ClickHouse launches Labs, names Andy Pavlo Research VP

ClickHouse has launched ClickHouse Labs and appointed Andy Pavlo as Vice President of Database Research. The new unit will focus on database research for ClickHouse and PostgreSQL.

Pavlo joins from Carnegie Mellon University, where he is Associate Professor with Indefinite Tenure in the Computer Science Department and has led the Carnegie Mellon Database Research Group since 2013.

His academic work has focused on autonomous databases, transaction processing and large-scale data analytics, all areas under growing strain as artificial intelligence drives heavier, more complex workloads.

ClickHouse Labs will conduct foundational research in database and data architectures, query processing, systems performance and infrastructure. That work is intended to feed into both ClickHouse and PostgreSQL, the widely used open-source database.

Research focus

ClickHouse is positioning the unit as a research effort that combines academic-style investigation with practical testing in production-style environments. Researchers will work with ClickHouse engineers and test ideas against real-world workloads before publishing their findings for wider scrutiny and use.

The approach reflects Pavlo's record in database research, which has often emphasised proving ideas in working systems rather than leaving them at the theoretical stage.

Alexey Milovidov, Chief Technology Officer at ClickHouse, outlined the company's goal for the group.

"At ClickHouse, we are interested in finding new and innovative ways of processing data, exploring efficient data structures and algorithms, and pushing computer hardware to its limits," said Alexey Milovidov, Chief Technology Officer, ClickHouse.

"I'm thrilled that Andy Pavlo is joining ClickHouse as VP of Database Research and will lead our new research group, ClickHouse Labs," he added.

Academic profile

Pavlo is a prominent figure in database research and has received several academic honours, including the IEEE TCDE Ramez Elmasri Database Education Award, the VLDB Early Career Award, the NSF CAREER Award, a Sloan Research Fellowship and the ACM SIGMOD Jim Gray Best Dissertation Award in Databases.

Before joining ClickHouse, he co-founded OtterTune and served as Chief Executive Officer. The company applied machine learning to database optimisation, linking his academic work with commercial software development.

In his new role, Pavlo will set the research agenda for ClickHouse Labs and build the team around it.

He described the position as an opportunity to tackle difficult technical questions in operating systems under real-world usage demands.

"The most exciting database research does more than describe a new idea in a paper. It demonstrates what is possible by building and testing real systems," said Andy Pavlo, Vice President of Database Research, ClickHouse.

"ClickHouse has an exceptional engineering culture, a strong open-source community, and workloads that push database technology to its limits. ClickHouse Labs gives us an opportunity to take on difficult problems, evaluate them in real-world scenarios, and share what we discover with the broader community and ecosystem," he said.

Open model

ClickHouse is also presenting the lab as part of a broader open-source strategy. Because its database software is open source, research outputs can be examined, tested and extended by outside developers and organisations.

That stance may matter in database infrastructure, where performance gains often depend on deep engineering work that can be difficult to evaluate from papers or marketing claims alone. Public release of methods and results may also help ClickHouse attract engineers who want evidence of technical advances rather than broad product promises.

Yury Izrailevsky, President of Product and Technology at ClickHouse, linked the effort to a tradition of in-house research aimed at solving difficult systems problems while producing work with wider industry relevance.

"Because ClickHouse is open source, ideas developed here can be tested, challenged, and extended by teams around the world," said Yury Izrailevsky, President of Product and Technology, ClickHouse.

"ClickHouse Labs, under Andy's leadership, will spearhead our investment in foundational research, helping shape both the future of ClickHouse and the broader database industry," he added.

Market pressure

The launch comes as database suppliers face fresh demands from artificial intelligence applications, observability tools and real-time analytics services, all of which can increase query volumes and raise expectations for response times. That has renewed attention on core database design, from storage layouts and query engines to transaction handling and hardware efficiency.

ClickHouse has built its position around column-oriented analytics and real-time data processing, and counts companies including Sony, Tesla, Anthropic, Memorial Sloan Kettering, Lyft and Instacart among its users.

The addition of a dedicated research group suggests the company wants to deepen its role not only as a database vendor but also as a contributor to the technical direction of data systems, particularly where open-source software and academic research increasingly overlap.

Pavlo said the goal is to work on hard problems, test ideas in practice and share the results with the wider community and ecosystem.