Stan Zdonik


Stan Zdonik Memorial Session


VLDB 2026 will include a memorial session for Stanley B. Zdonik, Professor Emeritus of Computer Science at Brown University, to honor his life, scholarship, mentorship, and many contributions to the database community.

About the Session

The memorial session will bring together Stan’s friends, colleagues, students, and members of the broader database community to remember him and celebrate his remarkable life and career. The session will be part of the VLDB 2026 program. We are grateful to the VLDB organizers for making space for this remembrance.

The program for the memorial session is being developed and will be posted here when available.

Stan’s Legacy

Stan Zdonik passed away peacefully on February 5, 2026, at the age of 78. He joined Brown University’s Department of Computer Science in 1983 and remained there for more than four decades, retiring in 2025. Stan was a pioneering computer scientist whose work helped shape modern data management, with foundational contributions to object-oriented databases, stream processing, and column-store systems. His research influenced both academic scholarship and industrial practice, including through systems and companies such as StreamBase and Vertica.

Stan was also a beloved teacher, mentor, colleague, friend, and community builder. Generations of students and researchers benefited from his intellectual generosity, curiosity, humor, and deep commitment to helping others grow. Beyond computing, Stan was a prominent figure in the bluegrass music community, a fountain pen collector, and a person whose wide-ranging interests brought people together across many communities. Above all, he is survived by his wife Gail; by his son David; and by his family, who were at the center of his life.

Attendance and Access

If you are planning to attend the memorial session, please fill out the attendance form here by Monday, August 17, 2026, so that we can get a sense of expected attendance and coordinate venue access and name tags as needed. We will do our best to accommodate later responses, but advance notice will be very helpful for planning purposes.

Note that you do not need to be registered for VLDB 2026 to attend the memorial session—if you are not registered for VLDB 2026, we will use the information in this form to coordinate access to the conference venue for the memorial session.

Please note that filling out this form does not constitute registration for VLDB 2026. It is intended only to help us plan attendance and coordinate access for guests attending Stan’s memorial session.

Contact Info

For questions about the memorial session or access to the venue, please email stan-memorial@cs.brown.edu

Additional details, including the session program, will be added as they become available.