ARMONK, N.Y. - 02 Apr 2014: 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 Researchers important contributions and industry-leading innovations in developing some of the worlds 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 IBMs 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.
"IBMs 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 IBMs 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 Of
