Kimberly Keeton facts for kids

Kimberly Kristine Keeton is an American computer scientist. She is an expert in how computers store and organize information, like in databases. She used to work at HP Labs, where she was a top expert called a Distinguished Technologist. Now, she works at Google as a Principal Engineer, which means she is a lead engineer on important projects. She also helped create a special database called Express Query, which helped Hewlett-Packard store huge amounts of data.

Kimberly Keeton's Education Journey

Kimberly Keeton went to Carnegie Mellon University for her first college degree. She studied two main subjects: computer engineering, which is about designing computer hardware and software, and engineering and public policy, which looks at how technology affects society.

Later, in 1999, she earned her Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley. A Ph.D. is the highest university degree you can get. For her Ph.D., she wrote a big research paper called a dissertation. Her dissertation was about how computer design helps database programs work better. Her professor, David Patterson, guided her research.

Awards and Honors for Kimberly Keeton

Kimberly Keeton has received several important awards for her work in computer science.

Awards for Research Papers

In 2018, a research paper she wrote in 2004 with four other scientists won the Usenix FAST Test of Time Award. This award is given to papers that have had a lasting impact on the field of computer storage. The paper was about how to automatically design computer systems that can keep data safe even during disasters.

Also in 2018, she won the SIGMOD best paper award. This was for her work on "range filtering" data structures. Imagine you have a huge list of numbers and you want to find all the numbers between 10 and 20. Range filtering helps computers do this very quickly and efficiently. Her work combined the best parts of two different ways to find data, making it even better.

Becoming a Fellow

Kimberly Keeton was chosen as an ACM Fellow in 2018. Being an ACM Fellow is a big honor given by the Association for Computing Machinery, a major group for computer professionals. She received this for making computers more reliable, easier to manage, and simpler to use, especially when it comes to storing information and using new types of computer memory.

In 2021, she also became an IEEE Fellow. This is another high honor, given by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, for her important contributions to the field.