Petrank’s current research theme involves the design of practical data structures for modern multicore platforms. Previously, he was engaged with memory management for parallel architectures. His designs were incorporated into commercial runtime systems by IBM, Microsoft, and more, and his algorithms stand at the heart of modern versions for various classical memory management algorithms such as reference-counting, compaction, and real-time garbage collection. Petrank has received various awards including the IBM Research Division Award (twice), the Yanai Award for excellence in teaching, and the Rothschild Research fellowship, Petrank holds 10 patents, one of which was listed among the 10% most profitable IBM patents for 2002. His research has been funded by Intel, Microsoft, IBM, the Israel Science Foundation, and the United States – Israel Binational Science Foundation.