IBM today announced prestigious new Ph.D. Fellowships and Faculty Awards named to honor past famed IBM research and development leaders. The new programs are designed to put greater focus on nurturing technical talent and fostering innovation among women and diversity groups worldwide. The new awards include:

• Pat Selinger IBM Ph.D. Fellowship: awarded to an exceptional female Ph.D. student worldwide with special focus on database design and management
• Alex Muller IBM Ph.D. Fellowship: awarded to an exceptional Ph.D. student from a growth market country with special focus on discovery and innovation
• Harry Cochrane/Cal Waite IBM Ph.D. Fellowship or Assistantship: awarded to an exceptional black Ph.D. student worldwide
• John Backus Faculty Award: awarded to an outstanding faculty member pursuing new innovations in computer science
• IBM LA Grid Student Scholars Ph.D. Assistantship and IBM LA Grid International Student Scholars Ph.D. Assistantship: awarded to exceptional Hispanic Ph.D. candidates pursuing research in key technical areas.

“IBM’s commitment to a culture of diversity and inclusiveness is an essential part of attracting and retaining the best talent, and is reflected in our focus in this year’s new awards in support of top Ph.D. students and faculty,” said Jai Menon, vice president of technical strategy and university programs at IBM. “We look to the brainpower inside university institutions to be our allies in innovation, and we hope these awards inspire future nominations from faculty who share and value IBM’s diversity spirit.” Additional Background on Award Honorees and Programs Pat Selinger IBM Ph.D. Fellowship Dr. Pat Selinger was a leading member of the IBM Research team that produced the world’s first relational database system and established the basic architecture for the highly successful IBM DB2 database product family. Her innovative work on cost-based query optimization for relational databases has been adopted by nearly all relational database vendors and is now taught in virtually every university database course. In 1994, Dr. Selinger was named an IBM Fellow – an honor accorded only to the top 50 technical experts in IBM – and in 2004, she was inducted into the Women in Technology International Hall of Fame. Alex Müller IBM Ph.D. Fellowship Karl Alexander Müller joined the IBM Zurich Research Laboratory in 1963. Müller was manager of the physics department at IBM Zurich Research Laboratory from 1973 to 1992, and was named an IBM Fellow in 1982. He received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1987 for his work in superconductivity in ceramic materials. He has been teaching at the University of Zurich since 1962, and is the author of more than 400 technical publications. Harry Cochrane/Cal Waite IBM Ph.D. Fellowship or Assistantship Harry W. Cochrane was hired by the IBM Poughkeepsie Data Processing business unit in 1952 as the first black engineer in the IBM Corporation. He produced several technical patents for IBM during his career as an engineer, including a core matrix calculator and binary matrix multiplier. Calvin L. Waite was hired by IBM in 1953 as a development engineer and was assigned to M.I.T. Lincoln Laboratory to work on the development of the Semi-Automatic Ground Environment system for radar defense of the eastern seacoast. He then was named manager of the Environment Test Laboratory for the IBM Federal Systems division where he received the distinction of being IBM’s first black engineering manager. Cal also has lived a life of public service, serving as chair of the Duchess County (N.Y.) Civil Rights Commission, and after retiring from IBM, he was elected Mayor of Oberlin, Ohio. John W. Backus Faculty Award John W. Backus is the father of Fortran, the first widely used high-level programming language, which revolutionized computer programming and continues in use today for scientific computing. He also invented the Backus-Naur Form, the first formal technique for specifying the syntax of programming languages. He was named an IBM Fellow in 1963 and was awarded the National Medal of Science in 1975. IBM LA Grid Student Scholars Ph.D. Assistantship and IBM LA Grid International Student Scholars Ph.D. Assistantship IBM’s LA Grid Student Scholars Ph.D. Assistantships are part of the IBM LA Grid Student Scholars Program, which is solely focused on the development of student scientists from diverse backgrounds. Member students get access to a set of seminars covering technology and professional development workshops, and most importantly, it provides select students with mentoring by IBM executives and professionals. The LA (Latin American) Grid is an international multi-disciplinary research community and virtual computing grid enabling institutions and industry to facilitate collaborative IT research, education and workforce development. Its primary objective is the leverage of collaborative research to drive the development of computer scientists from underrepresented populations towards increasing the diversity in our workforce. The LA Grid consortium consists of 10 universities and two supercomputing centers across four countries collaborating with four IBM Research labs and numerous IBM employees. More information about IBM’s University Programs and Academic Initiative is available at its Web site.