Alternative Computing

Abstract

Joel Birnbaum is somebody you could describe as a mover and shaker because of what he does, and where he does it. He started out with a doctorate in Nuclear Physics from Yale in 1965, then spent 15 years at IBM’s research lab in Yorktown Heights, New York, where he became director of Computer Sciences. In 1980, he joined the company he’s been with since, Hewlett-Packard, as the founding director of its computer research center in Palo Alto, California. Along the way he’s been vice president and general manager of the Information Technology Group. Today, he’s the director of Hewlett-Packard Labs and is HP’S senior vice president of R & D. He’s a board member of both the Corporation for National Research Initiatives and the Technion University of Israel, and he serves on the advisory councils of UC Berkeley, Stanford, Carnegie Mellon and Yale.