Oscar Peter Buneman FRS, FRSE is a British

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 computer scientist who works in the areas of database systems and database theory

Database theory

Database theory encapsulates a broad range of topics related to the study and research of the theoretical realm of databases and database management systems....

.

Buneman received his PhD in mathematics from the University of Warwick

University of Warwick

The University of Warwick is a public research university located in Coventry, United Kingdom...

, in 1970. After that he worked briefly at the University of Edinburgh, followed by a professorship of computer science at the University of Pennsylvania

University of Pennsylvania

The University of Pennsylvania is a private, Ivy League university located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. Penn is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States,Penn is the fourth-oldest using the founding dates claimed by each institution...

, which he held for several decades. In 2002, he moved to the University of Edinburgh

University of Edinburgh

The University of Edinburgh, founded in 1583, is a public research university located in Edinburgh, the capital of Scotland, and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The university is deeply embedded in the fabric of the city, with many of the buildings in the historic Old Town belonging to the university...

, where he built up the database research group.
He is one of the founders and the Associate Director of Research of the UK Digital Curation Centre

Digital Curation Centre

- Purpose :The Digital Curation Centre was established to help solve the extensive challenges of digital preservation and digital curation and to lead research, development, advice, and support services for higher education institutions in the United Kingdom...

, which is located in Edinburgh

Edinburgh

Edinburgh is the capital city of Scotland, the second largest city in Scotland, and the eighth most populous in the United Kingdom. The City of Edinburgh Council governs one of Scotland's 32 local government council areas. The council area includes urban Edinburgh and a rural area...

.

He is known for his research in database systems and database theory, in particular for establishing connections between database

Database

A database is an organized collection of data for one or more purposes, usually in digital form. The data are typically organized to model relevant aspects of reality , in a way that supports processes requiring this information...

s and programming language theory

Programming language theory

Programming language theory is a branch of computer science that deals with the design, implementation, analysis, characterization, and classification of programming languages and their individual features. It falls within the discipline of computer science, both depending on and affecting...

 and introduced monad

Monad (category theory)

In category theory, a branch of mathematics, a monad, Kleisli triple, or triple is an functor, together with two natural transformations...

-based query languages for nested relations and complex object databases
He also pioneered research on managing semi-structured data

Semi-structured model

The semi-structured model is a database model. In this model, there is no separation between the data and the schema, and the amount of structure used depends on the purpose.The advantages of this model are the following:...

, and, recently, research on data provenance

Provenance

Provenance, from the French provenir, "to come from", refers to the chronology of the ownership or location of an historical object. The term was originally mostly used for works of art, but is now used in similar senses in a wide range of fields, including science and computing...

, annotations, and digital curation.

In computational biology

Computational biology

Computational biology involves the development and application of data-analytical and theoretical methods, mathematical modeling and computational simulation techniques to the study of biological, behavioral, and social systems...

, he is known for his work on reconstructing phylogenetic tree

Phylogenetic tree

A phylogenetic tree or evolutionary tree is a branching diagram or "tree" showing the inferred evolutionary relationships among various biological species or other entities based upon similarities and differences in their physical and/or genetic characteristics...

s based on Buneman graph

Median graph

In mathematics, and more specifically graph theory, a median graph is an undirected graph in which any three vertices a, b, and c have a unique median: a vertex m that belongs to shortest paths between any two of a, b, and c.The concept of median graphs has long been studied, for instance by or ...

s, which are named in his honor.

He is a fellow of the Royal Society, fellow of the ACM

Association for Computing Machinery

The Association for Computing Machinery is a learned society for computing. It was founded in 1947 as the world's first scientific and educational computing society. Its membership is more than 92,000 as of 2009...

, a fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh

Royal Society of Edinburgh

The Royal Society of Edinburgh is Scotland's national academy of science and letters. It is a registered charity, operating on a wholly independent and non-party-political basis and providing public benefit throughout Scotland...

, and has won a Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit Award

Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit Award

The Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit Award is an award to outstanding scientists holding posts at UK universities. It is administered by the Royal Society and jointly funded by the Wolfson Foundation and the UK Office of Science and Technology, this scheme aims to give universities additional...

.
He has chaired both flagship research conferences in data management, SIGMOD

SIGMOD

SIGMOD is the Association for Computing Machinery's Special Interest Group on Management of Data, which specializes in large-scale data management problems and databases....

 (in 1993) and VLDB

VLDB

VLDB is an annual conference held by the non-profit Very Large Data Base Endowment Inc.. The mission of VLDB is to promote and exchange scholarly work in databases and related fields throughout the world...

 (in 2008), as well as the main database theory conference, PODS

PODS

PODS may refer to:*PODS *Pipeline Open Data Standard*Plain old data structure*Symposium on Principles of Database Systems, an ACM symposium started in 1982*Palm OS Developer SuitePods may refer to:...

 (in 2001).

Buneman is the son of physicist Oscar Buneman

Oscar Buneman

Oscar Buneman made advances in science, engineering, and mathematics. Buneman was a pioneer of computational plasma physics and plasma simulation....

.