Alice and Eve

Alice & Eve is a free one-day workshop celebrating women studying and working in computing. The seventh edition is hosted by Utrecht University and features keynote talks, a poster contest, an exhibition on women in computing, and ample networking opportunities. DuckLabs is a gold sponsor of the event, and Nantia Makrynioti will give a talk titled “DuckDB: From academic research to AWS.”

Venue

The workshop is held at the Neude11 Utrecht Public Library, Neude 11, Utrecht (Google Maps). Utrecht Centraal station is a few minutes’ walk away and is roughly 30 minutes from Amsterdam and 35–40 minutes from Schiphol Airport.

Attendance

🎟️ Attendance is free, but registration is required via the registration form. The deadline is October 11, 2026, so that the organizers can plan catering.

DuckDB: From Academic Research to AWS

DuckDB is an open source analytical database system with a vibrant community of contributors and over a million downloads per day. The project started by Hannes Mühleisen and Mark Raasveldt at CWI, the Dutch national research institute for mathematics and computer science in Amsterdam. It then continued its course through DuckLabs, a spin-off company founded by the two creators, which was recently acquired by AWS.

In this talk I’ll walk through DuckDB’s journey from an academic research project to a beloved tool that attracted the interest of major players in the area of data management. I’ll share lessons learned, anecdotes as well as my perspective on why it’s a great example of research built around real user needs.