Biography
I am a Research Affiliate at MIT’s Sloan School of Management. At MIT I am a Fellow of the Initiative on the Digital Economy, of MIT Connection Science, and of Cybersecurity at MIT Sloan. I’m also a member of the Linux Foundation Research Advisory Board.
I retired from IBM in May of 2007 after a 37 year career with the company, where my primary focus was on innovation and technical strategy. I led a number of IBM’s companywide initiatives including the Internet, Supercomputing and Linux.
I’ve been an Adviser on Digital Strategy and Innovation at Citigroup, at HBO, and at MasterCard; Adjunct Professor at the Imperial College Business School and at New York University’s Center for Urban Science & Progress (CUSP); a member of the Committee on Science, Engineering and Public Policy of the American Association for the Advancement of Science; and guest columnist at the Wall Street Journal’s CIO Journal.
Since 2005 I’ve been writing a weekly blog, irvingwb.com.
I was co-chair of the President’s Information Technology Advisory Committee, and a founding member of the Computer Sciences and Telecommunications Board of the National Research Council. I am a former member of University of Chicago Board of Governors for Argonne National Laboratories, the Board of Overseers for Fermilab, and BP's Technology Advisory Council.
I’m a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. A native of Cuba, I was named the 2001 Hispanic Engineer of the Year.
I received an M.S. and a Ph. D. in physics from the University of Chicago.