Andy Pavlo joins ClickHouse as VP of Database Research to establish ClickHouse Labs

Sources: ClickHouse announcement, HN discussion
Summary: ClickHouse announced that Andy Pavlo joins as VP of Database Research to establish ClickHouse Labs. The stated remit covers ClickHouse's PostgreSQL managed service alongside the analytical engine, and names two research questions: what a DBMS should look like to support agents, and how agents can automate DBMS development itself. Pavlo also names an immediate priority of validating and shipping a backlog of optimizations the engineering team explored but did not finish, which is a roadmap claim rather than a research one.
Why it matters: The backlog item is the near-term one for anyone running ClickHouse, because it describes optimizations that already exist in exploratory form rather than research that has yet to start.