About me

I retired from IBM on May 31, 2007 after 37 years with the company. As Chairman Emeritus, IBM Academy of Technology I remain involved in a number of IBM’s technical strategy and innovation initiatives. I am also Visiting Professor of Engineering Systems at MIT, where I am involved in multi-disciplinary research and teaching activities focused on how information technology is helping transform business organizations and the institutions of society. In March of 2008 I joined Citigroup as Strategic Advisor, helping with innovation and technology initiatives across the company.

At IBM I was responsible for identifying emerging technologies and marketplace developments that are critical to the future of the IT industry, and then organizing activities in and outside IBM in order to capitalize on them. I was also responsible for our university relations office and for the IBM Academy of Technology where I served as Chairman of the Board of Governors. In 1996, I 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. Since then, I have led a number of company wide initiatives like Linux, Grid Computing and, in October 2002, our On Demand Business initiative.

I am Adjunct Professor in the Innovation and Entrepreneurship Group at the Imperial College Business School. I am 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. It was my honor to serve on and later act as co-chair of the President’s Information Technology Advisory Committee from 1997 to 2001, and to be a founding member of the Computer Sciences and Telecommunications Board of the National Research Council in 1986. I am a former member of University of Chicago Board of Governors for Argonne National Laboratories and of the Board of Overseers for Fermilab. A few years ago, I was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Having been born in Cuba and come to the US at the age of 15, one of the things of which I am proudest is having been named 2001 Hispanic Engineer of the Year. I have an M.S. and Ph. D. in physics from the University of Chicago.