Dr. John E. Kelly III is IBM senior vice president and director of Research. In this position he directs the worldwide operations of IBM Research, with approximately 3,000 technical employees at nine laboratories, in seven countries around the world, and helps guide IBM’s overall technical strategy. Dr. Kelly’s top priority as head of IBM Research is to stimulate innovation in key areas of information technology, and quickly bring those innovations into the marketplace to sustain and grow IBM’s existing business, to create the new businesses of IBM’s future, and to apply these innovations to help our clients succeed. Dr. Kelly also leads IBM’s worldwide intellectual property efforts. IBM has led the world in U.S. patents for 17 consecutive years, generating nearly 5,000 patents in 2009 (on average over a dozen patents per day), and driving over $1B per year income from its intellectual property. Prior to beginning his current assignment in July of 2007, Dr. Kelly was senior vice president of Technology and Intellectual Property, responsible for IBM’s technical and innovation strategies. Dr. Kelly joined IBM in 1980. Between 1980 and 1990, he held numerous management and technical positions related to the development and manufacturing of IBM’s advanced semiconductor technologies. In 1990, he was named director of IBM’s Semiconductor Research and Development Center. Between 1994 and 2000, Dr. Kelly held several VP and GM positions across IBM’s businesses. In 2000, Dr. Kelly was named senior vice president and group executive for IBM’s Technology Group, where he was responsible for developing, manufacturing and marketing IBM’s microelectronics and storage technologies, products and services. Dr. Kelly received a Bachelor of Science degree in physics from Union College in 1976. He received a Master of Science degree in physics from the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 1978 and his Doctorate in materials engineering from RPI in 1980. In 2004, he received an Honorary Doctorate of Science from The Graduate School at Union College. Dr. Kelly is on the Board of Governors of The IBM Academy of Technology; a board member and former chairman of the Semiconductor Industry Association; a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, and on The Board of Trustees of Union College. Dr. Kelly has received numerous technical and business leadership awards, including the Semiconductor Industry’s highest honor, the Robert E. Noyce Award. August 2010.

I play with this kind of stuff at work all the time. Even though I'm in marketing, I do have a BSEE degree, and I can find my way around a breadboard and electronics well enough. This is a kluged-together demo we made since some of our software isn't quite ready to rock and roll yet. The board you see plugged in to the breadboard has four sensors on it - temperature, humidity, air pressure, and ambient light. The LCD is displaying raw data (not converted to units yet) for the temp, humidity, and pressure. Hopefully in a few weeks our real software will be ready and we'll be able to un-kluge the demo and actually give these to our customers. This was an excellent demo put together by one of the guys on my team.