Five top innovators named IBM Fellows
2004-5-24

Over the past five decades IBM innovators have conceived, built and brought to market a series of breakthrough technologies that have transformed industries around the world. The creative minds behind these innovations have received many laurels including Nobel Prizes and National Medals of Science and Technology. Many of them have also received the highest technical honor that IBM bestows - the title of IBM Fellow.

This year IBM is naming five new Fellows. The 2004 honorees are a diverse group, boasting accomplishments in areas ranging from nanotechnology to technologies that are making cell phones even smaller and more powerful.

This year IBM is naming five new Fellows. The 2004 honorees are a diverse group, boasting accomplishments in areas ranging from nanotechnology to technologies that are making cell phones even smaller and more powerful.

The five new IBM Fellows are:

• Phaedon Avouris (IBM Research, Yorktown Heights, NY) is a pioneer in nanoscience and nanotechnology. Dr. Avouris' innovations have created the potential for carbon nanotubes to compete with the long-established silicon transistor for important information technology applications. He has demonstrated fully functional transistors based on a single carbon nanotube molecule that is about 50,000 times thinner than a human hair. He also demonstrated an electrically induced and controlled light source based on a single nanotube molecule.
  
  
• Curt Cotner (Software Group, Silicon Valley Lab) is considered one of the leading innovators in the relational database field and is the chief architect of DB2 for z/OS and OS/390, the cornerstone of IBM's relational database products. He is recognized for inventing more efficient communications procedures within DB2 and he is the leader and architect of database connectivity for IBM's WebSphere product family.
  
  
• David Harame (Systems and Technology Group, Burlington, VT) led IBM¡¯s commercialization of silicon germanium (SiGe) from the early stages of materials investigations to commercial manufactured BiFET and BiCMOS technologies. These innovations are a driving force behind the explosion in low-cost, lightweight, personal communications devices, such as digital wireless handsets.
  
  
• Audrey Helffrich (Systems and Technology Group, Poughkeepsie, NY) led the hardware strategy for IBM's successful transition from bipolar to CMOS on the mainframe in the 1990's. She's an expert across a range of high-end system technologies and has led efforts from extremely complicated technologies with Parallel Sysplex on the IBM eServer zSeries to the implementation of industry standard technologies like InfiniBand.
  
  
• Kevin Stoodley (Software Group, Toronto, Canada) is recognized worldwide as a leader in compiler technology (programs that translate source code into object code). He provides strategic and technical direction of IBM's compiler and related technologies ensuring that IBM processors, compilers and software work together to deliver leadership performance, scalability and robustness. He works at the forefront of IBM's static/dynamic compilation strategy.
  
  

"Innovation is the engine that powers IBM," said Nick Donofrio, IBM senior vice president, technology and manufacturing. "Our history is rich with world-class minds that have pioneered entirely new ways of doing business and invented thousands of new products that have transformed business and society alike."

The company also presented more than $3 million in cash awards to employees and teams whose technical achievements brought exceptional innovation to the company and its customers.


Learn more: IBM's Highest Technical Honor Bestowed on Five Leading Innovators

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