By Steve Hamm

Steve Hamm, IBM Writer

In an event that some observers say marked a shift in the history of computing, China has for the second time placed a machine atop the list of the world’s highest-performing supercomputers. The MilkyWay-2 system was designed and developed by China’s National University of Defense Technology.

For a group of legislators and science and technology leaders gathered in Washington, D.C. today, the news of China’s triumph, which came on Monday, served as a wake up call about the importance of investing in national competitiveness. “American national security and competitiveness depends on the US not falling behind in this critical area of science and technology,” said Congressman Randy Hultgren (IL-14).

Hultgren was one of a group of Congressmen who are crafting the American Supercomputing Leadership Act, a bill aimed at funding research in high performance computing at the national laboratories. Yet it was clear from remarks made by a scientists and government officials at the event, “Cognitive Computing: A New Way of Thinking,” that for the United States to retain its leadership in computing a collaborative effort involving not just government but academia and industry will be required. Eric Isaacs, director of the Argonne National Laboratory, cautioned that science and research “should not be funded in stovepipes.” He called for the creation of co-design centers, where people from multiple government agencies, universities and private companies can work together on the most challenging problems facing humanity.

To read more about the era of cognitive computing, download a free chapter of the coming book Smart Machines, by IBM Research Director John Kelly, at http://www.cup.columbia.edu/static/cognitive.

IBM is one of the leading developers of cognitive computing technologies—starting with the Watson machine that beat two past grand-champions at the TV quiz show Jeopardy. Today, the company is busy bringing cognitive technologies to numerous industries, starting with health care. In each area, the company is forging alliances with other organizations. David McQueeney, a vice president at IBM Research, highlighted a couple of them: Smarter Energy Research Institute, aimed at creating the advanced energy utility of the future using wind and weather simulation; and the Sun Shot Initiative, aimed at using analytics to manage integration of solar energy into power grids. “The investments by the federal government are key to advances in cognitive computing,” he said.

One of the most important examples of how different types of institutions and scientific disciplines will have to work together is in the area where neuroscience and computer science overlap. The Obama administration has announced a goal of using supercomputing technology to map the human brain to help figure out how it works; a similar exploration is already underway in the European Union. “The breakthroughs will come at the intersections of the fields,” predicted James Olds, director of the Krasnow Institute for Advanced Study at George Mason University. Olds urged government leaders and scientists to be bold and be willing to take risks. “If we want to succeed, we have to be willing to occasionally fail,” he said.

While investing in education wasn’t on the official agenda at the cognitive computing event, it was recurring theme. Selmer Bringsford, chairman of the Department of Cognitive Science at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, advised people in the room to urge their children to study computer science and cognition. “Machines won’t design themselves and build themselves and makes themselves smarter. People will do that,” he said.

Technorati Tags: Argonne National Laboratory, cognitive computing, George Mason University, IBM, RPI

Steve Hamm, IBM Writer

By Steve Hamm

In the coming era of cognitive systems, fundamental changes will be required at each level of technology–from nanotechnology to the software programming layer.  These shifts will require remarkable feats of science and engineering. Yet it’s possible that even greater challenges will come as we go about harnessing the new technical capabilities and using them to solve the world’s most challenging problems. So it will be essential for tech companies like IBM to form deep collaborative partnerships with organizations that possess domain expertise, including those in health care, financial services, media and government.

This was one of the messages delivered by John E. Kelly III when he spoke last evening at the Computer History Museum in Silicon Valley. Kelly was interviewed by John Hollar, the museum’s president, in the institution’s Revolutionaries speakers’ series. Just minutes earlier, the two had participated in a photo-op in the museum’s new IBM Watson exhibit. IBM has donated the stage set it built for the Jeopardy TV quiz show, where Watson in 2011 defeated two past grand-champions.

John Kelly, left, and John Hollar, at the IBM Watson exhibit; Feature Photo Service

(Kelly’s book about the new era, Smart Machines: IBM’s Watson and the Era of Cognitive Computing , will be published in the fall by Columbia University Press. To read a free chapter now, go to the Columbia University Press web site.)

