About

I am an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science at UMass Boston, and the founder and director of the Computing Hardware & Large Data Lab (CHiLL). My research interests are in data systems and data management. My group designs hardware-aware and learned data management solutions, with a focus on LSM-based NoSQL key-value stores, disaggregated architectures (CXL), modern storage devices, and hardware/software co-design.

I completed my PhD in the Computer Science Department at Boston University, advised by Professor Manos Athanassoulis. During my PhD I was a research intern at Intel's Parallel Computing Lab (Summer '22) and at Microsoft Research's Data Systems Group (Summer '21).

Before Boston University I was a lecturer in the Department of Computer Science & Engineering at Bangladesh University of Engineering & Technology (BUET) for four years. I completed my BSc and MSc in the same department, working on medical informatics using machine learning and embedded systems for health monitoring.

Outside the office I enjoy traveling, playing pool (mostly 8-ball and 9-ball) and table tennis, and watching films and TV series.

Experience

Assistant Professor
University of Massachusetts Boston
Sept 2025 – Present
CS Preceptor
Harvard University
Jan 2025 – Aug 2025
PhD Researcher
Boston University
Sept 2019 – May 2025
Course Instructor
Boston University
Spring 2024
Research Scientist Intern
Intel Corporation
May 2022 – Sept 2022
Research Intern
Microsoft Research
May 2021 – Aug 2021
Lecturer
Bangladesh University of Engineering & Technology
Oct 2015 – Aug 2019

Selected Honors & Awards

  • Faculty Fellow, STEMPOWER Fellowship Program, UMass Boston2026
  • Computer Science Teaching Excellence Award, Boston University2025
  • SIGMOD Travel Grant, ACM SIGMOD2025, 2024
  • Best Demo Award, VLDB2023
  • Computer Science Research Excellence Award, Boston University2022
  • Dean’s Fellowship, Boston UniversityFall 2019
  • Champion, Intra-University Database Project Show, BUET2013
  • Champion, Intra-University Robotics Contest, BUET2012
  • Champion, Intra-University Logic Olympiad, BUET2012

News

  • Jul 2026PublicationOur work on a benchmarking framework for DB bufferpool analysis was accepted at TPCTC 2026. [Paper]
  • Jun 2026AwardI have been selected as a Faculty Fellow of the STEMPOWER Fellowship Program at UMass Boston.
  • Jun 2026AwardThanks to UMass Boston's Proposal Development Grant Program for supporting my research on RL for autonomous storage systems ($20K).
  • May 2026PublicationOur demonstration paper on ReStore was accepted at VLDB 2026. [Paper]
  • Apr 2026PublicationOur work "ZARC: Re-inventing Zone Allocation for LSMs on ZNS SSD" was accepted at DaMoN 2026. [Paper]
  • Mar 2026PublicationOur work on hierarchical storage architecture, "ReStore: A Reinforcement Learning Approach for Data Migration in Multi-Tiered Storage", was accepted at SIGMOD 2026. [Paper]
  • Feb 2026ServiceI will serve as Local Arrangements Chair at VLDB 2026.
  • Jan 2026ServiceI was the Organizer and General Chair of NEDB Day 2026, held at UMass Boston. My lab presented three posters on DB bufferpool, ZNS SSD and LSM compaction. [Poster 1] [Poster 2] [Poster 3]
  • 2025ServiceI am on the program committees of IEEE ICDE 2027, VLDB 2027, SIGMOD 2027, SIGMOD 2026, VLDB 2026 Demo and SIGMOD 2026 Demo.
  • Sept 2025HighlightI joined the CS Department of UMass Boston as an Assistant Professor.
  • May 2025AwardI was awarded the BU Computer Science Teaching Excellence Award. [Certificate]
  • Apr 2025HighlightI defended my doctoral thesis. [Dissertation]
  • Mar 2025PublicationOur demonstration paper on ACE was accepted at SIGMOD 2025. [Paper]
  • Dec 2024PublicationI presented a poster on our RL-based data migration policy for tiered storage at NEDB Day 2025. [Abstract]
  • Jul 2024ServiceI served on the program committee of SIGMOD 2025 Demo.
  • May 2024AwardI received the 2024 SIGMOD Student Scholarship to attend the conference and present our CAVE work in Chile.
  • Apr 2024PublicationI gave a talk on CAVE and presented a poster on design principles of ZNS SSD at NEDB Day 2024. [Abstract][Abstract 2]
  • Mar 2024PublicationOur invited article "Effortless Locality on Data Systems using Relational Fabric" was accepted in IEEE TKDE. [Paper]
  • Feb 2024PublicationOur work "CAVE: Concurrency-Aware Graph Processing on SSDs" was accepted at SIGMOD 2024. [Paper]
  • Feb 2024PublicationMy work on SSD-aware data system design was accepted at the IEEE ICDE 2024 PhD Symposium. [PDF]
  • Jan 2024HighlightI served as course instructor for "CS 561: Data Systems Architectures" at Boston University. [Class Website]
  • Dec 2023HighlightI passed my PhD Qualifying Exam. [Thesis Prospectus]
  • Nov 2023PublicationMy internship work at Intel, "Silhouette: Toward Performance-Conscious and Transferable CPU Embeddings", was accepted at the ML for Systems workshop at NeurIPS 2023. [Paper]
  • Sept 2023Award"On-the-fly Data Transformation in Action" won the Best Demo Award at VLDB 2023.
  • Jun 2023PublicationOur demonstration "On-the-fly Data Transformation in Action" was accepted at VLDB 2023. [Paper]
  • Apr 2023PublicationOur journal work "Enabling Timely and Persistent Deletion in LSM-Engines" was accepted in ACM TODS. [Paper]
  • Mar 2023PublicationOur work "Software-Shaped Platforms" was accepted at CPS-IoT Week Workshops 2023. [Paper]
  • Feb 2023PublicationOur vision paper "Relational Fabric: Transparent Data Transformation" was accepted at IEEE ICDE 2023. [Paper]
  • Nov 2022PublicationOur work "ACEing the Bufferpool Management Paradigm for Modern Storage Devices" was accepted at IEEE ICDE 2023. [Paper]
  • Jun 2022PublicationOur work "Relational Memory: Native In-Memory Accesses on Rows and Columns" was accepted at EDBT 2023. [Paper]
  • May 2022HighlightI joined Intel as a Research Scientist Intern for the summer.
  • May 2022AwardI was awarded the BU Computer Science Research Excellence Award. [Certificate]
  • Mar 2022PublicationOur invited article "Building Deletion-Compliant Data Systems" was accepted in IEEE DEBull. [Paper]
  • Jan 2022PublicationOne of my MSc works, "UACD: A Local Approach for Identifying the Most Influential Spreaders in Twitter in a Distributed Environment", was accepted in SNAM. [Paper]
  • Jun 2021PublicationOur work "A Parametric I/O Model for Modern Storage Devices" was accepted at DaMoN 2021. [Paper] [Video] [Slides]
  • Mar 2021HighlightI joined Microsoft Research as a Research Intern for Summer 2021.
  • Jan 2021AwardOur work "The Need for a New I/O Model" won an honorable mention for Best Gong Show Talk at CIDR 2021. [Paper] [Video] [Slides]
  • Mar 2020PublicationOur work "Lethe: A Tunable Delete-Aware LSM Engine" was accepted at SIGMOD 2020. [Paper] [arXiv] [Website] [Poster]

Contact

Email
t.papon@umb.edu
Office
McCormack Hall, 3rd Floor, M-3-201-25
Department of Computer Science, UMass Boston
100 Morrissey Boulevard, Boston, MA 02125, USA