Heiner Litz is the Director of the Storage Systems Research Center. He is an Assistant Professor in Computer Engineering at the University of California Santa Cruz which he joined in 2018 after graduating from Stanford and Google. His main research interests are in Computer Architecture, Operating Systems and Storage with a focus on data centers. He works on storage disaggregation (ReFlex), software programmable storage using LightNVM/OpenChannel SSDs and on machine learning techniques to improve storage systems.