Paul Horn, senior vice president and director of research for IBM Corp., will present the CU-Boulder College of Engineering and Applied Science聮s second annual Mervyn Young Memorial Lecture at Macky Auditorium, Sept. 14.
The 90-minute lecture titled "The Future of Technology" is free and open to the public, and will be followed by a question-and-answer session. The event is scheduled from 2 p.m. to 4:30 p.m.
Horn is the head of IBM聮s Research Division, the world聮s largest research organization dedicated to information technology, with 3,000 technical employees at eight laboratories in five countries around the world.
In his lecture, Horn will cover what IBM has identified as the five major future trends for technology:
- In an increasingly challenging environment, progress in information technology will continue to accelerate;
- Everything will go online;
- The underlying infrastructure of the Web will become more "intelligent;"
- Higher-level software, delivered as services, will be key;
- E-business will need deep information technology resources to continue evolving.
"As fascinating as our progress in technology is, what I find really intriguing is what we聮re going to be able to do with it -- more than just how fast or powerful a technology is," said Horn. "In everything from banking and commerce, to life sciences, to personal access, to data and applications, we聮ll see not an evolution but a revolution."
"I'm looking forward very much to hosting this talk," said Clayton Lewis, chair of computer science at CU-Boulder. "I came to CU from IBM Research, so I know first-hand what an influential organization it is. This is a chance for us to learn about the future from a leader, one of the people who is determining what the future will be like."
The Mervyn Young Memorial Lecture Series was established in the department of computer science to explore issues of computing technology and society. Bill Joy, co-founder of Sun Microsystems, presented the inaugural lecture in the series in April 1999.
Horn聮s presentation is co-sponsored by the CU-Boulder College of Engineering and Applied Science and by IBM Boulder, which has been a long-time partner with the college, helping to deliver high-quality educational programs in the fields of engineering and technology.
"The college is pleased to have the support of industry leaders as well as private donors such as Mervyn Young, who as an alumnus of the college has had a significant impact on the next generation of students through his generous donation establishing this lecture series," said engineering Dean Ross Corotis.
Horn began his career at IBM in 1979 as a solid state physicist and he was named head of the Research Division in 1996. Prior to that, he was vice president and lab director of the Research Division聮s Almaden Research Center in San Jose, Calif., which is responsible for creating novel data centric and pervasive computing solutions for businesses, along with new hard drive and storage systems products.
A native of New York, he graduated from Clarkson College of Technology and received his doctoral degree from the University of Rochester in 1973. Before joining IBM, he was a professor in the physics department and the James Franck Institute at the University of Chicago.
He is a fellow of the American Physical Society and the National Science Foundation, and a member of various professional committees, including the Washington-based Council on Competitiveness and Government University Industry Research Roundtable.