Kelly believes that the world is on the cusp of a new era, when new kinds of computers will help people and organizations analyze huge volumes of data and penetrate complexity. Watson’s victory on Jeopardy represented a milestone on the path to the cognitive era.

On stage with Hollar, Kelly recounted the relationship that IBM forged with Mars Inc., maker of M&Ms and other popular chocolate candies. Executives from Mars had approached IBM in 2008 looking for help in solving disease problems that were threatening its supply of cocoa, the essential ingredient in chocolate. Together, in just two years, scientists from IBM and Mars used high-performance computing to decode the cocoa genome. The knowledge gained from the project is helping Mars and cocoa farmers develop methods for improving the health and yields of cocoa plants.

After Watson won on Jeopardy, everybody wondered what would be the next step for the technology. Kelly told a museum audience of more than 400 that he knew, “We needed strong partners to take Watson to the next level, like our partnership with Mars.” And, indeed, that’s the way it has worked out. IBM has partnerships with Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and Cleveland Clinic in cancer treatment; with WellPoint in health care management; and with a handful of other organizations and companies.

Each human domain has it’s own “language,” not just the words that people within it use to express ideas, but processes for getting things done and even ways of thinking. In order to have impact in these areas, Watson and other cognitive computer programs and cloud services will have to learn how to decode the domain and interact with humans operating there in the ways that they’re most comfortable. The cognitive systems must be trained by experts and fed all of the relevant knowledge about the domain. Then the systems learn more as they interact with people and data.

Health care is the best example of how this is happening. IBM scientists and engineers are working with oncologists at Memorial Sloan Kettering to capture their expertise in Watson. Faculty and students at Cleveland Clinic Medical School are teaching Watson how they approach patient’s problems and correcting the system when it makes mistakes.

But there will be other important areas for collaboration, as well. For instance, IBM is working with The Nielsen Co. to use Watson technology to develop new and more effective ways of measuring the impact of marketing in the digital era.

Kelly told the museum crowd that we’re just at the start of a long journey. “We’re talking about a journey that will last the next 40 to 50 years,” he said. Which means there will be many partnerships coming for IBM, as well.

Technorati Tags: Computer History Museum, IBM

Michael Karasick, Vice President and Director, IBM Research-Almaden

The world is on the cusp of a new era of computing, which we call the era of cognitive systems. New  computer technologies are coming that will help people and organizations penetrate complexity and make better decisions. At IBM, we believe that this coming revolution in artificial intelligence has the potential to transform the way business is done and dramatically accelerate innovation.  Cognitive systems will enable humans and machines to interact together and achieve things that neither could do on their own.

The victory of IBM’s Watson on the TV game show Jeopardy! was one of the milestones in this new phase of computing. Scientists at IBM and elsewhere are pushing the boundaries of science and technology fields ranging from neural networks to machine learning to create machines that sense, learn, reason and interact with people in new ways.

(IBM Research Director John Kelly is speaking about the future of computing today at 7 p.m. Pacific Time at the Computer History Museum in Silicon Valley. His book about the new era, Smart Machines: IBM’s Watson and the Era of Cognitive Computing , will be published in the fall by Columbia University Press. To read a free chapter now, go to the Columbia University Press web site.

We expect the coming era to emerge over the next couple of decades as one major breakthrough in science and technology follows another. Over time, these advances will fundamentally alter the relationships between people and machines. They will transform computers into truly useful assistants that magnify and accelerate our abilities and enable us to do things we never could have done before. As a result, you can expect better outcomes for individuals, the organizations and society.

–In the doctor’s office, cognitive systems will assist the physician by harnessing vast amounts of data to help them diagnose illnesses and choose among treatment options.

–In a big city, cognitive systems will help city leaders react to a crisis or prioritize infrastructure investments by using data to gain insights into complex systems.

–In the home, intelligent assistant apps on smart phones will help elderly citizens by serving as health monitors and advisers in managing chronic diseases and promoting wellness.

–In companies, cognitive systems will help engineers and designers create new products and services that respond better to the demands of consumers or even anticipate their needs.

