Mahmoud Abo Khamis joins Wadham as Associate Professor of Computer Science and Tutorial Fellow

Prior to Oxford, Mahmoud was a Senior Computer Scientist at RelationalAI, 2017 - 2026. He was a Visiting Research Scientist at the Simons Institute for the Theory of Computing, Berkeley, University of California from Aug 2023 - Dec 2023; and a Senior Database Engineer at LogicBlox from 2015 to 2017.

Mahmoud received his Ph.D. and M.S. in Computer Science and Engineering from the State University of New York at Buffalo in 2016 and 2012 respectively, and his B.Eng. in Computer Science from Damascus University in 2010. He has taught Discrete Mathematics at SUNY Buffalo. While working in industry, he mentored several PhD students as interns — working with them to implement their research ideas in real-world systems and to bridge the gap between academic research and industry.

Mahmoud's research interests include database systems and theory, in-database machine learning, query optimization and evaluation, information theory, and beyond worst-case analysis. His broader research vision is for query optimization to guide automated algorithm design — with the ultimate goal of the query optimizer becoming a universal algorithm designer: one that takes in any problem definition and automatically generates an optimal algorithm for it.

He is delighted to be joining Wadham and looks forward to becoming part of the College’s academic community.