IBM Announces Record Number of Fellows in 51st Anniversary of Innovation Honor

ARMONK, N.Y., April 2, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- IBM (NYSE: IBM) has elevated a record number of eleven scientists to the IBM Fellow honor, the company's most prestigious technical distinction. The 2014 Fellows will be responsible for carrying out the Technology Ambassador Initiative, which is to drive growth through innovation and is directly tied to the roots of the IBM program.  The Fellow honor acknowledges an IBM Researcher's important contributions and industry-leading innovations in developing some of the world's most important technologies.

In the true spirit of Thomas J. Watson's vision to give IBM fellows creative freedom and responsibility, the 2014 IBM Fellows have influenced a broad array of technologies in the following areas:  Brain-inspired cognitive computing, security platforms, computational science, cloud computing, business database and analytics, and high performance, enterprise storage technologies.  IBM Fellows have a history of pushing the boundaries of science and technology to deliver improved solutions for constantly changing, global business needs.

This year's Fellows account for a combined total of 283 issued patents and they join a select group of inventors whose efforts benefit from IBM's more than $6 billion annual commitment in research and development. In the program's 51 year history, only 257 IBMers have earned the title of 'IBM Fellow' and 87 of them still remain active employees. IBM Fellows have generated over 7,700 patents, five were named Nobel Laureates, have thousands of government and professional citations and have a substantial amount of published research in prominent scientific journals.

"IBM's unique ability to innovate and to make markets sets us apart," said Ginni Rometty, IBM chairman, president and chief executive officer. "The 2014 IBM Fellows join a distinguished group of leaders in science and technology, not only in our own company, but in our industry and academia. They are innovators at the forefront of data, analytics, cloud, mobile and the other historic technical innovations that are changing business and society today."

Technology Ambassador Initiative
The new Fellows will be highly visible in reinforcing IBM's commitment to technical distinction worldwide as each of them engages with an IBM economic growth market, serving as technology ambassadors in key regions.  Each Fellow ambassador will leverage their unique skills and expertise to ensure that IBM has a technical leadership role in their assigned country.  By partnering with local universities and research institutions, and by mentoring employees, Fellow ambassadors with help maintain a two-way visibility between IBM leadership and local markets.

IBM views the IBM Fellow ambassador role as a model for each of its growth markets. A key goal will be to provide these markets with a preview of future technologies being developed across IBM. This will enable IBM clients and employees to influence those technologies while the Fellows themselves gain a greater understanding of the unique challenges and opportunities in these markets.

The eleven scientists who have earned the distinguished honor of IBM Fellow this year are:

Sandy Bird
IBM Software Group – Fredericton, Canada
Sandy Bird is a leader in the enterprise IT security.  Sandy joined IBM thought the Q1 Labs acquisition, where he was the Chief Technical Officer, technical leader and co-founder. Sandy transformed the QRadar product, IBM's security intelligence platform, from a network traffic anomaly detection tool to a security intelligence platform.  Sandy continues to deepen IBM's security intelligence footprint by driving the product integration roadmap.  Sandy will serve as technology ambassador to Singapore.

Rhonda Childress
IBM Global Technology Services – Austin, TX
Rhonda Childress is a recognized expert in Systems Management and Security in the outsourcing arena. With 75 patents over 21 years with IBM, she has made numerous significant contributions to our outsourcing architectures and approaches, while developing extensive experience working with a range of large clients on critical engagements. Rhonda is a subject-matter expert for Architectural Governance and System Management, as well as Security and Compliance, and she has a leadership role in addressing security requirements in our clients' use of Big Data for analytics. Rhonda will serve as technology ambassador to Mexico.

Alessandro Curioni
IBM Research – Rueschlikon, Switzerland
Alessandro Curioni is a world renowned leader in the area of Computational Science where his innovative thinking and seminal contributions have helped solve some of the most complex scientific and technological problems within IBM and across many industries. Alessandro is the IBM scientist responsible for the very popular ab-initio molecular dynamics code CPMD and its scale out on massively parallel computers. This opened the way for simulations of unprecedented complexity and contributed fundamentally to the development of the high performance computing market, with great benefits to IBM. Alessandro is recipient of the prestigious PRACE and Gordon Bell Awards. He will serve as technology ambassador to Italy and Algeria.

Tamar Eilam
IBM Research – Yorktown Heights, NY
Tamar Eilam is a pioneer in the model-driven approach to software and systems configuration and deployment.  These technologies allow for expressing and incorporating knowledge from different domains to consistently and predictably manage systems and software. Tamar's research sits at the heart of new approaches for building and deploying cloud applications based on patterns of expertise. Tamar will serve as technology ambassador to Bulgaria.