One of the greatest impacts of cognitive systems will come in the realm of discovery. In the pharmaceutical industry, the process of new drug development takes anywhere from 10 to 15 years and costs $500 million to $1 billion per drug. Further, more than 90% of the potential drugs that are explored never make it to market. Working with major pharmaceutical companies, a team at IBM Research-Almaden is developing a system that makes it possible for companies to identify promising molecules quickly, find new uses for compounds already proven safe and spot diseases that could be treated more effectively.

The solution draws on text analytics, visual data mining and machine learning. With it, scientists will be able to search though millions of published papers, medical literature, patents and databases describing chemical properties to find the proverbial needle in the haystack that can make a huge difference for pharma companies, physicians and patients alike.

This could save years and hundreds of millions of dollars for each drug, but also could transform the discovery process in any industry where R&D speaks the language of materials science, chemistry and intellectual property law.

We believe that cognitive systems will help us make sense of our amazingly complex world and provide a new collaborative dimension to human reasoning and decision making—whether it’s for business leaders reshaping industries or regular people trying to choose careers or investment strategies. These technologies will help create new products, services, companies and entire industries.

We look to our clients, university researchers, government policy makers, industry partners and tech entrepreneurs to take this journey into the era of cognitive systems with us. And, just as importantly, we hope to inspire university and high school students to pursue careers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. Together, we can produce another wave of progress in computing.

Technorati Tags: cognitive computing, IBM

Dr. Glenn Omura, Associate Professor, Michigan State University, Broad College of Business

By Dr. Glenn Omura

Earlier this year I spoke with Manoj Saxena, General Manager of Watson Solutions at IBM, about developing a scale-to-measure customer engagement. We agreed that as businesses look for ways to retain existing customers and attract new ones, the question of what resonates with consumers and makes them loyal customers is increasingly top of mind.

In my research and work as a marketing professor, I’ve seen how organizations have succeeded in marketing to various population segments, and also how they’ve fallen short of their customers’ expectations.

The traditional way of marketing is no longer sufficient, particularly when dealing with a younger, tech-savvy digital consumer – the Millennial. Research shows that Millennials are optimistic, confident and pragmatic, are seeking more personalized attention and engagement. Smart businesses need to make sure they’re meeting those needs. As companies increasingly apply technology to satisfy the daily consumer demand for greater individual productivity and immediacy, they may be giving up relationship-building for the sake of efficiency.  

Can companies have both? 

At MichiganStateUniversity, we are developing a measure of engagement that we will use to evaluate whether technology can deliver a desired level of engagement and secure the company-customer relationship. Our customer engagement scale measures three dimensions of customer engagement – the degree to which a company/brand energizes or excites a consumer; builds enthusiasm for the brand; and enmeshes, or captures, the attention of the consumer with the brand or company. 

With smartphones and tablets never out of arm’s reach, Millennials are leading the trend toward increased digital engagement. It is estimated that there will be more than 10 billion mobile devices by 2016, outpacing the human population. Numbers like these indicate that the digital consumer is here to stay and businesses would be well advised to adapt quickly. Given the demand for immediacy, and the sheer volume of online information, it is crucial to be able to measure customer engagement, pinpoint how and where engagement can be improved, and deliver a better engaged experience. 

Whereas “traditional” consumers might see an advertisement on TV or in a magazine and visit a store to seek out information and make an in-person purchase decision, Millennials operate a little differently. They may see an ad on TV, grab their smartphone off the couch next to them, surf the Web for more information and make an on-the-fly online purchase. How can retailers increase their chances that these digital, Millennial consumers will make a purchase and, better yet, become a return customer? 

One of the things we’ve seen in our research is a strong correlation between social media and customer engagement. Those who are more engaged with a brand, also interact more about the brand via multiple social media. Millennials are very active online and looking for ways to engage.  

Have a question for your brand? You can send a tweet saying exactly what you want in 140 characters — but there’s still a wait time and the response may be limited in context.  

Need advice on the best product for your unique needs? You can perform a search, but there’s no one to guide you towards the most evidence-based recommendation, amidst a sea of forums, blogs and online opinions.

Successfully engaging consumers can have multiplicative positive effects in the social net.

