Myron Flickner

Myron 'Flick' Flickner is an engineer, manager, inventor, programmer and author with over 30 patents and 75+ publications in areas of image analysis, computer virus detection, retail, and human-computer interaction. Flick currently works at IBM Research on Cognitive Computing - creating brain inspired low power computer systems. In 2010 and 2011 Flick was a Product Manager at Google. Prior to Google, Flick worked on the Smarter PLanet platform for Analysis and Simulation of Health (SPLASH) and the SyNAPSE Virtual Environment projects at IBM Research. From 2003 to 2010 Flick was the Global Retail Industry Leader for IBM Research. He created and managed Research projects relevant to the Retail industry and educated industry leaders on disruptive technologies that will change their life. A 39+ year IBMer, Flick joined IBM Research San Jose in 1982 working on automated inspection of thin film disk heads. During 1987-1988 at IBM's Thomas J. Watson Research Center he researched image processing languages and served as IBM's representative to the ANSI X3H3.8/ISO (image processing) standards committee. He returned to the Almaden Research Center and explored content based image retrieval and created the widely referenced QBIC (Query by Image Content) system. After that he founded the BlueEyes project to explore how computing experiences change when the computer understand the emotional state of users. This migrated into a project on Attentive Environments - sensor augmented spaces that are user and context aware - which became the early foundation for IBM's Smart Surveillance System (S3) offering. His current research interests include simulating neuromorphic systems on supercomputers and inventing new algorithms tailored to low power neuromorphic systems. He received a B.S.(1980) and a M.S.(1982) in Electrical Engineering from Kansas State University.