April Roundup – What We Were Talking About

In this issue:

• Best of the Blog: Your Top Five for April
• IBM Research Makes History with the World’s Smallest Movie
• Join the Conversation

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The Best of the Blog: Your Top Five for April

For the month of April, here are the five most popular posts on The Greater IBM Connection blog:

1. 50 Years of Innovation: IBM Honors 2013 Fellows
2. Just for Fun: Vintage Social Networking
3. Video Tour: Capturing the Character of the IBM Brand
4. 1st Quarter 2013 Earnings: How Did IBM Do?
5. 10 Things Extraordinary People Say Every Day

Thanks for visiting and thanks for your comments on the blog, as always.

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IBM Research Makes History with The World’s Smallest Movie

Scientists at IBM have created the world’s smallest stop-motion film. The extraordinary 90-second breakthrough, titled “A Boy and His Atom“, stars carbon atoms that were moved by a scanning tunneling microscope.

The Guinness Book of World Records has certified this breakthrough feat, a showpiece for IBM’s work in data storage solutions based on single atoms. Learn more and see the film now!

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Now Playing: IBM Scientists Create a Movie by Moving Atoms

“A Boy and His Atom” is the world’s smallest stop-motion movie. It can be seen only when  magnified 100 million times. It was made by a scanning tunneling microscope moving atoms.

And it was created by IBM Research.

Watch this remarkable 90-second film now:

More:

The Making Of: Check out this collection of photos from the scanning tunneling microscope lab at IBM Research – Almaden

How did they do it?

Exploring the limits of storage and moviemaking

Why Make the Atom Movie? To Get Kids Excited about Science and Technology

Learn more about atomic memory, data storage, and Big Data

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Greater IBM, what do you think?

- Posted by Regan Kelly

IBM’s Robot Sidekick to Aid Field Engineers

- From bbc.co.uk

A robotic sidekick could soon be helping field engineers fix faulty equipment in remote locations. IBM has developed the robotic helper, whose projector can overlay information on equipment to guide repair work performed remotely.

The IBM MRO helper. The projector can display information to guide repair work.

Supervisors and experts back at base can also look and talk through the projector to oversee repairs. Get the story.

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Related:

IBM Research

More on augmented reality

 

 

 

 

- Posted by Regan Kelly

On Earth Day, IBM Is Collaborating to Harness the Power of 2,000 Suns

Because of safety concerns, today’s solar collectors can concentrate only so much energy: too much in one place means enormous risk. But IBM is collaborating on developing a new collector dish that could avoid that – and it’s a major step forward in solar power efficiency.

The new collaboration between IBM, Airlight Energy and Swiss university partners 
will develop an affordable photovoltaic system capable of concentrating, on average, the power of 2,000 suns, onto hundreds of 1×1 cm chips. Read more from IBM Research.

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What do you think of this exciting news, Greater IBM? Let us know in the Leave a Reply field below.

Processing Data Like a Human Brain: Why IBM Made a Liquid Transistor

An advance in materials by IBM is revealing another promising path to replace the foundation of today’s computing technologies. Researchers at IBM have unveiled an experimental new way to store information or control the switching of an electronic circuit. Although it’s in a very early phase, the method could someday allow for very energy-efficient computing, says Stuart Parkin, the IBM Research Fellow behind the work at the company’s Almaden Research Lab in San Jose, CA.

“Unlike today’s transistors, the devices can be switched ‘on’ and ‘off’ permanently without the need for any power to maintain these states,” he says. “This could be used to create highly energy-efficient memory and logic devices of the future.” Read more in MIT Technology Review.

Twitter Chat Today at Noon Eastern Time: IBM’s Newly Developed Antimicrobial Hydrogel

Last week, Researchers from IBM and the Institute of Bioengineering and Nanotechnology revealed an antimicrobial hydrogel that can break through diseased biofilms and completely eradicate drug-resistant bacteria upon contact. The hydrogel has clear applications in the field of medicine, making it an ideal tool to combat serious health hazards facing hospital workers, visitors and patients.

The next #p4spchat will open discussions around IBM’s newly developed antimicrobial hydrogel and its potential impact on healthcare. You can ask the guest experts how and why IBM made this hydrogel. Guest Experts: IBM’s Chief Medical Scientist Dr. Marty Kohn and IBM Research Scientist Amanda Engler are joining the chat. Join us – here are the details you need.

Self-Service Kiosks: Another Life-Changing Patented Innovation from IBM

Low on cash? Out of stamps? Want to skip to the gate?

Without this IBM innovation, you’d only be able to get cash during normal banking hours: Self-service kiosks, another patented IBM innovation.

Last year, IBM was awarded the most U.S. patents for the 20th year in a row. What’s the secret? Follow along as IBM decodes the culture behind extraordinarily continuous invention.