Now is the perfect time to discuss new ways of understanding and reaching today’s digital consumers.

The Millennial consumers that marketers seek to engage may be tech savvy, and may have a range of devices at their disposal, but even in the age of all things digital, they could still benefit from an insightful, easy to access guide to ensure their decisions are well-informed and on the trajectory towards optimizing their consumption choices.

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In related news, this week IBM unveiled the IBM Watson Engagement Advisor, a technology designed to crunch big data and help brands deepen their engagement with customers who want fast personalized and mobile experiences.

Technorati Tags: Big Data, IBM Smarter Planet, ibm watson, Michigan State University, mobile computing, smarter analytics, smarter marketing, smarter social business, social business, social media, Watson

Joyce Phillips, CEO Global Wealth and Group Managing Director, Marketing, Innovation and Digital, ANZ Banking Group

By Joyce Phillips

It used to be that next generation technology to make humans smarter, faster and at the top of their game was the stuff of cinema and science fiction.

Here at ANZ, we are exploring a groundbreaking solution that holds this very same promise – a cognitive assistant, if you will, that can empower our regional bank advisors to better serve our two million wealth management clients.

To understand why and what we’re doing to foster this innovation, it’s important to start with the perspective of the customer.

Imagine yourself entering a regional bank branch. You’ve arranged an appointment with the branch’s financial advisor, to discuss the life you want for you and your loved ones upon your retirement, and the solutions you need to achieve it.

Two of the key questions you and your advisor need to address are: what types of insurance, retirement and banking solutions do you have now, and do they cover you in a way that will safeguard your assets and yield a secure, well-funded retirement.

The fact is, many customers don’t know the answer to that question.  

We do our best to choose the vehicles that can grow assets, protect them and prepare us for retirement. But amidst market fluctuations, changing needs, and a host of new financial solutions and strategies being brought to market every day, it’s hard for customers to gauge whether their trajectory is safe and sound – and in turn, ask the right questions of our advisors.

But what if financial advisors had access to everything they need to know about a customer’s portfolio, with a click of a button – informed by an instant, 360 degree view of what’s right and what needs to be fixed, to usher that customer into the retirement they deserve?

This is where technology comes in; but not just any technology.  

The natural resource that can fuel a smarter, faster customer experience is Big Data, or the vast amount of electronically generated and stored information – ranging from account information to market research – that can piece together that 360 degree view for the financial advisor.

ANZ is collaborating with IBM to give our advisors that ability to harness information and make smarter, faster financial recommendations – enabling a customer experience that is simple, safe and steeped in data-informed insights.

The technology that will get us there: Watson, a cognitive computing system that is tailor-made for the customer experience, based on its ability to grasp the subtle context of questions posed in human language, search through a universe of Big Data to find the exact answers its users need, and deliver fast, evidence-based recommendations that can fuel a financial advisor’s advice to clients.

And that is how we’ll empower our advisors to be smarter and faster: by leveraging a groundbreaking innovation that can think like a human, and serve as a dedicated assistant, researcher and guidepost for ANZ’s top-flight team of advisors.

Technorati Tags: ANZ, Big Data, Big Data analytics, Financial Services, ibm watson, innovation, smarter analytics, smarter banking, Watson

Randall Beard, Global Head, Advertiser Solutions, Nielsen

By Randall Beard

It’s often said that marketers are drowning in data, but here at Nielsen, we have an idea for turning that harrowing experience into an insightful deep sea exploration.

For decades, Nielsen has been in the business of empowering brands and agencies with the information they need to understand and build connections with consumers.  We do this by measuring the advertising and media content people watch, the goods and services people buy – and very importantly, by spotting connections between the two. Why are these connections important? If you know what ads people are exposed to, and you know what those same people buy, you can get a lot smarter about how well your advertising is working and how to make it work better.

However, despite vast amount of data at their fingertips—and often because of the complexity of the data at hand—our clients’ ability to form these vital connections is oftentimes hindered. In fact, our advertiser clients tell us that despite the ever increasing amounts of data they have access to, they still have problems answering basic questions such as: How much should I spend on advertising? How should I allocate my spending across media platforms and within them? And, how do I measure my advertising performance “in-flight,” and make course corrections to improve results?

