Patricia Selinger

Patricia Griffiths Selinger is an American computer scientist and IBM Fellow known for foundational contributions to relational database management systems. She played a central role in creating System R, one of the first relational database implementations, and authored the canonical paper on relational query optimization, inventing cost-based query optimization techniques whose dynamic programming approach to determining join order still underlies most modern relational query optimizers. Before retiring from IBM she served as Vice President of Data Management Architecture and Technology and established the Database Technology Institute. She earned her A.B., S.M. and PhD in applied mathematics from Harvard University between 1971 and 1975, and her honors include appointment as an IBM Fellow in 1994, ACM Fellow in 2009, election to the National Academy of Engineering in 1999, and the ACM SIGMOD Innovations Award in 2002, the highest ACM honor in data management.