Zhang, Zhou Earn MongoDB Fellowships

William Zhang and Renfei Zhou, both Ph.D. students in Carnegie Mellon University's Computer Science Department, have been selected as 2025 MongoDB Ph.D. Fellows.

The highly competitive fellowship program supports graduate students who demonstrate exceptional talent and a deep commitment to advancing database research. It provides up to $50,000 and personal mentorship with one of the company's industry experts. 

Zhang earned the fellowship for his research on practical holistic database system optimization. In his work, he's developed a framework that can simultaneously tune multiple configuration spaces while autonomously optimizing a database, leading to increased performance. Zhang is a member of the Database Group and Parallel Data Lab at CMU, and is advised by CSD Associate Professor Andy Pavlo. 

Zhou studies theoretical computer science with a primary focus on classical data structures, especially hash tables and succinct data structures. He also developed an improvement on the laser method for designing fast matrix multiplication algorithms that incorporates more asymmetry in the analysis. Zhou is advised by CSD faculty members William Kuszmaul and Guy Blelloch.

MongoDB is a global technology company seeking to empower innovators with its modern database platform and integrated services. Its mission is to unleash the power of software and data, enabling development teams to meet the diverse needs of modern applications. 

More information about the fellowship is available on MongoDB's website.