DuckDB: From Academic Research to AWS

Scheduled for November 05, 2026 at Atlassian, Amsterdam
Nantia Makrynioti

Nantia Makrynioti will give a talk at the Amsterdam Java User Group meetup at Atlassian. The meetup takes place from 6:00 PM to 9:00 PM CET on November 5, 2026, and also features talks by Pasha Finkelshteyn (BellSoft) and Michael Kemp (Atlassian). See the meetup page for the full program and registration.

Venue

Atlassian, Singel 236, 1016 AB Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

Abstract

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, we’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. We’ll share lessons learned, anecdotes, as well as personal perspectives on why it’s a great example of research built around real user needs.

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