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Chris Nay in
Lisa Seacat DeLuca, Software Engineer, Advanced Cloud Solutions; IBM Master Inventor
By Chris Nay
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Notice a pattern in these codes? Don’t feel bad if you don’t. They’re from 1994’s “Pac Man 2: The New Adventures.” The kids playing the game in the mid-1990s knew that they unlocked hidden levels, but probably didn’t notice a pattern either. But 12 year old Lisa DeLuca did. To the point she could correctly predict, and enter the next code without playing the game.
“Figuring out these codes made me think: I want to be around this kind of thing [when I grow up],” Lisa said.
What that “thing” turned into almost 20 years later is programming and patenting at IBM. Today, Lisa is a two-time Master Inventor with more than 300 patents filed, working on next-gen cloud applications for IBM’s Advanced Cloud Solutions. Continue Reading »
By Joanna Brewer, Writer/Communications, IBM
Keith Mercier, Associate Partner, IBM Global Business Services, Retail Center of Competency
Growing up in a military family, Keith Mercier‘s fashion choices were limited to what was available at the military base exchange. At age 12, his love of fashion hit him like a bolt of lightning in the form of a bright red, v-neck, cashmere Lacoste sweater.
Dubbing himself the “fashionisto,” Mercier says, “In the fashion business you have to think like a fashionista – a truly devoted follower of fashion – if you are going to surprise and delight them and keep them coming back.” Continue Reading »
Posted by
Richard Silberman in
Jeffrey Nichols, IBM Research Staff Member
By Richard Silberman, Writer/Researcher, IBM Communications
Jeffrey Nichols is putting a new twist on Twitter that could change the way businesses use social media to identify, engage and market to customers.
“What we actually see from Twitter is just the tip of the information iceberg,” said Nichols, who manages the social media and crowd research team at IBM Research in Almaden, Calif. “Below every tweet there’s a lot more information that people have that they’re not sharing.”
Determined to extract hidden information from social media, Nichols is developing strategies to ask questions directly of targeted strangers over Twitter. The crux of Nichols work is to move from the ubiquitous reactive approach to social media, where marketers follow and respond to what people are saying, to a proactive model where they can reach out to individuals to collect specific information. Continue Reading »
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Richard Silberman in
Uyi Stewart, Chief Scientist, IBM Research-Africa
By Richard Silberman, Writer/Researcher, IBM Communications
When Osamuyimen (Uyi) Stewart left his native Nigeria 23 years ago to attend graduate school at Cambridge University, computer science was still just a concept in Africa. Although Stewart had learned some programming languages in college, he had never actually used a computer to develop an application.
This year, Stewart will return to a very different Africa, moving his family to Nairobi, Kenya to serve as chief scientist at IBM Research-Africa, IBM’s first research lab on the continent. In his new role, which he officially started in August working from the T.J. Watson Research Center in New York, Stewart spearheads innovation for a vast emerging market that is rapidly growing and embracing new technologies.
For Stewart, who previously worked at the IBM Services Innovation Lab and was responsible for technical strategy and program management across eight global labs, his return to Africa is filled with meaning and emotion. Whereas a quarter century ago using an actual computer was just a dream, today Stewart leads development of advanced systems to help solve some of Africa’s most pressing challenges. Continue Reading »
Posted by
Steve Hamm in
In the aftermath of the global financial crisis and the recovery from the worst American recession since the Great Depression, government leaders have learned that they need to do more, like make improvements to infrastructure, basic services and governmental programs, but with shrinking resources.
Municipal governments have the greatest direct impact on the lives of their constituents and no matter how tight the budget, citizens expect, and deserve, action. So mayors have to think innovatively to accomplish goals, deliver services more efficiently and effectively and stimulate economic development.
Philadelphia Mayor Michael A. Nutter
Philadelphia Mayor Michael A. Nutter has not pared back his ambitious agenda despite reduced funding. One major focus: access to a quality education, which he refers to as “the new civil rights fight.” Mayor Nutter supports a number of creative initiatives designed to provide Philadelphians with educational opportunities and job skills to prepare them for the 21st century workforce.
Philadelphia is one of more than 60 cities worldwide that have participated in IBM’s Smarter Cities Challenge program. IBM sends teams of six executives to participating cities to help them develop solutions to difficult problems. Nutter and other mayors have provided insights in to what it takes to transform cities. The lessons they learned are captured in a white paper, How to Reinvent a City.
