Ahmed R. Mahmood

Senior Software Engineer, Google • Adjunct Professor, UW-Madison Computer Sciences

Biography

I am an Adjunct Professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a Senior Software Engineer at Google. My research and professional work focus on AI and LLM-Powered Databases, Distributed, and Spatial Data Management.

At Google, I lead the design of LLM-powered SQL-to-SQL rewrite tools and the support of geospatial operators in distributed query engines. Academically, I explore scalable spatial, spatial-keyword, and spatio-temporal analytics, data cleaning, and AI and LLM-optimized databases.

Professional Experience

Adjunct Professor 2026 – Present University of Wisconsin-Madison

Teaching CS 564: Database Management Systems, focusing on the engineering of high-performance storage and query engines.

Senior Software Engineer 2018 – Present Google Inc.
  • LLM Optimization: Developing SQL-to-SQL rewrite tools using Large Language Models to automate performance tuning.
  • F1 Geo: Core contributor to distributed Geospatial joins and predicates in the F1 Query engine.

Publications

Recent & Featured Work (2024–2026)

SOLAR: Scalable Distributed Spatial Joins through Learning-based Optimization

Y. Liu, A. Mahmood, A. Magdy, M. Zhu

To appear ICDE, 2026
Progressive and Scalable Hotspot Detection through Local K-Function in Spatial Networks

Y. Kang, Y. Liu, P. Juvekar, A. Mahmood, S. Wang, A. Magdy

ACM Transactions on Spatial Algorithms and Systems (TSAS), 2025
Pyneapple-L: Scalable Expressive Learning-based Spatial Analysis

Y. Liu et al., A. Mahmood, et al.

ACM SIGSPATIAL (Best Demo Award), 2024
Pyneapple-R: Scalable and Expressive Spatial Regionalization

Y. Kang, Y. Liu, H. Alrashid, A. Mahmood, et al.

IEEE ICDE, 2024

Books & Core Spatial-Keyword Research

Scalable Processing of Spatial-Keyword Queries (Complete Monograph)

A. R. Mahmood and W. G. Aref

Morgan & Claypool Publishers, 2019/2022

Select Systems Papers

PRUC: P-regions with user-defined constraint

Y. Liu, A. R. Mahmood, A. Magdy, and S. Rey

2022Proceedings of the VLDB Endowment (PVLDB) 15 (3)
An Experimental Evaluation and Investigation of Waves of Misery in R-trees

L. Xing, E. Lee, T. An, B. Chu, A. R. Mahmood, A. M. Aly, J. Wang, and W. G. Aref

2022Proceedings of the VLDB Endowment (PVLDB) 15 (3)
Horizon: Scalable Dependency-driven Data Cleaning

M. Ouzzani, W. G. Aref, A. K. Elmagarmid, A. R. Mahmood, and M. Stonebraker

2021Proceedings of the VLDB Endowment (PVLDB) 14 (11)
Swarm: Adaptive load balancing in distributed streaming systems for big spatial data

A. Daghistani, W. G. Aref, A. Ghafoor, and A. R. Mahmood

2021ACM Transactions on Spatial Algorithms and Systems (TSAS) 7 (3)
Prompt: Dynamic data-partitioning for distributed micro-batch stream processing systems

A. S. Abdelhamid, A. R. Mahmood, A. Daghistani, and W. G. Aref

2020Proceedings of the 2020 ACM SIGMOD International Conference on Management of Data
Spatio-temporal access methods: a survey (2010-2017)

A. R. Mahmood, S. Punni, and W. G. Aref

2019GeoInformatica 23 (1)
Adaptive processing of spatial-keyword data over a distributed streaming cluster

A. R. Mahmood, A. Daghistani, A. M. Aly, M. Tang, S. Basalamah, S. Prabhakar, and W. G. Aref

2018Proceedings of the 26th ACM SIGSPATIAL International Conference on Advances in GIS
FAST: frequency-aware indexing for spatio-textual data streams

A. R. Mahmood, A. M. Aly, and W. G. Aref

20182018 IEEE 34th International Conference on Data Engineering (ICDE)
Aqwa: adaptive query workload aware partitioning of big spatial data

A. M. Aly, A. R. Mahmood, M. S. Hassan, W. G. Aref, M. Ouzzani, and H. Elmeleegy

2015Proceedings of the VLDB Endowment (PVLDB) 8 (13)
Tornado: A distributed spatio-textual stream processing system

A. R. Mahmood, A. M. Aly, T. Qadah, E. K. Rezig, A. Daghistani, A. Madkour, et al.

2015Proceedings of the VLDB Endowment (PVLDB) 8 (12)

Full List on Google Scholar →

Education

Ph.D. in Computer Science 2018 Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN

Thesis: Efficient Support of Text and Time in Spatial Data Systems

M.Sc. & B.Sc. in Computer Science 2011 / 2006 Alexandria University, Egypt

Education

Ph.D. in Computer Science 2018 Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN
M.Sc. & B.Sc. in CS 2011 / 2006 Alexandria University, Egypt

Awards & Service

  • Best Demo Paper, ACM SIGSPATIAL (2024)
  • NSF Panel Reviewer, III (2023)
  • 1st Place, ACM SIGSPATIAL SRC (2017)
  • PC Member/Reviewer: PVLDB, SIGMOD, ICDE, VLDBJ, TODS.