Hamish Nicholson

I am a Doctoral Candidate at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), working in the Data-Intensive Applications and Systems laboratory with Prof. Anastasia Ailamaki. My research centers on optimizing analytical query processing by effectively utilizing heterogeneous modern hardware. This means optimizing for efficient data movement and computation on today’s diverse and complex architectures. Ultimately, I aim to make data systems faster and more resource-efficient.

While my PhD focuses on query processing, my interests extend to the broader challenges of performance and resource efficiency across the entire software stack. This includes the full spectrum of hardware-software co-optimization, from detailed microarchitectural analysis and compiler strategies like runtime code generation (JIT compilation) to designing full systems that inherently minimize bottlenecks in memory, I/O, and computation.

Fun Stuff

In my spare time I enjoy cooking, the mountains, collecting cameras, and tinkering with my home lab and network.