Level 3 · Ph.D
Ph.D Advanced Databases & Data Systems
Data & Databases · Live · v0
Doctoral database systems research — query optimisation, vectorised execution, distributed consensus, and formal specification.
- Path type
- Data & Databases
- Requirements
- MSc Advanced Databases & Data Systems
- Enrollment
-
€19.95
- Deadline
- Next cohort starts 2027-09-06 (AY 2027/28)
- Length
- +1 year · 56 phases
- Language
- English · Español
- Content freshness
- Curriculum updated 2026-08-22 · content rev fd96eceb
- Cortex Credits (CC)
-
280 CC
What are Cortex Credits? - Syllabus
-
View the phase syllabus
- From engineer to researcher
- The storage design space at research depth
- Modern hardware for data systems
- In-memory indexing
- Concurrency primitives
- Measurement discipline
- Reading the literature
- B+tree engineering at depth
- LSM at depth
- Buffer management research
- Specialized index internals
- Text-search internals
- Compression at depth
- Learned index structures
- Storage capstone
- Rewriting & algebraic equivalences
- Cardinality estimation
- Cost models
- Join ordering
- Optimizer architecture: Volcano/Cascades
- Robust & adaptive query processing
- Optimizer capstone
- Beyond tuple-at-a-time: vectorized execution
- Columnar storage & open formats
- Query compilation
- Parallel execution: morsel-driven
- Joins & hash tables at depth
- Aggregation & window functions at scale
- Execution capstone: lynxdb-col
- Serializability theory at depth
- Isolation in the real world
- Serializable snapshot isolation
- Modern in-memory concurrency control
- The MVCC design space
- Logging & recovery at depth: ARIES
- Concurrency capstone
- Consistency models as contracts
- Impossibility & trade-offs: CAP, PACELC, FLP
- Consensus I: Paxos
- Consensus II: Raft implemented
- Distributed transactions
- Partitioning & elasticity at depth
- Weak coordination: CRDTs
- Distributed capstone: Raft-replicated lynxdb
- Cloud-native architecture & the lakehouse
- Modern OLAP & time-series engines
- HTAP: dual-format designs
- Streaming, CDC & incremental view maintenance
- Vector, graph & deductive systems research
- Testing distributed databases: Jepsen
- Deterministic simulation testing
- Formal specification & model checking: TLA+
- Research method
- Capstone I: the original contribution
- Capstone II: the verified publication
- Frontier & what's next
- Enrolment prerequisites
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- A verified account and admissions-committee approval.
- Completion of MSc Advanced Databases & Data Systems.
What changed
Every release of this programme, newest first.
- v0 Pilot Wave A backfill: v0 pilot baseline
Professor: Vacancy available
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