Posted by
Steve Hamm in
Steve Hamm, IBM Writer
By Steve Hamm
Patience is one of the most important virtues a researcher can possess, but some scientific pursuits require an almost preternatural calm in the face of monumental challenges. Case in point: quantum computing.
Scientists have been trying to grasp this holy grail of computing ever since Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman in 1981 challenged the scientific community to build computers based on quantum mechanics. Matthias Steffen, the manager of an experimental quantum computing project at IBM Research, believes the key to persevering in a project like this is keeping an open mind. ” You can’t stubbornly keep pursuing a path because you’re invested in it personally,” he says. “Take a breather, and be open to making changes in your approach–potentially drastically”
Posted by
Richard Silberman in
Dr. Lubomyr Romankiw, IBM Fellow in Electrochemical Technology, Micromagnetics and Microfabrication
By Richard Silberman, Writer/Researcher, IBM Communications
Without Lubomyr Romankiw, building a smarter planet would be much more difficult, if not impossible. Personal computers, smart phones, digital cameras and DVRs may have taken much longer to become a reality. ATMs, the Internet, Blue Gene and cloud computing might still be far off fantasies.
The world as we know and enjoy it today – with its ubiquitous computers and data-storing devices – is almost unimaginable without the magnetic thin-film disk storage technology and the read-and-write magnetic head that Dr. Romankiw and Dr. David A. Thompson invented at IBM 40 years ago.
The thin-film magnetic recording head is the tiny component that reads and writes data in virtually every disk-based storage device made since 1979. Before Dr. Romankiw’s inventions of thin-film heads and the processing technology to fabricate them, data storage for even the most cutting-edge computers was cumbersome, slow and expensive.
Kathleen Ryan, Writer, IBM Communications
By Kathleen Ryan
Universal Product Codes (UPCs) are part of our everyday lives. Whether we’re checking out groceries at the supermarket, getting medicine from the pharmacy, or shipping a package, the bar code and scanner are standard technologies for capturing and registering pricing and other retail information.
But it wasn’t always this way. Before bar codes, the process of pricing was laborious, time consuming and a drain on resources. Prices were placed on individual products by hand, usually with the thump of a price “stamper,” and then read by a cashier who then tapped the price into the cash register, by hand. Weekly price changes started the process all over again.
That all changed in June of 1974 when a clerk scanned a pack of Wrigley’s gum at a supermarket in Troy, Ohio. The technology rapidly took hold and today it shows up on virtually every retail product. Today the non-profit governing body for bar codes says that uniform standards for UPC codes are used by more than one million companies around the world.
One of the pioneers of bar code technology, retired IBM employee N. Joseph Woodland, died this week. He was 91.
Continue Reading »
Posted by
Richard Silberman in
Robert Waymouth, Ph.D., Professor of Chemistry, Stanford University
By Richard Silberman, Writer/Researcher, IBM Communications
Robert Waymouth, Ph.D., maintains the sense of awe that he’s had since his earliest days as a chemist, savoring those “marvelous moments where it just takes your breath away, you can’t believe something worked like that.”
Waymouth, a professor of chemistry at Stanford University, had one such moment in 2004 when he and his grad students discovered a new way to make molecules using organic catalysts. That breakthrough, followed by years of research with colleague Jim Hedrick at IBM Research in Almaden, Calif., has yielded a process to make environmentally sustainable plastics that could lead to smarter recycling methods, a drastic reduction in plastics pollution and even a safer, more efficient way to administer drugs.
Continue Reading »
Innovation and collaboration will be crucial to boosting jobs and economic competitiveness in the the coming years. A strong example of these levers at work is the just-announced IBM Center for Advanced Analytics in Columbus, Ohio. The new center, which is expected to employ 500 people within three years, will focus on research, product development, client services and skills training in the areas of Big Data, analytics, and cognitive computing. IBM is collaborating with Ohio State University to develop new business and technology curricula to help students and mid-career professionals prepare for the high-value jobs of the future. Ohio officials hope what the center will help foster entrepreneurship and new business initiatives.
Here’s U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown for Ohio talking about his belief that innovation will accelerate economic growth in his state:
