IBM Awards Highest Technical Honor to Eight New Fellows as Company Celebrates 50th Anniversary of Program

New Fellows To Also Serve as Technology Ambassadors to Key Growth Countries

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Apr 03, 2013, 12:01 ET

ARMONK, N.Y., April 3, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- IBM (NYSE: IBM) today marked the 50th anniversary of its Fellows program by elevating eight employees to IBM Fellow for their innovations in such strategic areas as cloud and mobile computing, big data and business analytics. The new Fellows will be visible in reinforcing IBM's commitment to technical eminence worldwide as they each "adopt" an IBM growth market, serving as technology ambassadors in key regions.

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The new IBM Fellows join an elite group of inventors whose efforts benefit from IBM's more than $6 billion annual investment in research and development as well as other initiatives that serve clients. Since 1963, only 246 IBMers have earned the IBM Fellow distinction, and 85 of them remain active IBM employees. IBM Fellows have generated nearly 7,500 patents, received five Nobel prizes, thousands of government and professional citations and have a massive store of published research in scientific journals.

"As we have for half a century, IBM is today honoring its most outstanding technologists and their contributions to computing and society," said Ginni Rometty, IBM chairman, president and chief executive officer. "Like all IBM Fellows, members of the class of 2013 are recognized leaders in the global technical community. In 2013, this leadership will be focused on IBM growth markets, where each of this year's fellows will serve as an ambassador and resource to a different country."

As evidence of the transformational role that skills and technical expertise play in building a Smarter Planet, each of the new Fellows will serve as a technology ambassador to an important growth market for IBM. In this capacity, they will ensure IBM has an active and prominent technical presence in key countries, partnering with local universities and research institutions, mentoring employees and helping to sustain 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. This new initiative follows other investments IBM is making in growth markets, including the company's first research lab on the African continent, in Nairobi, Kenya; and the Corporate Service Corps, a program in which IBM employees donate their time and expertise to solve problems for educational institutions, small businesses, non-governmental organizations, and governmental agencies in growth markets.

The new IBM Fellow ambassador initiative ties directly back to the roots of the IBM Fellows program and its intended goal of driving growth through innovation. When it was inaugurated in 1963, then IBM CEO Thomas Watson, Jr. envisioned a program that would be carried out in a "unique" way to give Fellows resources to probe deeper into their areas of specialization, break new ground in technology and open up new opportunities for IBM.

"We want to recognize outstanding scientific, engineering, programming and systems people who have made a record over a long period of time for sustained achievement..." said Watson. "We want to ensure that their continued contribution to IBM's growth and stature will be assured by giving them greater freedom to be creative in their field of specialty or technical discipline."

IBM Fellows have influenced a broad array of technologies that have yielded commercial and societal benefits. For example, a multi-task operating system designed by IBM Fellow Thomas Simpson was vital to the success of early NASA space missions. Other breakthroughs were in solid state circuitry, injection laser, transistor and digital video technology as well as data mining, speech recognition and computer ease of use.

Specific innovations tied to IBM Fellows include:

IBM personal computer;
IBM Selectric typewriter;
Watson, the computer that was victorious on Jeopardy!;
The Scanning Tunneling Microscope, the first instrument to enable routine and widespread imaging of atoms;
The world's first hard disk drive;
Fortran, the most widely used computer language;

The eight IBMers who have earned the coveted distinction of IBM Fellow for 2013 have 154 years of combined IBM experience, have collectively been issued more than 225 patents and include five PhDs. They are:

Neil Bartlett
IBM Software Group - Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Neil Bartlett is a leader in risk analytics, particularly as applied to the financial and insurance industries. His innovative work in moving risk analysis from a batch oriented to a real-time model that worked on individual stock trading ticks had a revolutionary impact on the industry. Bartlett joined IBM in 2011 when IBM acquired Algorithmics, where he was chief technology officer. He is a key contributor to IBM's risk analytics business, applying technical innovation to a deep understanding of risk challenges by clients. He is expanding his scope to explore risk applications in IBM's overall analytics and big data strategies, with implications to a wide range of industries. Bartlett will serve as technology ambassador to Brazil.

Jon Casey
Systems and Technology Group - Hopewell Junction, N.Y.

