Synopsis: IBM has been thinking for some time about how they can apply information technology to improve the efficiency of systems, both natural and man-made. As the world is becoming more instrumented, there is a great opportunity to integrate data in real-time from a broad variety of sources, and to apply advanced analytics to gain deeper insight into these systems. This approach is being applied to improve traffic and transportation, food supply chains, the environment and even cities.

Biography: Glenn Wightwick is an IBM Distinguished Engineer, Director of the IBM Australia Development Laboratory and IBM Australia Chief Technologist. From 2001 to 2006 he undertook a number of assignments in Shanghai, Tucson and New York in areas ranging from large scale system design to managing a team defining the architecture of IBM's enterprise storage subsystems.

Since joining IBM in 1987, he has worked on the application of large scale Unix systems to the solution of complex problems in domains including computational chemistry, seismic processing, weather forecasting, transaction processing and highly-available infrastructure. He spent seven months working on RS/6000 systems to support the XVIII Olympics Winter Games in Nagano, Japan during 1997 and 1998, and was involved in the design, implementation and operation of the RS/6000 infrastructure to support the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games.

Glenn has led numerous systems and software development projects, published a number of papers in the areas of Numerical Weather Prediction, Medical Imaging and the Internet, and is the author of eight patents. He is a Senior member of the IEEE, was elected to the IBM Academy of Technology in 2000, and has served a three year term on the Australian Research Council College of Experts. Most recently he was appointed an Honorary Professorial Fellow at the University of Melbourne.