Irving Wladawsky-Berger

Retired on May 31, 2007, after 37 years at IBM. He is currently the President Emeritus of the IBM Academy of Technology, where he remains involved in technical strategy and innovation initiatives at IBM. In March 2008 he joined Citigroup as Strategic Advisor, assisting with innovation and technology initiatives in the company.

At IBM he was responsible for identifying emerging technologies and developing markets, critical to the future of the computer industry, as well as participating in organizing activities inside and outside IBM to capitalize on them. In addition, he was responsible for IBM’s university relations office and the IBM Academy of Technology where he served as the Chairman of the Board of Trustees. In 1196, he led the formulation of IBM’s Internet strategy and the development and market launch of advanced Internet technologies that could be integrated into IBM’s business. Since then, he has led initiatives in a wide number of companies such as Linux, Grid Computing and, in October 2002, On Demand Business.

Irving Wladawsky-Berger is a visiting professor in MIT’s Sloan School of Management and Engineering Systems Division; a senior researcher at the Levin Institute at the State University of New York, and an adjunct professor in the Innovation and Entrepreneurship Group at Imperial College School of Business. In his academic activities he is involved in multidisciplinary research and teaching focused on how technology can improve business organizations and institutions of society.

He is a member of the Advisory Board of BP’s Technology, the Visiting Committee for the Physical Sciences Division at the University of Chicago, and the Board of the Institute for Computational Engineering and Sciences at the University of Texas at Austin. He had the honor of participating in and subsequently co-chairing the Presidential Advisory Commission on Information Technology from 1997 to 2001, and being a founding member of the National Research Council on Computer Science and Telecommunications in 1986. He is a former member of the Board of Supervisors of the Governors for Argonne National Laboratories at the University of Chicago. He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Born in Cuba and coming to the U.S. at the age of 15, one of the things Irving Wladawsky-Berger is most proud of is being named Hispanic Engineer of the Year 2001. He holds a bachelor’s degree and a doctorate in physics from the University of Chicago.