Ihab Francis Ilyas (born May 13, 1973) is a computer scientist who works in
data science
Data science is an interdisciplinary field that uses scientific methods, processes, algorithms and systems to extract or extrapolate knowledge and insights from noisy, structured and unstructured data, and apply knowledge from data across a bro ...
. He is currently a professor of
computer science
Computer science is the study of computation, automation, and information. Computer science spans theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, information theory, and automation) to practical disciplines (includin ...
in the
David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science
The David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science is a professional school within the Faculty of Mathematics at the University of WaterlooQS World University Rankingsranked the David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science 24th in the world, 10th ...
at the
University of Waterloo
The University of Waterloo (UWaterloo, UW, or Waterloo) is a public research university with a main campus in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. The main campus is on of land adjacent to "Uptown" Waterloo and Waterloo Park. The university also operates ...
. He also leads the Knowledge Platform team at
Apple Inc.. Ihab is the holder of the Thomson Reuters-NSERC Industrial Research Chair in Data Cleaning at the University of Waterloo.
Ilyas co-founded Tamr Inc., a start-up focusing on large-scale data integration and cleaning, with Andy Palmer and
Michael Stonebraker, a
Turing Award
The ACM A. M. Turing Award is an annual prize given by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) for contributions of lasting and major technical importance to computer science. It is generally recognized as the highest distinction in compu ...
winner. Ilyas was the CEO of Inductiv Inc., an
artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence—perceiving, synthesizing, and inferring information—demonstrated by machine
A machine is a physical system using Power (physics), power to apply Force, forces and control Motion, moveme ...
start-up that uses
machine learning
Machine learning (ML) is a field of inquiry devoted to understanding and building methods that 'learn', that is, methods that leverage data to improve performance on some set of tasks. It is seen as a part of artificial intelligence.
Machine ...
to automate the task of identifying and correcting errors in data, which he co-founded with Theodoros Rekatsinas at the
University of Wisconsin-Madison
A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. ''University'' is derived from the Latin phrase ''universitas magistrorum et scholarium'', which ...
and
Christopher Ré at
Stanford University. Inductiv was acquired by
Apple Inc. in May 2020.
Education and career
Ilyas was born and raised in
Alexandria, Egypt
Alexandria ( or ; ar, ٱلْإِسْكَنْدَرِيَّةُ ; grc-gre, Αλεξάνδρεια, Alexándria) is the second largest city in Egypt, and the largest city on the Mediterranean coast. Founded in by Alexander the Great, Alexandria ...
. After completing bachelor's and master's degrees at
Alexandria University
Alexandria University ( ar, جامعة الإسكندرية) is a public university in Alexandria, Egypt. It was established in 1938 as a satellite of Fouad University (the name of which was later changed to Cairo University), becoming an indepen ...
in 1995 and 1999, respectively, he earned a PhD at
Purdue University
Purdue University is a public land-grant research university in West Lafayette, Indiana, and the flagship campus of the Purdue University system. The university was founded in 1869 after Lafayette businessman John Purdue donated land and ...
in 2004 under the supervision of Walid Aref and
Ahmed K. Elmagarmid
Dr Ahmed K. Elmagarmid (born 1954) is a computer scientist, academic and executive. He is the founding executive director of Qatar Computing Research Institute, a national research institute under Hamad bin Khalifa University, a member of the Qa ...
.
After his doctoral studies, Ilyas accepted a position in 2004 as a tenure-track professor at the University of Waterloo's David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science.
Research contributions
Ilyas is best known for the development of database systems and data science, with emphasis on data quality, data cleaning, managing uncertain data, machine learning for data curation, and rank-aware query processing.
Since 2009, he has focused research on data quality and the technical challenges in building data-cleaning systems. He and his research group introduced novel practical algorithms and system prototypes, which circumvent limitations of previous data-cleaning solutions that either focus narrowly on single types of data errors or ignore real-life considerations that prevent their adoption.
With Theodoros Rekatsinas,
Christopher Ré, and Xu Chu, he introduced HoloClean, an open-source statistical inference engine to impute, clean and enrich data.
Awards and honours
Ilyas received a Government of Ontario Early Researcher Award in 2008, a provincial program that funds new leading researchers at publicly funded Ontario universities to build a research team. He was named an IBM Canada Advanced Studies Fellow from 2006 to 2010.
Ilyas held a Cheriton Faculty Fellowship at the David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science from 2013 to 2016 and he received the Google Faculty Award in 2014.
He was named an
ACM
ACM or A.C.M. may refer to:
Aviation
* AGM-129 ACM, 1990–2012 USAF cruise missile
* Air chief marshal
* Air combat manoeuvring or dogfighting
* Air cycle machine
* Arica Airport (Colombia) (IATA: ACM), in Arica, Amazonas, Colombia
Computing
* ...
Distinguished Scientist in 2014, and an
ACM Fellow
ACM or A.C.M. may refer to:
Aviation
* AGM-129 ACM, 1990–2012 USAF cruise missile
* Air chief marshal
* Air combat manoeuvring or dogfighting
* Air cycle machine
* Arica Airport (Colombia) (IATA: ACM), in Arica, Amazonas, Colombia
Computing ...
in 2020 for his contributions to data cleaning and data integration. He was also named
IEEE Fellow
As of 2019, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) has 5,082 members designated Fellow, each of whom is associated with one of the 41 societies under the IEEE. The Fellow grade of membership is the highest level of membershi ...
in 2022 for his contributions in data cleaning, data integration and rank-aware query processing Since 2018, Ilyas has held the Thomson Reuters-NSERC Industrial Research Chair in Data Cleaning. In 2020, he was named a Faculty Affiliate at the Vector Institute.
Service
Ilyas was elected a member of Board of Trustees of the Very Large Data Bases Endowment in 2016 and the Vice Chair of the ACM Special Interest Group on Data Management (SIGMOD)
in 2017.
References
External links
*
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Ilyas, Ihab
Egyptian computer scientists
Canadian computer scientists
Egyptian emigrants to Canada
University of Waterloo faculty
Purdue University alumni
Alexandria University alumni
Living people
1973 births
People from Alexandria
Database researchers