Serge Joseph Abiteboul (born 25 August 1953 in

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...

, France) is a French

computer scientist A computer scientist is a scientist who specializes in the academic study of computer science. Computer scientists typically work on the theoretical side of computation. Although computer scientists can also focus their work and research on ...

working in the areas of

data management Data management comprises all disciplines related to handling data as a valuable resource, it is the practice of managing an organization's data so it can be analyzed for decision making. Concept The concept of data management emerged alongsi ...

database theory Database theory encapsulates a broad range of topics related to the study and research of the theoretical realm of databases and database management systems. Theoretical aspects of data management include, among other areas, the foundations of q ...

, and

finite model theory Finite model theory is a subarea of model theory. Model theory is the branch of logic which deals with the relation between a formal language (syntax) and its interpretations (semantics). Finite model theory is a restriction of model theory to inte ...

Education

The son of two hardware store owners, Abiteboul attended high-school in

Romorantin Romorantin is a traditional French variety of white wine grape, that is a sibling of Chardonnay. Once quite widely grown in the Loire, it has now only seen in the . It produces intense, minerally wines somewhat reminiscent of Chablis. Histor ...

, and Higher School Preparatory Classes in

Tours Tours ( ; ) is the largest city in the region of Centre-Val de Loire, France. It is the Prefectures in France, prefecture of the Departments of France, department of Indre-et-Loire. The Communes of France, commune of Tours had 136,463 inhabita ...

. He was admitted to the Télécom Paris engineering school and studied at the Technion in Haifa for a year. Abiteboul received his

PhD A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, DPhil; or ) is a terminal degree that usually denotes the highest level of academic achievement in a given discipline and is awarded following a course of graduate study and original research. The name of the deg ...

from the

University of Southern California The University of Southern California (USC, SC, or Southern Cal) is a Private university, private research university in Los Angeles, California, United States. Founded in 1880 by Robert M. Widney, it is the oldest private research university in ...

under the supervision of

Seymour Ginsburg Seymour Ginsburg (December 12, 1927 – December 5, 2004) was an American pioneer of Automaton, automata theory, formal language theory, and database theory, in particular; and computer science, in general. His work was influential in distingui ...

, in 1982.

Career and research

Abiteboul is a senior researcher at the Institut national de recherche en informatique et en automatique (INRIA), the French national research institute focussing on

computer science Computer science is the study of computation, information, and automation. Computer science spans Theoretical computer science, theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, and information theory) to Applied science, ...

and related areas, and has been a professor of the

Collège de France The (), formerly known as the or as the ''Collège impérial'' founded in 1530 by François I, is a higher education and research establishment () in France. It is located in Paris near La Sorbonne. The has been considered to be France's most ...

. He is known for his many contributions in the areas of

, database theory, and database systems. In finite model theory, the Abiteboul–Vianu Theorem states that

polynomial time In theoretical computer science, the time complexity is the computational complexity that describes the amount of computer time it takes to run an algorithm. Time complexity is commonly estimated by counting the number of elementary operations p ...

is equal to

PSPACE In computational complexity theory, PSPACE is the set of all decision problems that can be solved by a Turing machine using a polynomial amount of space. Formal definition If we denote by SPACE(''f''(''n'')), the set of all problems that can ...

if and only if fixed point logic is the same as partial fixed point logic. In database theory, he has contributed a wide variety of results, the most recent on languages for the distributed processing of XML data. In data management, he is best known for his early work on semistructured and Web databases. In 2008, according to

Citeseer CiteSeerX (formerly called CiteSeer) is a public search engine and digital library for scientific and academic papers, primarily in the fields of computer and information science. CiteSeer's goal is to improve the dissemination and access of a ...

, he is the most highly cited researcher in the data management area who works at a European institution. Abiteboul is also known for two books, one on database theory and one on Web data management. He frequently writes for French newspapers, including Le Monde, Libération and La Tribune A member of the ARCEP, the independent agency in charge of regulating telecommunications in France, Abiteboul has been an advocate of net neutrality. He has also been critical of virtual assistants and their impact on privacy. In 2019, he is among the members of a group tasked by the French government with addressing online bullying and harassment.

Awards and honours

Abiteboul was awarded the

Association for Computing Machinery The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) is a US-based international learned society for computing. It was founded in 1947 and is the world's largest scientific and educational computing society. The ACM is a non-profit professional membe ...

(ACM) SIGMOD Edgar F. Codd Innovations Award in 1998, the

(ACM)

SIGMOD SIGMOD is the Association for Computing Machinery's Special Interest Group on Management of Data, which specializes in large-scale data management problems and databases. The annual ACM SIGMOD Conference, which began in 1975, is considered one of ...

Test of Time Award in 2004, the Prix EADS in 2007 and the ACM PODS Alberto O. Mendelzon Test-of-Time Award (2008). Abiteboul was elected a member of the

French Academy of Sciences The French Academy of Sciences (, ) is a learned society, founded in 1666 by Louis XIV at the suggestion of Jean-Baptiste Colbert, to encourage and protect the spirit of French Scientific method, scientific research. It was at the forefron ...

in 2008, of the European Academy of Sciences in 2011, and an

ACM Fellow ACM Fellowship is an award and fellowship that recognises outstanding members of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). The title of ACM Fellow A fellow is a title and form of address for distinguished, learned, or skilled individuals ...

in 2011.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Abiteboul, Serge Database researchers Members of the French Academy of Sciences 2011 fellows of the Association for Computing Machinery Living people 1953 births French computer scientists University of Southern California alumni