After completing two bachelor’s and two master's degrees at MIT, he then earned a PhD in database management under Michael Hammer.

[5] He has been involved in the development of several notable database projects with other researchers, including Michael Stonebraker and Sam Madden.

These projects include the Aurora and Borealis stream processing engines, the C-Store column store database, and the H-Store parallel, main memory OLTP system.

He has also served as a member of the VLDB Board of Trustees [6] and has been the general chair for several major database conferences.

Episode 2035 of Car Talk (approximately 35m) refers to his stint as an instructor in novice automobile maintenance.