His recent work is to understand how software and hardware systems will change because of machine learning along with a continuing, petulant drive to work on math problems. Research from his group has been incorporated into scientific and humanitarian efforts, such as the fight against human trafficking, along with products from technology and companies including Apple, Google, YouTube, and more.

His family still brags that he received the MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, but his closest friends are confident that it was a mistake. His research contributions have spanned database theory, database systems, and machine learning, and his work has won best paper at a premier venue in each area, respectively, at PODS 2012, SIGMOD 2014, and ICML 2016. Due to great collaborators, he received the NeurIPS 2020 test-of-time award and the PODS 2022 test-of-time award. Due to great students, he received best paper at MIDL 2022, best paper runner up at ICLR22 and ICML22, and best student-paper runner up at UAI22.