To help answer these questions, Nielsen created a simple “end-to-end” framework for measuring advertising and media effectiveness: the 3R’s. The 3R’s try to answer three simple questions: First, is my advertising reaching my intended audience (Reach)? Second, is it breaking through, being remembered and changing consumer opinion about my brand (Resonance)? And third, is it driving a behavioral reaction – e.g. sales (Reaction)?

We’ve been working hard to create the data sets and tools to help brand marketers answer these questions. We’ve gotten much better at answering the fundamental questions about advertising effectiveness, but we still have work to do.

Like never before, we and our clients face a continuous and, sometimes overwhelming stream of data generated by consumers and our digitally enabled measurement tools.  Just envision terabytes of structured and unstructured data pouring into our offices – trends, metrics, sentiments and perspectives – that express who consumers are, which programs and ads they’ve seen, how those ads perform by TV program, genre, web site, placement, number of times they’ve seen the ad, exposure to social media, where they’ve shopped, what they’ve bought, etc.

Within this data, there exists a range of opportunities to better understand consumers. But the challenge is clear, and for many, overwhelming – due to the data’s volume, scope and growing complexity, it’s almost too much to decipher.

A new form of technology is needed to dive deep into this sea of data, and come up for air with actionable advertising and media insights that can help brands understand their campaigns’ reach, resonance and reaction, and in turn, improve their advertising campaigns.

That’s why we were so intrigued when we began discussions with IBM about an entirely new and unique category of technology known as cognitive computing.

Cognitive computing systems can understand the nuances of human language, process questions akin to the way people think, and quickly cull through vast amounts of data for relevant, evidence-based answers to their human users’ needs. And very importantly, they learn from each interaction, to improve their performance and value to users over time.

Seems like a custom fit for the data-driven challenges today’s advertisers face.

Building on this excitement, we’re embarking on a new collaboration between the Nielsen Innovation Lab, which we founded in 2012 to advance research in advertising effectiveness, and IBM to harness the power of Watson, the sole player in this exciting new era of cognitive computing.

As part of our own brand’s continuous effort to advance understanding around advertising effectiveness, we’ll be exploring ways to use Watson for helping our agencies and their client brands engage more effectively with consumers across all devices – from TV to tablet to smartphone – while improving the impact of their advertising and media plans.

We believe this collaboration will open up a realm of possibilities for our clients, so they too can uncover value from new and exciting data. It’s time to stop drowning, and start exploring.

Technorati Tags: Big Data, Big Data analytics, cognitive computing, IBM Research, IBM Smarter Planet, ibm watson, innovation, Watson

Manoj Saxena, General Manager, IBM Watson Solutions

By Manoj Saxena

Social and technological shifts are driving rapid change, altering ways in which individuals interact with one another, learn, and attend to their personal and business needs. These shifts offer the potential to strengthen the relationships between companies and their customers—enabling more individual and directed communication and allowing organizations to cater to individual needs. Yet, for many, today’s online customer experiences lack personalization, timeliness and trust.

But what if companies could offer their customers the kind of personalized and knowledgeable assistance when they’re online or on the phone that people have come to expect from top-flight customer service delivered in person?

We believe that a new generation of cognitive systems will do just that. They will provide individuals with intelligent personal digital assistants that interact with them, answer their questions, and help them make complex purchasing decisions or solve problems they’re having with products like cell phones, computers and consumer electronics devices.

Click here to view the embedded video.

A first step in this journey happens this week, when IBM introduces the Watson Engagement Advisor. The technology underlying this service is based on IBM Watson, the computer that beat former grand-champions on the TV quiz show Jeopardy!. Our research and development staff has made Watson 75 percent smaller, 25 percent faster, and have been working hard to improve Watson’s ability to answer consumer-oriented questions.  For the first time, with the engagement advisor, we’re bringing Watson to the masses.

