IBM Honors Six Employees with Highest Technical Award

ARMONK, N.Y., May 25 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- IBM (NYSE: IBM) announced today that it has named six employees as IBM Fellows – its most prestigious technical honor – acknowledging their important industry-leading innovations and collaboration with clients and business partners worldwide. From seminal work on business analytics to breakthroughs in microprocessors that enable gamers as well as IBM's BlueGene supercomputer, to mainframe product development, this group of employees has made important contributions to IBM and the industry.

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"Our 2010 IBM Fellows were handpicked out of thousands for IBM's highest technical honor. They join an elite and distinguished group of IBM's finest innovators who have invented some of the industry's most useful and widely applied technologies – much of the computer technology we use today," said Samuel J. Palmisano, IBM chairman of the board, president and chief executive officer. "I am honored to recognize the 2010 IBM Fellows for their tremendous accomplishments in carrying forward IBM's long legacy of innovation."

The six employees who have earned the coveted distinction of IBM Fellow this year are:

James C. Colson

Software Group – Austin, Texas

Jim Colson has been appointed to IBM Fellow for his significant contributions across IBM and the computing industry. Jim pioneered an industry-wide movement toward "fit for purpose middleware" that allows customers to tailor their middleware and applications to specific needs whether they are running on servers, desktops, mobile phones and other embedded devices. As part of this industry-wide movement, Jim has orchestrated the development of core technologies and standards that provide customers with a choice of independent, open platforms and Web technologies to deliver unique business value. Jim's relentless pursuit for open frameworks enables dynamic software giving customers and the industry more flexible computing options.

Jeffrey A. Frey

Systems and Technology Group – Poughkeepsie, New York

Jeff Frey has a long history of leadership and innovation within IBM. By advancing the IBM System z operating system and middleware to help clients leverage their mainframe investments, Jeff has been instrumental in the technical revitalization of the IBM mainframe into one of the world's most sophisticated servers. Jeff was one of the founding architects of System z Parallel Sysplex, which operates as ultra-reliable clustering software to execute many of the world's daily business and financial transactions nearly flawlessly. His innovations in the areas of autonomic systems management, dynamic resource provisioning, and goal-oriented resource management are highly sought after by clients as they embark on popular initiatives like cloud computing.  Currently, Jeff is responsible for the ongoing architecture and design of IBM's next-generation mainframe.

Alfred Grill

Research – Yorktown, New York

Dr. Alfred Grill is recognized as an IBM Fellow for his influential contributions in microelectronics advances and manufacturing.  Most notably, Dr. Grill's work in semiconductor interconnect technology now allows IBM to embed unique insulating materials into wiring of microprocessors for faster information extraction and improved chip performance.  Dr. Grill has been the chief architect and lead materials scientist for the innovation of the wiring insulators and their implementation in microprocessor products.  His latest microelectronic insulators have been implemented in the high performance Power 7 chip recently released by IBM.  His more than 100 outstanding inventions and development of wiring insulating materials have spearheaded them to become the standard in the semiconductor industry. In his earlier work at IBM Research, Dr. Grill pioneered diamond-like carbon protective coatings for magnetic recording media and his patented process gained widespread use by the magnetic storage industry.

Subramanian Iyer

Systems and Technology Group – Hopewell Junction, New York

Dr. Subramanian (Subu) Iyer is recognized for his sustained innovations in semiconductor technology. He led the development and implementation of embedded DRAM technology - a dense memory that can be fabricated on high performance Logic chips - used today in IBM systems ranging from high-end servers to BlueGene supercomputers to game chips. Throughout his career, Dr. Iyer has looked for new ways to solve complex problems.  At IBM, Dr. Iyer and his colleagues demonstrated the first SiGe heterojunction bipolar transistor used extensively in wireless communication.  The team also developed on-chip programmable electrical Fuses, a technology that allows semiconductor chips to "self-repair" and for the circuits on a chip to be reconfigured even after the chip has left fabrication facilities. He also led the development of IBM's 45 nm CMOS technologies. Dr. Iyer's highly sought after expertise helps solve the broad and detailed technical challenges in the semiconductor and related areas.

Anant D. Jhingran

Software Group – San Jose, California

Anant Jhingran is being recognized as an IBM Fellow for his ongoing contributions to IBM's Information Management business.  His work helped IBM lead the industry in data warehouse, business analytics, search and e-commerce software.  Anant has introduced Web 2.0 technologies to help clients unlock business information natively.  He is best known for defining and bringing out the first version of IBM's Data Warehouse Edition, which included his innovations in core data warehouse capabilities, and combined it with mining, OLAP, and ETL technologies, bringing various parts together in a unified fashion. This approach has become the core software behind the current IBM Smart Analytics System, which arms clients with key business insights from raw data.  Anant is also one of the key technical leaders within IBM responsible for defining the middleware platform for cloud application delivery.

Charles Johnson

Research – Rochester, Minnesota

Charlie Johnson is being recognized as an IBM Fellow for his technical leadership and innovations in microprocessor design and architecture. One of Charlie's more significant achievements was serving as the technical leader behind a four-year project that resulted in the first processor to break the one gigahertz barrier, a milestone that attracted more client interest for IBM systems and formed the foundation for the company's highly valued Power systems portfolio. Charlie's innovative leadership has expanded the bounds for microprocessor, semiconductor and packaging applications. Presently, Charlie is applying his technical leadership through the architecture of the next-generation wire speed processors and modular 3D design techniques for building IBM's next generation systems.

About IBM Fellows

The title of IBM Fellow is the company's most preeminent technical distinction and is granted in recognition of outstanding and sustained technical achievements and leadership in engineering, programming, services, science and technology. To further enhance their potential for innovative achievements, IBM Fellows are given additional responsibilities in their areas of specialization.  Only 217 individuals have earned this designation in the company's history and, including the newly named Fellows, 73 are active employees.  

Examples of technology originated by IBM Fellows include:

• Reduced Instruction Set Computing (RISC) -- the architectural basis for most high performance work stations and servers
• Thin-film heads -- for high-density disk storage devices
• DRAM -- the fundamental solid-state memory technology used in the industry
• Relational databases -- one of the foundational technologies of knowledge management
• The Trackpoint -- the little red pointing device for laptop computers
• Virtual memory -- allows many users to share a single computer
• The Scanning Tunneling Microscope -- the first instrument able to image atoms
• Fortran -- one of the world's most widely used computer languages
• RAMAC -- the world's first disk drive
• The AT bus -- the basic architecture for IBM personal computers

More information on IBM Fellows can be found at www.research.ibm.com/resources/awards_fellows.shtml.

SOURCE IBM