IBM Vice President, Gill Zhou, Is a Model for Working Women in China (Ad Age)

Gill Zhou, Vice President Marketing, Communications & Citizenship, IBM Greater China Group

IBM Vice President, Gill Zhou, was recognized as being one of China’s Women to Watch in September 2012 at a gala event sponsored by Ad Age and Thoughtful China.  The recognition cites Gill as being a role model for Chinese women in business, as evidenced by her 760,000 followers on the Chinese micro-blogging service Sina Weibo (now more than 1M+). Gill is quoted in the article as follows: “As a woman leader, I always have to be conscious that we play multiple roles: professional, daughter, daughter-in-law, wife, mother, parent,” says Ms. Zhou, who often accommodates employees’ family needs by granting them flexibility. “It’s never easy.”   Previously in charge of Communications for IBM Asia Pacific, Ms. Zhou took on the role of leading marketing for IBM China in 2012 after driving double digit growth in the region in 2011.

At the gala event, Ms. Zhou had this thought to share with the event attendees:

“My key takeaway out of my 20 years career in the fast changing industry like IT is you have to choose your battles….but once you define your battles, DO IT with an unwavering focus…”

Ms. Zhou has also been recognized by a number of other organizations.  Prior to joining IBM, she worked at Motorola where she received the “Woman Star of Motorola” award for her role in making the company one of the top 10 brands in China (2000).   In 2004, she was recognized as being one of the top 10 women in China’s IT industry in a program sponsored by the All China Women’s Federation, Ministry of Information Industry and China Computerworld, and was also voted one of the Top 50 most influential women in China by Trends magazine.  More recently, she was a keynote speaker at Working Mother magazine’s ‘Global Advancement of Women‘ conference in Shanghai in 2011 where she spoke on Strategies in Building Your Personal Brand.

Read the full story and learn more about Ms. Zhou below, including some video footage from the event:

• (Ad Age, 2012) – IBM’s Gill Zhou is a Model for Working Women in China
• (Chinalogue Blue Ocean Network TV, 2011 video interview) – Gill Zhou:  Advice for Aspiring Women
• (IBM Research Report with Intro by Gill Zhou) – Collaborating with Gen-Y:  Leveraging generational insight to build the best workplace for Gen-Y in China
• (Working Mother Magazine, 2011) – Gill Zhou profile
• Gill Zhou Weibo Channel (in Chinese)
• IBM China Weibo Channel (in Chinese)

(Video credit: Thoughtful China Women to Watch Event)

–Posted by Julie Yamamoto, Program Manager, The Greater IBM Connection

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The January 2013 theme for The Greater IBM Connection is ”leadership”, and The Greater IBM Connection will be sharing various tips, tools, stories, and resources on this topic.

IBM Research Chief Scientist for Social Business, Irene Greif, Wins Technical Leadership Award

Irene Greif, IBM Fellow and Chief Scientist for Social Business (Photo Credit: Anita Borg Institute for Women in Technology)

Irene Greif, IBM Research Fellow and Chief Scientist for Social Business was awarded The Anita Borg Technical Leadership Award at the 12th annual Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing in October, 2012.  The award recognizes and celebrates an outstanding woman technical leader and was established to honor the legacy of Anita Borg, a significant contributor to advances for women in technology and engineering fields. Recipients are women who have inspired the women’s technology community through outstanding technological and social contributions and through leadership have increased the impact of women on technology.  Irene was recognized for founding the research field of CSCW (Computer-Supported Cooperative Work) and her continued leadership championing this kind of interdisciplinary research in the IBM Center for Social Business.  The Center for Social Business is a global effort to focus IBM’s CSCW and Computer-Human Interaction research on the growing opportunities to transform business practices through social technologies such as crowd-sourcing, social analytics, and interactive visualization. The Center has emphasized research based on large scale deployments of new technologies, providing test beds for studies of adoption rates and impact of social media on organizations. As an example, many of the core capabilities of IBM Connections, IBM’s social software for business that provides a collaborative work environment, was developed by the Center.

Irene has also been recognized by a number of other organizations.  She is a fellow of both the Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and the Association of Computing Machinery (ACM).  Irene was inducted into the Women In Technology International (WITI) Hall of Fame in 2000 and awarded the Women Entrepreneurs in Science and Technology Leadership award in 2008.  In 2010, she was elected to the National Academy of Engineering, and in 2012 she was elected to American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

A full listing of Irene’s publications can be found here, and she also discusses social business in this video interview with IT columnist Lenny Liebmann.

Read the full story and watch Irene’s acceptance speech below:

• (Anita Borg Institute for Women in Technology, 2012) – 2012 Anita Borg Technical Leadership Award Winner Irene Greif
• (Anita Borg Institute for Women in Technology, 2012) – Interview with Irene Greif

(Video credit:  Anita Borg Institute for Women in Technology)

–Posted by Julie Yamamoto, Program Manager, The Greater IBM Connection

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The January 2013 theme for The Greater IBM Connection is ”leadership”, and The Greater IBM Connection will be sharing various tips, tools, stories, and resources on this topic.

IBM Research Team Wins Coveted Feynman Prize for Advancing Scanning Probe Microscopy

Several members of IBM Research have been awarded the prestigious Feynman prize given by the Foresight Group, an organization that seeks to advance the study of nanotechnology.

IBMer Leo Gross, a member of the winning IBM Research team (photo by Monica Davey)

The group won the award for its groundbreaking work in producing detailed molecular images and deconstructing chemical bonds on individual atoms. Congratulations, IBM! Read the rest of the story.

—Posted by Regan Kelly

 

Monica Davey/Feature Photo Service for IBM