Niv Dayan
Assistant Professor in Computer Science
University of Toronto
Databases & Data Structures
Data structures are the bookkeepers of modern civilization. At its core, a data structure is a method of organizing data and putting it at our fingertips. My work aims to design the best possible data structures that the laws of physics allow for. With modern hardware constantly evolving and new application domains (e.g., crypto, ML, VR) continuously emerging, the quest for the world’s best data structures is never complete.
This work spans the full pipeline from theory into practice: from mathematical analysis, to efficient implementation, to rigorous experimentation. I do this work in collaboration with industry partners, especially startups, to keep it grounded and helpful to real-world users.
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For more about my work, read here.
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Join my Lab
Selected Publications
Do you enjoy cracking algorithmic riddles? Do you like using math to distill insight? Do you love implementing lighting-fast code?
If so, we would love to have you on board as a masters' or PhD student.
Reach out to me nivdayan@cs.toronto.edu for more.
To get a feel for research my lab does, start with the following papers:
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Sublime: Sublinear Error & Space for Unbounded Skewed Streams
Navid Eslami, Ioana O. Bercea, Rasmus Pagh, Niv Dayan.
SIGMOD 2026. [code] Honerable Mention for Best Paper​​
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Diva: Dynamic Range Filter for Var-Length Keys and Queries
Navid Eslami, Ioana O. Bercea, Niv Dayan.
VLDB 2025. [code] [video] Best Paper​
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InfiniFilter: Expanding Filters to Infinity and Beyond.
Niv Dayan, Ioana Bercea, Pedro Reviriego, Rasmus Pagh.
SIGMOD 2023. [video] Best Artifact
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Spooky: Granulating LSM-Tree Compactions Correctly.
Niv Dayan, Tamar Weiss, Shmuel Dashevsky, Michael Pan, Edward Bortnikov, Moshe Twitto.
VLDB 2022. [video] [slides]​ Used in TidesDB
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Dostoevsky: Better Space-Time Trade-Offs for LSM-Tree Based Key-Value Stores via Adaptive Removal of Superfluous Merging.
Niv Dayan, Stratos Idreos.
SIGMOD 2018. [video] [slides] "A Most Influential Paper"
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Monkey: Optimal Navigable Key-Value Store.
Niv Dayan, Manos Athanassoulis, Stratos Idreos.
SIGMOD 2017. [video] "Best of SIGMOD"
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See the full list in Google Scholar.
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This paper was cited as one of the best four papers at the conference.
C.V.
Assistant Professor, University of Toronto, 2023 -
Postdoctoral Researcher, Copenhagen University, 2022
Research Scientist, Pliops, 2019 - 2022
Postdoctoral Researcher, Harvard, 2015 - 2019
PhD in Computer Science, IT University of Copenhagen, 2012 - 2015
MSc in Software Development, IT University of Copenhagen, 2010 - 2012
BSc in Computing and Economics, University of Dundee, 2007 - 2010
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Teaching
