Jai Menon

Dr. Jai Menon is responsible for shaping IBM's technical strategy and identifying emerging technologies critical to the future of IBM as Vice-Chair of the IBM Academy of Technology - an elite body of worldwide leaders whose mission is to provide technical direction and leadership for IBM. In addition, Jai serves as the global Vice-President of IBM's University Collaboration programs, serves on several university industry advisory boards, and works with academia to establish innovative research and build 21st century skills in support of the innovation economy.

Jai began his career with IBM Research in 1982 and became IBM Research's leading authority on the design and architecture of data storage systems which enable enterprises to manage their data reliably and efficiently. He is well-known as an industry pioneer and technical visionary in RAID Research and is one of the key early contributors to the technology behind what is now a $20B industry. He directed IBM's world-wide research in Storage Systems and his leadership helped establish IBM Almaden as a world-class center of competence in storage research. Research projects that Jai lead or initiated contributed to the creation of IBM's flagship Shark Storage Server and the industry's leading storage virtualization product. He became Director of the Storage Systems Institute, a collaboration between IBM Research and the IBM Storage Division aimed at speeding the incorporation of scientific and technological advances into IBM storage system products. In 2003, Jai joined the Systems Division as CTO and, later, VP of Systems Strategy and Architecture, where he was responsible for setting the strategy and direction of IBM's storage and systems software products and guiding the development of 6000 systems software developers.

As an IBM Fellow, Jai has achieved the highest technical position within IBM. He is one of only about 10 people in IBM – a company of 370,000 people – to have achieved the highest technical honor of IBM Fellow and to also be a Vice-President. Over the course of his career, Jai has been awarded 52 U.S. Patents and has been the recipient of many IBM technical awards and external honors. He is an IEEE Fellow and an IBM Master Inventor. In 2002, he received the IEEE Wallace McDowell Award. In 2004 he received the Distinguished Alumnus Award from the College of Engineering at Ohio State University. In 2006, he became a Distinguished Alumnus of IIT, Madras and he also received the IEEE Reynold B. Johnson Information Systems Award. Jai is the author of 31 papers and 47 technical reports and he is a contributing author to three books on database and storage systems.

Jai received a Bachelor of Technology in Electrical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology in 1977 and earned M.S. and Ph.D degrees in Computer Science from Ohio State University in 1978 and 1981.