Advances in information technologies, combined with open standards, and especially the Internet, are helping us build a global infrastructure with the potential to transform business, society and its institutions, and our personal lives, not unlike the impact that steam power had in ushering the Industrial Revolution in generations past. The resulting environment is characterized by collaborative innovation and access to information on an unprecedented scale. It holds the promise to help us apply engineering disciplines, tools and processes to the design and management of highly complex systems, including businesses and organizations, as well as to make applications much more user-friendly through the use of highly visual, interactive interfaces.
Slides:
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About the speaker:
![]() | Dr. Irving Wladawsky-Berger is responsible for identifying emerging technologies and marketplace developments critical to the future of the IT industry, and organizing appropriate activities in and outside IBM in order to capitalize on them. In conjunction with that, he leads a number of key innovation-oriented activities and formulates technology strategy and public policy positions in support of them. As part of this effort, he is also responsible for the IBM Academy of Technology and the company's university relations office. |
Dr. Wladawsky-Berger's role in IBM's response to emerging technologies began in December 1995 when he was charged with formulating IBM's strategy in the then emerging Internet opportunity, and developing and bringing to market leading-edge Internet technologies that could be integrated into IBM's mainstream business. He has led a number of IBM's company-wide initiatives including Linux, IBM's Next Generation Internet efforts and its work on Grid computing. Most recently, he led IBM's on demand business initiative.
He joined IBM in 1970 at the Thomas J. Watson Research Center where he started technology transfer programs to move the innovations of computer science from IBM's research labs into its product divisions. After joining IBM's product development organization in 1985, he continued his efforts to bring advanced technologies to the marketplace, leading IBM's initiatives in supercomputing and parallel computing including the transformation of IBM's large commercial systems to parallel architectures. He has managed a number of IBM's businesses, including the large systems software and the UNIX systems divisions.
Dr. Wladawsky-Berger is a member of the University of Chicago Board of Governors for Argonne National Laboratories and of the Technology Advisory Council for BP International. He was co-chair of the President's Information Technology Advisory Committee, as well as a founding member of the Computer Sciences and Telecommunications Board of the National Research Council. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. A native of Cuba, he was named the 2001 Hispanic Engineer of the Year.
Dr. Wladawsky-Berger received an M.S. and a Ph. D. in physics from the University of Chicago.
Dr. Wladawsky-Berger maintains a personal blog, which captures observations, news and resources on the changing nature of innovation and the future of information technology.
Contact information:
Irving Wladawsky-Berger
IBM