MySQL and HeatWave Summit: Speakers

Wim Coekaerts

Executive Vice President, Software Development, Oracle

Wim Coekaerts is executive vice president of software development at Oracle. He is responsible for managing a number of projects including Oracle Linux and Virtualization, Oracle Enterprise Manager, MySQL, HeatWave, Oracle JET (JavaScript Extension Toolkit), Oracle Visual Builder, and various developer, infrastructure, and management cloud services. Wim is a well-known developer in the open source community.

Nipun Agarwal

Senior Vice President, HeatWave, Oracle

Nipun Agarwal is Senior Vice President of MySQL Database and HeatWave Development at Oracle. His interests include data processing, machine learning and cloud computing. Prior to this role, Nipun played a pivotal role in Oracle Labs, where he directed various research endeavors that later evolved into new Oracle products, such as HeatWave. Nipun's journey with Oracle began in 1994, following the completion of his Master of Science in Computer Science. For several years, he contributed to the Oracle database team. To date, Nipun has amassed an impressive portfolio of 200 patent awards.

Marcelo Altmann

Readyset

Marcelo Altmann is a database professional with almost 20 years of experience working with MySQL. Over the years, he’s contributed code fixes to MySQL itself. As a C++ and Rust developer, he’s passionate about solving tough problems and building tools that make databases faster and more reliable. Marcelo loves sharing what he’s learned, which is why you’ll often find him speaking at MySQL conferences and events. He’s also part of the Oracle ACE program, a recognition of his contributions to the MySQL community. When he’s not knee-deep in code or databases, Marcelo enjoys geeking out over new technologies and connecting with others in the database world. Whether it’s about performance tuning or MySQL internals, he’s always up for a good chat.

Ronald Bradford

Kanangra I/O

Ronald Bradford is a MySQL expert, speaker and published author with deep expertise in database performance, scalability, and security. With over three decades of experience, he has advised companies ranging from early startups to Fortune 500s on all aspects of optimizing MySQL architectures. Ronald is the author of Effective MySQL series, a MySQL community contributor of the year recipient, and previously an Oracle ACE Director.

René Cannaò

ProxySQL

René Cannaò is a database expert and a key contributor to ProxySQL, specializing in MySQL performance optimization, query routing, and high availability solutions. With years of experience working with large-scale MySQL deployments, he has helped companies, including Fortune 500 enterprises, design and implement scalable, resilient database architectures. As an active member of the open-source database community, he regularly speaks at industry conferences and contributes to improving database performance and reliability.

Daniël Van Eeden

PingCAP

Daniël van Eeden is working for PingCAP on TiDB and is an active opensource contributor. He was awarded the MySQL Rockstar 2023 award.

Raja Sriram Ganesan

Uber

Senior Staff Engineer at Core Storage team at Uber. Tech lead for various MySQL initiatives and has led critical reliability and modernization projects for MySQL at Uber.

Alexander Martinez

Yelp

Currently, a Staff Software Engineer at Yelp on the Database Reliability Engineering MySQL team. Our team owns the infrastructure stack for MySQL, which includes Vitess, SQLAlchemy, and other technologies. Before Yelp, I began my career briefly in Machine Learning and Computer Vision infrastructure and algorithms at a startup in Vancouver, BC upon finishing my bachelor degree in Mathematics at the University of the British Columbia. When I’m not working on MySQL database infrastructure at Yelp, I’m either working on my app + website for sports and trading card prices called Compz or exploring the numerous restaurants, museums, and live music of New York City.

Krishna Mamillapalli

Datavail

Over 16+ years of experience in database architecture and solutions with an extensive technical background in database operations, cloud migrations and modernizations specialized in MySQL. He also has extensive experience in cloud strategies, migrations and supporting opensource database technologies in the cloud. Deep understanding of relational, non-relational and hybrid data models, Krishna’s collaborated with Enterprise customers and led projects that delivered high-end database solutions in Finance, Healthcare, Retail, e-commerce, Manufacturing and Telecommunications industries and help customers. He’s active as a thought leader and presents at database conferences such in SSWUG, IOUG, DBTA and AWS Workshops.

Giovanni Morelli

Mazzing, Inc

Giovanni is the CEO of MaZZZing inc., a Toronto-based technology company which specializes in providing top-tier internet security to individuals anywhere and everywhere. He is an Application and Hardware Virtualization Specialist with over 20 years of experience in his field

Daniel Nichter

Daniel Nichter is a DBA with 20 years of experience with MySQL. He started optimizing MySQL performance in 2004 while working in a data center. Soon after, he created HackMySQL.com to share information and tools about MySQL. Daniel is most known for the tools he published during his eight-year tenure at Percona, several of which remain the de facto standard and in use at the largest tech companies around the world. He is also a MySQL Community Award winner, conference speaker, and wide-ranging open source contributor.

Craig Shallahamer

Viscosity North America

Having worked with Oracle technology since 1989, Craig Shallahamer is a leader in the fields of machine learning, artificial intelligence and Oracle database performance tuning. Craig has extensive experience in constructing and teaching predictive modeling methods, notably developing a Reinforcement Machine Learning bot in 1990. He has launched several specialized generative AI conversational assistants, each with distinct personalities and capabilities. As an Applied AI Scientist at Viscosity and the founder of OraPub, Craig is also the author of two acclaimed books: Oracle Performance Firefighting and Forecasting Oracle Performance. He has received recognition as an Oracle ACE Director for his valuable contributions to the Oracle community through his technical expertise and leadership. Craig is an active participant in Oracle user groups, frequently presenting at conferences and serving as a board member and volunteer.

Deepthi Sigireddi

PlanetScale

Deepthi is the Technical Lead for Vitess, an open-source distributed database system built around MySQL. She leads the Vitess engineering team at PlanetScale which offers a database service built on Vitess and MySQL. She brings over 20 years of experience building scalable systems to this role. She enjoys speaking about technology and hiking in her spare time.

Desiree Abrokwa

Product Manager, Observability and Management, Oracle

Desiree is a Product Manager in the Observability and Management organization at Oracle Corporation. She currently focuses on the monitoring space of Enterprise Manager. She has a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science from the University of Maryland, College Park.

Bhushan Arora

Principal Cloud Architect, Oracle

Bhushan Arora is a Principal Cloud Architect with over 18 years of experience in database technologies and cloud solutions. As a key member of Oracle’s North America Pre-Sales team, he helps enterprises seamlessly transition to the cloud, driving innovation, efficiency, and scalability.

His expertise spans Oracle Database Multicloud, MySQL HeatWave, ExaDB-D, Autonomous Databases and Oracle E-Business Suite. With a strong background in solution architecture and pre-sales, Bhushan works closely with customers to design and implement high-performance, scalable database solutions tailored to their business needs.

Gaurav Chadha

Senior Development Manager, MySQL & HeatWave Development, Oracle

Gaurav Chadha is a Senior Development Manager leading development of HeatWave Lakehouse. With a keen interest in systems, machine learning, and computer architecture, Gaurav brings a multifaceted expertise to database technology. Prior to his current role, Gaurav played an integral part in the development of Exadata Exascale, showcasing his adeptness at systems, database, and cloud technologies.

Following the completion of his PhD from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Gaurav started at Oracle Labs in 2016, working on a research project which eventually graduated into HeatWave.

Frédéric Descamps

MySQL Community Manager, Oracle

After graduating in Management Information Technology, Frédéric Descamps started his career as a developer for an ERP under HPUX. He will then opt for a career in the world of opensource by joining one of the first Belgian startups dedicated 100% to free projects around GNU/Linux. It is in 2011 that lefred joined Percona, one of the leading MySQL-based consumerism specialists. He decided to join the MySQL Community Team in 2016 as a MySQL Community Manager for EMEA & APAC. His blog mostly dedicated to MySQL: http://lefred.be

Mike Frank

Product Management Director, Oracle

Over the past 20 years, Mike has helped organizations formulate and implement complex new products and strategies. His background spans databases, development, tools, packaging, security, and backup. He's brought well over 15 new to market products. At Oracle MySQL he's been instrumental in working on various database features, development tools, backup and recovery, software repos, and security. As a founder and VP of Products at Gazzang (acq. by Cloudera) he brought to market Linux TDE and a SaaS key management products. As a co-founder and head of products at Idera he brought to market 5 database management products including SQL Secure, SQL Compliance Manager, and SQLsafe. At PentaSafe/NetIQ, as Product Author and Product Line Manager, he created a line of products for Security and Risk assessment of Linux and Web Servers. Mikes experience spans databases, operating systems, security, e-business, and trading systems.

Alfredo Kojima

Software Development Director

Henrique Leandro

Director, MySQL Solution Engineering, Oracle

As a seasoned technology leader specializing in databases, cloud computing, and generative AI, I lead the US East Coast Solution Engineering team for MySQL at Oracle, the world’s most popular open-source database. I drive strategic sales initiatives and enhance product delivery with advanced features like vector store and generative AI. My expertise includes database migration, Visual Studio, and enabling technical partners through hands-on labs and workshops.

Mandy Pang

Senior Principal Product Manager, HeatWave, Oracle

Mandy Pang is a Senior Principal Product Manager in the Oracle HeatWave team focusing on HeatWave on OCI and AWS. She has been working with MySQL and HeatWave for over 8 years. Mandy has an extensive background in Cloud, database, analytics, and security solutions.

Norvald Ryeng

Software Development Director, Oracle

Norvald has been at Oracle since 2011 and is the MySQL optimizer team lead, responsible for query optimization and execution. He holds a PhD in Computer and Information Science from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology.

Jayant Sharma

Senior Director, HeatWave Product Management, Oracle

Jayant Sharma is a Senior Director of Product Management at Oracle. He has over twenty years of experience in databases, spatial analytics, and application development. He is currently focused on the product strategy and design of the HeatWave MySQL managed service offering.

Luís Soares

Senior Software Development Director, Oracle

Luís Soares is a Senior Development Director at Oracle. He works on MySQL High Availability, Replication and on the Heatwave Database Service. His interests include replication technologies, distributed systems, high availability and running systems at scale. Before joining the MySQL team, he was both a post-graduate student and a distributed systems researcher at the University of Minho, Portugal.

Scott Stroz

MySQL Developer Advocate, Oracle

Scott has been a full-stack developer for longer than the term “full-stack developer” has been around. At that time, MySQL was the only constant in his development stack. He is passionate about sharing what he has learned on his coding journey so others may learn from his mistakes. Scott is a MySQL Developer Advocate at Oracle and is part of the MySQL Community Team.

Seema Sundara

Architect, Oracle

Sriram Vrinda

Senior Director, MySQL Product Management, Oracle

Sriram Vrinda is an experienced Product Manager with a demonstrated history of working in the information technology and services industry. Strong product management professional skilled in Oracle Database, Autonomous Databases, MySQL Databases, IT Service Management, Solution Architect, and Pre-sales. He has helped various customers with Oracle solutions specifically around performance, availability, and scalability aspects for about 20 years.

Benjamin Wood

MySQL Master Solution Engineer, Oracle

With nearly two decades of service to MySQL customers across North America, Benjamin Wood works in the sales consulting group of MySQL at Oracle. He helps customers meet challenging technical and business requirements in both on-prem and cloud environments.