Top IBM executive to speak at spring commencement

Dr. Paul M. Horn, senior vice-president and director of IBM Research, will be speaking at the school’s spring commencement held at 1 p.m. May 15 in the Great Hall of the Student Union.

His talk, "Beyond Technotoys and Hype: What Will Really Succeed the Industrial Age," will focus on the many forces converging to make our time one of rapid change unlike any other before it. He will discuss the constantly changing technology, the most significant changes ahead of us, and what it will likely mean for the generation inheriting and shaping them.

IBM Research is the world’s largest research organization dedicated to information technology, with 3,000 researchers at eight labs worldwide. Horn has led the organization through many technological breakthroughs, including the chess-playing supercomputer Deep Blue.

The areas of research Horn is currently focusing on are: the ongoing challenge for the IT industry to build “autonomic computing systems”; delivery of the technologies to support IBM’s on demand strategy; and the exploration of new modes of storage, processing and computing, such as nanomechanical devices, atomic-scale manipulation, carbon nanotube structures and so-called “superhuman speech systems.”

Horn graduated from Clarkson College of Technology and received his doctoral degree in physics from the University of Rochester in 1973. He served as vice president and lab director of IBM Research’s Almaden Research Center in San Jose, Calif. before his current position. Prior to joining IBM in 1979, Horn was a physics professor at the University of Chicago. Horn has received numerous awards, including the 2000 Distinguished Leadership award from the New York Hall of Science, and in 2002, he was named as one of America’s top technical leaders by Scientific American Magazine.