Consumers will be able to experience this new level of personalized service through the brands they already have relationships with—their banks and investment advisors, their phone service providers, insurance companies, favorite stores and other trusted organizations. For instance, a bank might offer Watson directly to customers on Web sites and mobile devices to help give them insights regarding retirement and various types of savings instruments like 401K accounts. An individual may begin a dialogue with Watson on their smartphone, but continue later from where they left off on their PC or tablet. Alternatively, a telecommunications firm could equip their call center agents with Watson to assist customers in troubleshooting a problem with a product, service, or billing issue.

(Check out images of the IBM Watson Client Engagement Advisor)

These amazing new capabilities are the next steps on the journey to the era of cognitive systems. We at IBM foresee a dramatic improvement coming in the way people interact with organizations and the role computers will play. The cognitive systems of the future will provide deep reservoirs of knowledge and sharp insights combined with an understanding of needs of the individuals they’re serving. The result will be transformational—helping people and organizations interact, learn, grow and make better decisions.

Since shortly after Watson’s debut on Jeopardy! two years ago, IBM has been improving the technology and finding new uses for it. Our early efforts focused on particular fields, such as health care, where cognitive capabilities can help physicians and patients make more personalized decisions about treatment and care. Now, with the IBM Watson Engagement Advisor, we’re widening the scope that the technology addresses. It’s gratifying and exciting to see how rapidly this technology is developing. And, as far as I’m concerned, this is just the start. This next era of computing is going to touch all of our lives in positive ways we can’t yet imagine.

Technorati Tags: Big Data analytics, business analytics, cognitive systems, IBM Congnitive Computing, IBM Smarter Planet, innovation, Jeopardy, smarter analytics

Steve Hamm, IBM Writer

By Steve Hamm

When Brenda Dietrich joined IBM with a newly-minted PhD in operations research 30 years ago, she ran into a buzz saw of ignorance about the role that math could play in business. She offered her  expertise to an IBM manufacturing group in Poughkeepsie, New York, but was rebuffed. The only way they could use her math skills, they told her mockingly, was in helping to balance their checkbooks. “We’ve come a long way in the recognition of the value of math and analytics,” says Dietrich, CTO of IBM’s Business Analytics division.

Today, math and data analytics are seen as essential elements for businesses and other organizations when it comes to understanding how the world works, predicting the future and making better decisions. In this world of Big Data, the Internet of Things and social networks, organizations use math to help improve everything from operations and finances to their understanding of customers, employees and the interactions of physical and social systems. As data about all manner of things becomes more readily available and has computers become ever more powerful, we are at last able to deal with complexity and uncertainty, and, as IBM Watson’s victory on the TV quiz show Jeopardy showed, we can create machines that think.

With all of this progress in mind, IBM Research on May 1 threw a party celebrating the 50th anniversary of its math department–which is now called Business Analytics and Mathematics Sciences. Here’s a video with insights from attendees about the past, present and future of math.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Rather than attempt to give a full report of what was said during panel discussions featuring past and current IBM math scientists, I’m going to bullet a series of comments and anecdotes that made me think:

Ralph Gomory, the second leader of the math department and later director of IBM Research: What we’re living through today is on the scale of the Industrial Revolution–only things are happening much faster. But, as with that earlier revolution, it’s still difficult to predict the future. “I won’t predict anything because the future of science and technology is totally unpredictable and utterly transforming.”

Sam Winograd, who led the math department in 1994, when IBM had its near-death experience: The company’s turnaround CEO, Lou Gerstner, visited IBM Research a couple of days after he started on the job. Walking the hallways,  he came upon a scientist, David Johnson, who had an IBM customer visiting him in his office. Gerstner stopped and talked to the two men. Later, in a meeting with IBM Research managers, Gerstner told him that this was the first time he had met one of IBM’s customers–and he was impressed that it was in the lab. (Many people expected Gerstner to slash the research workforce, but, instead, he recognized research as the crown jewel of the company and built it up.)

Richard Toupin, a former math department head: “One of my favorite mathematicians, Henry Poincare, said mathematics is the art of giving the same name to different things. It’s a very efficient definition.”

Alan Hoffman, another former math department leader: Most people have no idea how difficult it is for a mathematician to prove theorems. “You really don’t know what it’s like until you have done it. You isolate yourself mentally and beat yourself up. Other people don’t understand it or appreciate it.”