Jon Casey has been a strategic and tactical innovator in semiconductor packaging and chip package interaction technologies, which have become so prominent in generating data in today's connected world. He has contributed to IBM's development of the industry's highest performing organic packaging solutions. These are now the basis for all future IBM systems processors, including the most recent p7+ dual-chip module. Over his career, he has done groundbreaking work in developing and implementing multilayer ceramic packaging technologies -– including the High Performance Glass Ceramic crystallization mechanism, binder removal catalysts, raw material development, and green sheet fabrication –- that have helped IBM systems lead the industry for more than 20 years. Casey will serve as technology ambassador to Ethiopia.

Monty Denneau
IBM Research - Yorktown Heights, N.Y.

Monty Denneau is a pioneer in high-performance computer design whose innovations have resulted in new approaches to managing big data, with advances in machine architecture, processors, networks, chips and system design. His work was instrumental in the development of IBM's earliest multicore systems, laying the foundation for today's large-scale parallel system architecture. Denneau has also pioneered work in system simulation, creating a series of leading-edge logic simulators. He is a technical leader and innovator on architecture development for IBM's most ambitious supercomputing projects. Denneau will serve as technology ambassador to Australia and New Zealand.

Jason McGee
IBM Software Group - Durham, N.C.

Jason McGee has been instrumental in establishing IBM as the leader in cloud technologies, Java based application server middleware and application aware virtualization. He led the development of critical technologies in WebSphere Application Server, including the Web container and the watershed version 5 system design. McGee's innovations in using application awareness have helped the application server move into the realm of virtualization and cloud computing. Those innovations are now being applied to expert integrated systems with his leadership of IBM PureApplication System. McGee will serve as technology ambassador to Egypt.

John Ponzo
IBM Research - Yorktown Heights, N.Y.

John Ponzo has shaped the future of IBM's business in mobile computing and delivered innovative products and services to Web browser and server based standards. He is a pioneer in technology that promotes end-user interaction through mobility, Web programming, Web application middleware, and software tools. Ponzo led the development of key software technologies including HTML/JavaScript runtime libraries, XML middleware, Web services runtime libraries, Eclipse Web integration, and Web 2.0 enterprise collaboration services. He also authored the "Enterprise Mobile" and the "Mobile First" theses that are the cornerstone of IBM's mobile strategy and execution. Ponzo will serve as technology ambassador to Kenya.

Heike Riel
IBM Research - Zurich, Switzerland

Heike Riel has made seminal contributions to the science and technology of nanoscale electronics and the promise it holds for applications in IT, medicine and consumer goods, among other areas. Her breakthrough achievements include advances in semiconducting nanowires for devices beyond conventional Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductors (CMOS), in molecular electronics for future nanoscale switches and memory applications, and in organic light-emitting diodes as a disruptive display technology. Her distinguished work, worldwide scientific impact and technical leadership have significantly advanced IBM's reputation as a leader in nanotechnology. Riel will serve as technology ambassador to South Africa.

Dinesh Verma
IBM Research - Yorktown Heights, N.Y.

Dinesh Verma is a leading researcher in mobile computing and computer communications networks, particularly in the area of IT and Wireless Convergence. His significant contributions include an optimizer for Wi-Fi networks, enabling edge applications for cellular networks, and leadership in network science. Dinesh has made seminal contributions in the scientific disciplines of network Quality of Service and policy based networking. His innovation and technical leadership has helped to establish IBM Research as a leader in industrial networking research. Verma will serve as technology ambassador to Nigeria.

Chandu Visweswariah
Systems and Technology Group - Hopewell Junction, N.Y.

Chandu Visweswariah is a pioneer in circuit analysis and optimization and the inventor of statistical timing, directly impacting technologies that generate and manage data. He has developed techniques used in every IBM chip design –- including formal circuit tuning and gate-level timing sign-off. These fundamental contributions have improved performance, ensured timing correctness, combated variability and enhanced design productivity across three generations of IBM's fastest microprocessors and most complex application specific integrated circuits (ASIC). Visweswariah is a widely recognized industry leader with 68 patents, published research in more than 100 journals and numerous awards including Electronic Design News' Innovator of the Year. Visweswariah will serve as technology ambassador to Morocco.

For more information about the IBM Fellows, visit: