PeopleofSuperintelligence

Researcher

Immanuel Trummer

Immanuel Trummer is a computer scientist at Cornell whose research uses machine learning, and more recently large language models, to make data analysis more efficient and more user-friendly. He studied in Stuttgart and Nantes, earned a PhD at EPFL in 2016, and joined Cornell as an assistant professor in 2016. His SkinnerDB system, presented at SIGMOD in 2019, used reinforcement learning to choose join orders while queries ran, and he applied language models to database tuning with DB-BERT in 2021 and to SQL processing with CodexDB in 2022. He received an NSF CAREER Award in 2023 and published the book Data Analysis with LLMs in 2025. He is an associate professor of computer science at Cornell, where a 2026 LinkedIn grant supports his work on token-efficient agentic data analysis.

Timeline

  1. 2010–2016

    A PhD at EPFL

    He earns a computer science diploma from the University of Stuttgart and an engineering diploma from the École Centrale de Nantes in 2010, then a computer science PhD from the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne in 2016.

  2. 2016

    Assistant professor at Cornell

    He joins Cornell in 2016 as an assistant professor of computer science, with an academic focus on databases, data mining, data science and optimization.

  3. 2019

    SkinnerDB at SIGMOD

    At SIGMOD 2019, he and coauthors including Junxiong Wang and Saehan Jo present SkinnerDB, a database system that uses reinforcement learning to learn join orders on the fly while a query runs.

  4. 2021–2022

    DB-BERT and CodexDB

    In December 2021, he posts DB-BERT, a tuning tool that applies BERT language models to read database manuals and uses reinforcement learning to choose settings. In April 2022, he describes CodexDB, an SQL processing engine built on OpenAI's GPT-3 Codex whose internals can be customized through natural language instructions.

  5. March 2023

    An NSF CAREER Award

    In March 2023, the National Science Foundation names him one of five Cornell Bowers faculty to receive a CAREER Award, worth about $600,000 over five years. His project uses large language models to support automated database performance tuning.

  6. 2024–2025

    λ-Tune for database tuning

    In November 2024, he and a coauthor post λ-Tune, a framework that has large language models write complete configuration scripts for database tuning. The paper is set for presentation at SIGMOD 2025.

  7. April 2025

    A book on LLM data analysis

    In April 2025, Manning publishes his book Data Analysis with LLMs, which covers text, tables, images and sound. It guides data scientists through projects that use OpenAI's Python library, LangChain, LlamaIndex and models from Anthropic, Cohere and Hugging Face.

  8. As of October 2026

    Associate professor at Cornell

    He is an associate professor of computer science at Cornell, where his research makes data analysis more efficient and more user-friendly, in particular through large language models. A 2026 Bowers-LinkedIn grant supports his project "Making Agentic Data Analysis Token-Efficient", which explores database systems that lower the costs of LLM-based agents performing iterative data analysis.

Career

  1. Since 2016Cornell UniversityAssistant Professor of Computer Science

Education

  1. 2016EPFLComputer science PhD
  2. 2010University of StuttgartComputer science diploma
  3. 2010École Centrale de NantesEngineering diploma

From the biography.

  1. 11% of AI doctorate holders from 2010 to 2016 founded or led a company or lab by 10 years after graduationIncludes Cornell University. We estimate how often AI doctorate holders founded or led a company or lab by 10 years after graduation, how waiting times compare between founders and top jobs, and which universities trained the most.
  2. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology trained or employed 44 of the 187 AI major-prize winners, more than any other universityIncludes Cornell University. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology trained or employed 44 of the 187 AI major-prize winners, more than any other university. We compare doctorate and 5+ year employment links, career timing and current workplaces for 187 major-prize and 1,111 best-paper winners.
  3. 84% of people shaping AI with recorded undergraduate and doctoral schools changed institutions for their doctorateIncludes Cornell University. 84% of people shaping AI with recorded undergraduate and doctoral schools changed institutions for their doctorate. Across 2,116 people with both an undergraduate degree and a doctorate recorded, we trace which undergraduate schools feed which doctoral programs, how often students stay at the same school, and how paths differ by birth-country region.
  4. The median h-index is 48 at universities and 14 at frontier AI labsIncludes Cornell University. The median h-index is 48 at universities and 14 at frontier AI labs. We compare publishing careers, recent citations, dual appointments and job moves across 2,420 university researchers and 308 frontier-lab researchers.

Colleagues

People with dated positions at the same organization in the same years.

Sources and credits

Photo: We have no published photo of Immanuel Trummer yet. Send us a free-licensed photo.

  1. Introducing new members of the faculty for 2016-17 | Cornell Chronicle news.cornell.edu. Checked 21 October 2026.
  2. Immanuel Trummer | Department of Computer Science | Cornell Bowers cs.cornell.edu. Checked 21 October 2026.
  3. [1901.05152] SkinnerDB: Regret-Bounded Query Evaluation via Reinforcement Learning arxiv.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  4. [2112.10925] DB-BERT: a Database Tuning Tool that "Reads the Manual" arxiv.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  5. [2204.08941] CodexDB: Generating Code for Processing SQL Queries using GPT-3 Codex arxiv.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  6. Basu, Bhattacharjee, Trummer, Kizilcec, and Zhang receive NSF CAREER Awards | Cornell Bowers bowers.cornell.edu. Checked 21 October 2026.
  7. [2411.03500] λ-Tune: Harnessing Large Language Models for Automated Database System Tuning arxiv.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  8. Data Analysis with LLMs - Immanuel Trummer manning.com. Checked 21 October 2026.
  9. 2026 LinkedIn grant recipients to drive innovation in GenAI, LLMs | Cornell Bowers bowers.cornell.edu. Checked 21 October 2026.
  10. Immanuel Trummer itrummer.org. Checked 21 October 2026.