Bill Pulleyblank, a former math department director who is now a lecturer at the US Military Academy at West Point: In his early days in IBM Research, then-research director Jim McGroddy used to bring in executives from other industrial research laboratories. One of them, from Xerox PARC in Silicon Valley, said, “Strategy is who you hire and tactics is how they get the job done. So I always focused on hiring the very brightest people. We had to be flexible about what we pursued because things are always changing.”

Finally, a warning from Brenda Dietrich: “One of the downsides of making math and analytics so easily consumable is that people can also abuse them. You can have really bad results that are made to look really pretty on the screen. Some people slap the name ‘analytics’ on it and declare victory.”

So math is out of the societal dungeon. It’s recognized as being relevant like never before. A new generation of university students is studying math together with business and computer science with the goal of becoming  data scientists. Perhaps the profession will emerge as one of the hot careers of our era, and the next generation of math grads won’t have to face the kind of derision that Dietrich did when she introduced data analytics to one corner of the world of business.

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For an excellent introduction to the increasing role of math in business and society, check out Steve Baker’s book and blog, The Numerati.

Technorati Tags: Analytics, Big Data, IBM, Math

David McQueeney, Vice President, Technical Strategy and Worldwide Operations, IBM

By David McQueeney

Five years ago, IBM launched its Smarter Planet initiative, describing the era in which we currently live and operate in as the “Era of Smart,” one marked by forward-thinking leaders in business, government and society capitalizing on smarter systems to achieve economic growth, operational efficiency and sustainable development.

Since 2008, we have moved beyond the world of programmable systems to our first steps in cognitive systems – systems that exploit large data sources and can “learn.” Our Watson system may highlight this new way of operating best. For the first time, a computer has the ability to consult a broad range of human language resources, learn from historical training data, and answer surprisingly complex questions. We are forced to rethink how computers can work with humans on complex tasks, by showing the world a system that is able to respond based on what it ‘knows’ –  facts and information and training – rather than simply what words match in a simple search.

(Third in a series in support of Big Data Week.)

The Era of Smart helps to drive economic growth and today IBM brought that message to Congress in a hearing before the U.S. House of Representatives’ Science Committee’s Research and Technology subcommittees.

As Big Data and analytics continue to touch every single industry – from energy and healthcare to transportation and banking – it’s critical that the public and private sectors work together to ensure we are leveraging these new technologies to transform society and support economic competitiveness.

Data created from the beginning of time up until 2003 is comparable to the amount of data that will be created in just two days during 2013. In fact, it is estimated that by 2015, 2 million IT jobs will be created in the U.S. to help tackle the slew of data and transform it into actionable information. As the world continues to generate more and more structured and unstructured data, the need for skilled workers who can apply analytics to Big Data will continue to grow exponentially.

At the hearing, I stressed the importance of creating a new workforce, which includes support for skills development, as well as increased research in system design and software development.

Here at IBM, we’ve witnessed firsthand the power and necessity behind this new imperative for skills development and training. The IBM Academic Initiative, a program designed to supply institutions with essential training software and hardware, has added 6,000 universities and 30,000 faculty members to its program in just the past seven years. We now have in place more than 300 academic partnerships with some of the nation’s leading institutions.

Last month, IBM announced a partnership with the City of Baton Rouge and LouisianaStateUniversity. Over the next 10 years, we will work with LSU academics to develop a physical center and curriculum that will train computer science students in the application of analytics. The result is a projected 800 new jobs created in the Baton Rouge area to supply the demand for this smarter workforce.

And just today, IBM announced a new academic partnership with Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute to offer a graduate degree program beginning in the 2013 Fall semester. The new Master of Science in Business Analytics program is designed to develop data application and analytic skills to the future workforce.

Yet, more can – and should – be done. IBM supports legislation that will drive an agenda around skills and research, like the Department of Energy’s High-End Computing Revitalization Act of 2004. The legislation would improve high-end computing and research, as well as strengthen government and industry partnerships. We also support the reauthorization of the Carl D. Perkins Act and the Federal Work Study Program, to help students master the Big Data and analytic skills needed to compete in the global marketplace.

