Visiting Professor

Dr. Irving Wladawsky-Berger retired from IBM on May 31, 2007 after 37 years with the company. As Chairman Emeritus, IBM Academy of Technology, he continues to participate in a number of IBM’s technical strategy and innovation initiatives. He is also Visiting Professor of Engineering Systems at MIT, where he is involved in multi-disciplinary research and teaching activities focused on how information technologies are helping transform business organizations and the institutions of society.

At IBM he was 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. He was also responsible for IBM’s university relations office and for the IBM Academy of Technology where he served as Chairman of the Board of Governors. In 1996, he led the effort to formulate IBM’s Internet strategy and to develop and bring to market leading-edge Internet technologies that could be integrated into IBM’s mainstream business. He subsequently led a number of companywide initiatives like Linux, Grid Computing and the On Demand Business initiative.

He began his IBM career in 1970 at the Company’s 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 Adjunct Professor in the Innovation and Entrepreneurship Group at the Imperial College Business School. He is a member of BP’s Technology Advisory Council, the Visiting Committee for the Physical Sciences Division at the University of Chicago and the Board of Visitors for the Institute for Computational Engineering and Sciences at the University of Texas at Austin. 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 former member of the University of Chicago Board of Governors for Argonne National Laboratories and of the Board of Overseers for Fermilab. 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.

Updated June 2007

News and announcements:

Prof. Wladawsky-Berger in NY Times – Why Old Technologies are Still Kicking (April 1, 2008)

Prof. Wladawsky-Berger on Lou Gerstner at MIT (April 1, 2008)

New Course in Techology-based Business Transformation to be offered in Fall 2008 (June 1, 2007)

Irving Wladawsky Berger on Systems Solutions to Real World Challenges at NYPD: The Real-Time Crime Center (June 1, 2007)

ESD Visting Professor Irving Waldawsky-Berger retires from IBM (June 1, 2007)

MIT World Video – Engineering Systems Solutions to Real World Challenges in Healthcare (April 15, 2007)

Irving Wladawsky-Berger Panelist in Effective Examples of Educational Technology and Priorities for Future Investment, now available on MIT World (April 15, 2007)

Irving Wladawsky-Berger on A Kind of 21st Century Digital Animation Studio (April 3, 2007)

Irving Wladawsky-Berger on Skills for the 21st Century - Engineering Systems Solutions to Real World Challenges (November 3, 2006)

Applying "lean" thinking to healthcare solutions (December 29, 2006)