Ph.D. Student · Arizona State University

Viraj Thakkar

I teach databases new tricks and poke at storage engines until they spill their secrets.

Hi, 👋 I’m a perpetually-curious CS Ph.D. student who gets way too excited about LSM-based key-value stores, disaggregated infrastructure, and storage systems for AI/ML. My favorite thing is taking a big, intimidatin system apart just to see what makes it tick (sometimes literally), and then, on a good day, putting it back together a little bit better than I found it.

Recent news

all news →

  • Our paper “TellyTune: Exploring the Limits of LLM-Driven Tuning for LSM-Based Key-Value Stores” was accepted to SYSTOR 2026! 📄

  • Honored to be ASU’s nominee for the Google PhD Fellowship Award! 🎉

  • Presented “SHIELD: Encrypting Persistent Data of LSM-KVS from Monolithic to Disaggregated Storage” at ACM SIGMOD 2025! 🔐

  • Joined HPE Labs’ Systems Architecture Lab as a System Software Research Associate Intern! 🧪

  • Won the Best Paper Award at HotStorage ‘24 for our paper “Can Modern LLMs Tune and Configure LSM-based Key-Value Stores?”! 🏆

  • Started my Ph.D. journey under the guidance of Dr. Zhichao Cao at Arizona State University!

Selected publications

all publications →

TellyTune: Exploring the Limits of LLM-Driven Tuning for LSM-Based Key-Value Stores

Viraj Thakkar, Qi Lin, Kenanya Prasetyo, Raden Wisjnunandono, Jin Wang, Achmad Kistijantoro, Reza Rachmadi, Zhichao Cao

SYSTOR (19th ACM International Systems and Storage Conference) · 2026 · To appear

full paper

SHIELD: Encrypting Persistent Data of LSM-KVS from Monolithic to Disaggregated Storage

Viraj Thakkar, Dongha Kim, Yingchun Lai, Hoekun Kim, Zhichao Cao

SIGMOD (Proc. ACM Manag. Data) · 2025

full paperDOI

Can Modern LLMs Tune and Configure LSM-based Key-Value Stores?

Viraj Thakkar, Madhumitha Sukumar, Jiaxin Dai, Kaushiki Singh, Zhichao Cao

HotStorage '24 (16th ACM Workshop on Hot Topics in Storage and File Systems) · 2024

workshopBest PaperDOI