Dr. Stefan Grafberger from Snowflake will visit the DASYA research group and give a talk at ITU on November 17, 2026, between 14:00–15:00, in room AUD4.

Bridging Relational Engines and AI: Querying Unstructured Data with AI SQL

Abstract: The growth of large language models (LLMs) has transformed how organizations interact with data. Modern enterprises now store vast volumes of unstructured content, such as documents, images, audio, and video, alongside traditional structured tables. This talk explores some of the core concepts behind semantic query processing and how modern database architectures like Snowflake bridge the gap between relational execution engines and unstructured data analysis.

Bio: Stefan Grafberger is a Software Engineer at Snowflake, working on improving unstructured data processing as a member of the SQL Datatypes team. Prior to Snowflake, he completed his Ph.D. in data management for machine learning at the University of Amsterdam and BIFOLD / TU Berlin. He holds a Master’s degree from TU Munich, where he also focused on database systems. He previously interned with Microsoft Gray Systems Lab, Amazon Research, and Oracle Labs. His research has been repeatedly published in top database venues like SIGMOD, VLDB, and CIDR, and received an ACM SIGMOD Best Demo Runner-Up Award. His code became part of systems like Snowflake, Umbra, and Deequ.