Mike Stonebraker has been a pioneer of database research and technology for more than a quarter of a century. He was the main architect of the INGRES relational DBMS, the object-relational DBMS, POSTGRES, and the federated data system, Mariposa. All three prototypes were developed at the University of California at Berkeley where Stonebraker was a Professor of Computer Science for twenty-five years. He is the founder of three successful Silicon Valley startups, whose objective was to commercialize these prototypes. Dr. Stonebraker is the author of scores of research papers on database technology, operating systems and the architecture of system software services. He was awarded the prestigious ACM System Software Award in 1992, for his work on INGRES. Additionally, he was awarded the first annual Innovation award by the ACM SIGMOD special interest group in 1994, and has been recognized by Computer Reseller News as one of the top five software developers of the century. Moreover, Forbes magazine named him one of the eight innovators driving the Silicon Valley wealth explosion during their 80th anniversary edition in 1998. He was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 1998 and is presently an Adjunct Professor of Computer Science at M.I.T. Dr. Stonebraker was named the recipient of the 2005 IEEE John von Neumann Medal. The award recognizes Stonebraker for his significant contributions to the design, implementation, and commercialization of relational and object-relational database systems. Read the full article here. Dr. Stonebraker was the founder and CTO of Ingres Corporation, Illustra Corporation, and Cohera Corporation. He was the CTO of Informix Corporation and Required Technology, Inc. Dr. Stonebraker received a Bachelor of Science degree from Princeton University and Master of Science and Doctor of Philosophy degrees from the University of Michigan. He has held visiting professorships at the Pontifico Universitade Catholique (PUC), Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; the University of California, Santa Cruz, and, the University of Grenoble, France.