A stronger and smarter workforce equipped with advanced computing skills will have the tools to seize the future. With data now at all of our fingertips, we have the ability to create a planet that is the best it can be, and together with our government partners, we can continue to build a smarter planet.

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Other stories in this series:

• Big Data Takes Flight in Aviation, by Thomas J. Wholey
• Rensselaer’s New Analytics Degree to Help Organizations Better Tackle Big Data, by T. Ravichandran

Technorati Tags: Big Data analytics, IBM Research, IBM Smarter Planet, information technology, innovation, IT skills, research, skills, smarter analytics, U.S. House of Representatives

Dr. Mark Kris, Chief, Thoracic Oncology Service, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center

By Mark Kris, M.D.

As a longtime fan of the TV game show, Jeopardy!, I was fascinated when I watched an IBM supercomputer named Watson beat all-time  Jeopardy! champions, two years ago this month.

I was particularly interested because my friend and colleague Larry Norton had previously alerted me to the fact that systems like IBM Watson could be harnessed to improve cancer care and research. Combining the abilities to process massive amounts of data and using natural language processing could not only accomplish amazing things….like winning Jeopardy!, but also revolutionize care and research, accelerating progress for people with cancers. After a year on this project, I remain as excited today as I was on day one.

Over the past year, we at Memorial Sloan-Kettering have worked with an IBM team to train Watson to help assist medical professionals in choosing treatments for lung and breast cancers. We are sharing our knowledge and expertise in oncology to help Watson learn everything it can about cancer care and how Memorial Sloan-Kettering’s experts use medical information and their experience in personalized cancer treatments.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Cancers are illnesses that continually humble doctors. A major leap forward in understanding these diseases over the last 40 years is realizing the complexity of these illnesses.  You may notice that I have been using the word cancers instead of cancer. I do it deliberately, as a reflection of what we have learned. Doctors treating these illnesses know how different they are from person to person. We need better ways to help us understand the complexity and variation of these diseases to improve care and research. Textbook and guideline-based treatments are a good place to start but they can’t address the many biological and other factors affecting the course and aggressiveness of cancers. 

Current guidelines aren’t granular enough to determine treatments best matched to the person with the illness. The guideline recommended treatment may be chemotherapy, but how do you pick among 10 or more possible chemo options?  How do you choose the dosage? What treatment frequency would work best? Oncologists learn ways to make these choices from their experience treating individual patients. That kind of wisdom is what the Memorial Sloan-Kettering team is adding to IBM Watson. Our hope is to share our experience and knowledge, and, enabled by Watson technology, help physicians around the world to understand and mine the subtleties of each person’s illness. We believe this strategy can take us one step closer to the goal of personalized care for every person facing cancer treatment.

The power of the technology is that it has the ability to take the information about a specific patient and match it to a huge knowledge base and history of treatment of similar patients. This process can help medical professionals gain important insights so that they can make more informed decisions, evidence based decisions, about what treatment to follow. Watson’s ability to mine massive quantities of data means that it can also keeps up – at record speeds – with the latest medical breakthroughs reported in scientific journals and meetings.

Today, I join IBM, our partner WellPoint and many other healthcare leaders in New York City to mark a milestone on the path to bringing the power of Watson to oncology care. In collaboration with IBM and WellPoint, we will unveil the first commercially developed Watson-based cognitive computing system that is being taught by Memorial Sloan-Kettering experts. We believe these innovations will help transform the quality and speed of care for patients and enhance research to lead to more cures.

One of the big goals for Memorial Sloan Kettering and IBM Watson is to improve the quality of care delivered to persons with cancers:  every person, every time, and that it will learn with every encounter, continually getting smarter.

It can also help to reduce the time and documentation required to get an approval to start treatment. It is an interesting aspect of the project that using a machine can actually allow doctors and nurses more time to focus on patients, rather than paperwork.

I’m sure that applying the Watson technology to oncology has the power to transform cancer care so that our healthcare providers can dedicate more time toward delivering the best possible care.

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