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C. Mohan | |
|---|---|
| Born | (1955-08-03)3 August 1955 (age 69) |
| Citizenship | United States |
| Alma mater | Indian Institute of Technology, Madras (1972–1977) University of Texas, Austin (1977–1981) |
| Known for | ARIES Database systems Distributed database Presumed Abort Commit Protocol Transaction processing Workflow management Blockchain Distributed ledger |
| Spouse | Kalpana Mohan |
| Children | Pavithra Mohan Parthiv Mohan |
| Awards | USNational Academy of Engineering 2009 ACMSIGMOD Edgar F. Codd Innovations Award 1996 IBM Fellow 1997 IEEE Fellow 2002 ACM Fellow 2002 Indian National Academy of Engineering 2009 Distinguished Visiting Professor,Tsinghua University 2016 Distinguished Alumnus Award,IIT Madras 2003 |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Computer Science |
| Institutions | Tsinghua University (2016–) IBM (1981–2020) Kerala Blockchain Academy (2020–) Tamil Nadu e-Governance Agency (2019–) INRIA (1998–1999) |
| Thesis | Strategies for enhancing concurrency and managing deadlocks in data base locking protocols (1981) |
| Doctoral advisor | Abraham Silberschatz |
Chandrasekaran Mohan is an Indian-born Americancomputer scientist. He was born on 3 August 1955 inTamil Nadu,India.[1] After growing up there and finishing his undergraduate studies inChennai, he moved to the United States in 1977 for graduate studies, naturalizing in 2007. In June 2020, he retired from being anIBM Fellow at theIBM Almaden Research Center (San Jose, California) after working atIBM Research for 38.5 years. Currently, he is a visiting professor at China'sTsinghua University.[2] He is also an Honorary Advisor at the Tamil Nadu e-Governance Agency[3] (TNeGA) inChennai and an advisor at the Kerala Blockchain Academy[4] inKerala.
Mohan received his PhD in computer science from theUniversity of Texas at Austin in 1981. He received aB.Tech. in chemical engineering fromIIT Madras in 1977. He had his pre-college education inVellore,Tamil Nadu.
After finishing his PhD in thedatabase area in December 1981, Mohan joinedIBM Research in San Jose, working on projects like R*, Starburst, Exotica, and DBCache.[5] He subsequently worked as a visiting scientist atINRIA Rocquencourt in 1998–1999, then returned to IBM. From June 2006 until January 2009, he worked as theIBM India Chief Scientist, based inBangalore.[6]
After his return toIBM Almaden Research Center at the end of his India assignment, Mohan worked on projects relating to Storage Class Memories,[7]Big Data,Hybrid Transactional/Analytical Processing (HTAP) enhancements toIBM Db2 andApache Spark, andBlockchain andDistributed ledger technologies. He gave numerous keynotes and other talks onNoSQL,NewSQL, modern enhancements to classicRDBMSs and Big Data.[8]
Since 2017, he has lectured on blockchain and distributed ledger technologies,[9] co-organizing seminars[10][11] and giving a keynote[12][13] on the topic.[14] In August 2016, Mohan was named a visiting professor in the School of Software of China'sTsinghua University.[2]
Mohan has published numerous conference and journal papers in the areas ofdatabase,workflow andtransaction management, andblockchain technologies.[15][16][17][18][19] According toGoogle Scholar, hish-index is 68 and hisi10-index is 141.[18] He is the primary inventor of theARIES family of recovery and concurrency control methods,[20] and the industry-standard (e.g.,X/Open XA)Presumed Abort commit protocol.[21][22] His journal papers on ARIES[23] and Presumed Abort[24] are considered classic papers in the areas of transactions, recovery, distributed commit and locking,[25] and are included in a collection[26] of database papers, informally called the "Red Book", edited by ACMTuring Award winner Prof.Michael Stonebraker and others under a section titledTechniques Everyone Should Know. In the introduction to that section, one of the editors of the Red Book, Peter Bailis, while discussing the ARIES paper, has said "In graduate database courses, this paper is a rite of passage. However, this material is fundamental, so it is important to understand." In the ACM SIGMOD Record series called Reminiscences on Influential Papers, with reference to the ARIES paper, Prof. Betty Salzberg ofNortheastern University has said: "The ARIES paper was important for me because it enabled me to envision the mechanisms of recovery in database systems clearly. ... Reading the ARIES paper influenced much of my subsequent research. ... Now it is almost impossible for me to imagine thinking of a database system without ARIES style recovery."[27] Prof. Alan Fekete ofUniversity of Sydney, as part of the abstract of a keynote talk by him in February 1993 said the following: "In the past few years, there have been several exciting advances in transaction management that seem certain to influence future commercial systems. One is the invention and publication of improved techniques for implementation of transaction management. In particular, an exciting series of papers have come from the ARIES project led by C. Mohan at IBM Almaden Research Laboratory. There are new algorithms which provide concurrency control for B-tree indices, recovery compatible with fine-grained locking, and concurrency control allowing long-running audits."[28]
