Cognitive Discovery: The Next Frontier of R&D

Alessandro Curioni
IBM Fellow, Vice President Europe and Director IBM Research – Zurich
Zurich Research Laboratory, Switzerland

Abstract:

Click here for Alessandro Curioni’s presentation slides.

Data in all its forms is expanding as a resource to be utilized. Yet, on so many fronts and in so many industries and professions, the data explosion is outrunning our human capability to understand the meaning contained within that data. The key is that Data is also becoming very complex and unstructured. Where code goes, where data flows, cognition will follow and will confer a kind of thinking ability to every application, product, process and service. We call this cognitive computing and its represents a new era in computing. It refers to systems that learn at scale, reason with purpose and interact with humans naturally. Moreover, combining cognitive computing with massive-scale analytics, high-performance computing, and energy-aware algorithms and architectures will be truly transformational for knowledge discovery – opening up new frontiers for science and discovery.

Bio-Data:

Dr. Alessandro Curioni is an IBM Fellow and the vice president of Europe and director of the IBM Research lab in Zurich, Switzerland. He was also recently appointed as the Watson IoT Research Relationship Executive.

Dr. Curioni is a world recognised leader in the area of high performance computing and computational science where his innovative thinking and seminal contributions have helped solve some of the most complex scientific and technological problems in healthcare, aerospace, consumer goods and electronics. He was a member of the winning team recognized with the prestigious Gordon Bell Prize in 2013 and 2015.

Dr. Curioni received his undergraduate degree in Theoretical Chemistry and his PhD from Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa, Italy. He started at IBM Research – Zurich as a PhD student in 1993 before officially joining as a research staff member in 1998. His most recent position has been the head of the Cognitive Computing and Computational Sciences department.