Michael Haydock
IBM Global Business Services – Minneapolis, MN
Michael Haydock serves as the Chief Scientific Officer for IBM's Font Office Digitization efforts within the company's Business Analytics and Optimization Consulting Organization.  Michael has applied deep analytical solutions in retail direct mail, retail store, agricultural chemicals, financial services, insurance, automotive, health care, telecommunications, pharmaceuticals, food & beverage, and transportation industries.  Michael's work has been published in several journals that detail the application of mathematical methods in efficient customer treatments and improvements. Michael will serve as technology ambassador to Argentina.

Namik Hrle
IBM Software Group – Boeblingen, Germany
Namik Hrle has been responsible for a range of innovations that have enabled the evolution of System z to accommodate greater workloads as well as applications developed outside of System z ecosystems. In recent years, his efforts to enable business analytics on System z included numerous innovations that culminated in the development of IBM DB2 Analytics Accelerator – an effort that he led from its conception, through authorship of the design and architecture, to its implementation with clients. Namik is a key resource in IBM's ongoing development of big-data solutions enabled for System z and DB2. Namik will serve as technology ambassador to Norway.

Dharmendra Modha
IBM Research – San Jose, CA
Dharmendra S. Modha is a pioneer in Cognitive Computing by creating brain-inspired, ultra-low power, compact chips for creatively leveraging and advancing the diverse fields of supercomputing, neuroscience, and nanotechnology. To compliment this advanced brain-like chip, Dharmendra has led the creation of a new software programming tool consisting of a new language, a new library, and a new end-to-end laboratory for supporting all aspects of the cognitive computing programming cycle. Dharmendra will serve as technology ambassador to Peru.

Aleksandra Mojsilovic
IBM Research – Yorktown Heights, NY
Aleksandra (Saska) Mojsilovic is a pioneer in the innovative application of analytics and mathematical modeling to enterprise business decisions – including identifying client risk via predictive modeling, estimating outsourcing benefits via signal analysis (in support of IBM marketing campaigns), and most recently, forecasting healthcare costs via differentiating analytics. She has been instrumental to the development of the Smarter Workforce portfolio of assets in IBM Research, and led their deployment within the company. Moving forward, Saska will be leading the research agenda focused on next-generation predictive models and architectures for rapid and scalable delivery of industry solutions and analytics services.  Saska will serve as technology ambassador to Turkey.

Krishna Ratakonda
IBM Research – Yorktown Heights, NY
Krishna Ratakonda's pioneering research has resulted in fundamental changes to the way IBM manages its services projects, workforce, and delivery operations. He led the development of novel service delivery models, resource planning algorithms and performance analysis techniques that underpin the Application Assembly Optimization initiative in IBM Global Business Services. He also invented the analytical models that resulted in the first successful large-scale application of predictive analytics to performance trends in services projects. A prolific inventor with 49 patents issued and another 34 pending, Krishna is also responsible for the creation of several cognitive computing assets.  Krishna will serve as technology ambassador to Malaysia. 

Shivakumar Vaithyanathan
IBM Research – San Jose, CA
Shivakumar Vaithyanathan (Shiv) is recognized as a leader in the massive information analytics field.  His research has been significant to the success of IBM's Analytics, Big Data and Big Insights initiatives. Shiv founded a new area of research, sentiment analysis and also conceptualized and developed foundational technologies for text analytics, search and machine learning.  His innovations have led to a new product such as Social Media Analytics, the deployment of IBM's current intranet and extranet search engines, and new functionality in machines learning applications. Shiv will serve as technology ambassador to Czech Republic.

Andrew Walls
IBM Systems and Technology Group – San Jose, CA
Andy Walls is an expert in high-performance storage, with a record of achievements that include the recent introduction of flash storage to IBM's enterprise systems. His range of expertise – in server architecture, storage controller architecture, storage technology and storage software – has enabled IBM not only to incorporate flash memory but also to use it as a differentiator. Andy led the technical evaluation of Texas Memory Systems, which was acquired by IBM in 2012, as well as its subsequent integration with IBM. He is a prolific innovator with 71 patents, and serves as CTO and chief architect for IBM Flash Systems.  Andy will serve as technology ambassador to Chile.

History of IBM Fellow Distinction
IBM Fellow is the company's pre-eminent technical distinction, granted in recognition of outstanding and sustained technical achievements, and leadership in engineering, programming, services, science and technology. To enhance their potential for more innovations, IBM Fellows are given additional responsibilities in their areas of specialization. This year's class of Fellows has 188 years of combined IBM experience and includes 7 individuals who have PhDs.  

For more information on IBM Fellows please visit:
www.ibm.com

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SOURCE IBM