core of several innovative start-ups around the world, including MotherDuck, which has raised over $100 million to build a data warehouse product using DuckDB.
The project team has spun off from CWI into a separate company, DuckDB Labs, which provides commercial services around DuckDB and was co-founded by Mühleisen and Raasveldt. The project is governed by the non-profit DuckDB Foundation, whose bylaws ensure that DuckDB remains open source.
Bridging the gap
The judges chose Mühleisen as the winner because of the importance of his work in bridging the gap between data science and database development, enabling new insights through powerful data processing tools, and changing the way data is used and analyzed. Mühleisen's work has cemented the strong visibility of data management research in the Netherlands.
Mühleisen will receive his award at a ceremony during NWO ICT.OPEN2025, which will be held in Utrecht on 15 and 16 April 2025.
About the Dutch Prize for ICT Research
The prestigious Dutch Prize for ICT Research is awarded annually to a scientific researcher who has carried out innovative research or made a scientific breakthrough in the field of ICT within 15 years of obtaining their PhD.
Since 2023, the prize has been funded by the members of the ICT Research Platform Netherlands (IPN) with a grant from COMMIT/, through the Koninklijke Hollandsche Maatschappij der Wetenschappen (KHMW).
Previous winners of the prize include CWI researchers Pablo César (2020) and Joost Batenburg (2018).
