Lin Ma receives Google ML and Systems Junior Faculty Award

July 28, 2025
He is one of just 50 assistant professors in the U.S. to receive the inaugural award from Google for his research advancing AI- and GPU-driven database management systems.
Prof. Lin Ma
Prof. Lin Ma

Lin Ma, assistant professor of Computer Science and Engineering (CSE) at the University of Michigan, has been selected to receive the inaugural Google ML and Systems Junior Faculty Award. He joins a select cohort of just 50 assistant professors from 27 universities nationwide, chosen for their leadership in developing the next generation of efficient, scalable, and trustworthy computing systems.

Ma’s research sits at the intersection of artificial intelligence, hardware acceleration, and database management systems (DBMSs)—the backbone of modern data-driven applications. His work aims to simplify and automate the configuration, optimization, and maintenance of complex databases, thereby eliminating the need for constant human oversight. Leveraging advances in AI and novel hardware technologies such as GPUs, Ma develops new system architectures that enable databases to “self-drive”: automatically adapting to new workloads, predicting and mitigating performance issues, and optimizing operations at scale.

Before joining Michigan, Ma earned his PhD at Carnegie Mellon University, where he designed and built NoisePage, a prototype autonomous DBMS, and worked at Databricks on cloud data platforms. His ongoing projects include autonomous data pipeline tuning, LLM-driven database optimization, and large-scale GPU-accelerated data analytics—innovations that have the potential to greatly enhance reliability and efficiency across various applications, from cloud services and enterprise data platforms to scientific computing.

Google’s ML and Systems Junior Faculty Award provides $100,000 in unrestricted funding to support faculty pursuing pioneering research in machine learning and systems. The program aims to foster academic excellence and enable promising young faculty to advance bold new ideas that will shape the future of computing. With this award, Ma will continue his contributions to foundational technologies that enhance data management, cloud infrastructure, and scalable computing.