Mohan has worked closely with many IBM product groups worldwide and his research results have been implemented in numerous IBM and non-IBM prototypes, and products likeIBM Db2,MQSeries,[29]IBM WebSphere,Informix,Cloudscape,IBM Notes,Microsoft SQL Server andIBM System zParallel Sysplex.[30]
In a 2003 interview conducted byMarianne Winslett as part of the ACM SIGMOD "Distinguished Database Profiles"[31] series, Mohan discussed the first 20 years of his IBM career. Video and audio recordings, and the textual transcript of that interview were published.[5][32][33] That interview provides a historical perspective on the state of the database research and products landscape then and also on Computer Science work in India. It also discusses Mohan's most important research results and how they came about. A Chinese translation of this interview's transcript is also available.[34]
Mohan worked as a technologist during his entire 38.5 years professional career at IBM and avoided becoming a manager! He has often talked about the importance of long-term technical careers with sustained focus in one area to attain excellence and to be effective in innovation.[35][36] Especially in a developing country like India, during his IBM India Chief Scientist assignment as well as at other times, he has often emphasized the need for good technical people to stay technical and not be too attracted by a management career path.[37] In a front-page story back in August 2007,Business Standard, one of India's leading newspapers, discussed Mohan's senior most technical position at IBM and elaborated on his patenting activities.[38]
Mohan's research, publications, inventions and technology transfer contributions have been well appreciated both inside and outside IBM over the decades via numerous awards and other recognition.
In February 2009, Mohan was elected to the United StatesNational Academy of Engineering (NAE) "for contributions to locking and recovery algorithms for database systems".[39][40][41] During the same year, he was also elected as a Foreign Fellow of theIndian National Academy of Engineering (INAE).[42] He received the 1996Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)SIGMOD Edgar F. Codd Innovations Award in recognition of his innovative contributions to the development and use of database systems. He was the first non-American and the fifth person ever to receive that award.[43] The first 4 winners in chronological order wereMichael Stonebraker,Jim Gray,Phil Bernstein andDavid DeWitt. Later, the first two won theAssociation for Computing Machinery (ACM)Turing Award.
In 2002, Mohan was named anACM Fellow and anIEEE Fellow. At the 1999 International Conference on Very Large Data Bases (VLDB), he was honored with the 10 Year Best Paper Award[44][45] for the widespread commercial and research impact of his ARIES work which has been widely covered in textbooks[46][47] and university courses.
In 2003, Mohan was named a Distinguished Alumnus of his undergraduate alma materIIT Madras.[48] In discussing Mohan's accomplishments, that award citation[49] says: "He has played a key role in establishing the foundations of database systems, which are at the core of modern information infrastructure, that support modern society. His work is among the lessons taught to students of database systems across the world. He has won numerous awards and holds key patents. It is rare for the work of one person to have had such a significant research, commercial and societal impact".
From IBM, Mohan has received 2 Corporate and 8 Outstanding Innovation/Technical Achievement Awards. He is an inventor on 50 issued/pending patents[50][51][52] and was named an IBM Master Inventor in 1997.
Mohan has discussed his IBM and non-IBM professional activities in and outsideSilicon Valley in a short video.[53] He is a frequent speaker in North America, Western Europe and India, and has given talks in 40 countries.[54][55][56][57][58][59][60][61]
Mohan has been on the advisory board ofIEEE Spectrum and an editor ofVLDB Journal, and Distributed and Parallel Databases. He was a Steering Council member of IBM's Software Group Architecture Board, and a member of IBM's Technical Leadership Team (TLT), IBM Academy of Technology, and Information Management Architecture Board. In the past, he has also been a member of IBM's Research Management Council (RMC), IBM India's Senior Leadership Team, the IBM Asset Architecture Board, and the Bharti and Vodafone Technical Advisory Councils. He also served on the academic senate of theInternational Institute of Information Technology (IIIT) at Bangalore.
