De Wereldverbeteraars
Ton Engbersen
Prof.dr.ir Ton Engbersen, has earned his strips in the landscape of information technology in its full breadth and all aspects, partly through his more than four decades of involvement with IBM Research. Ton has conceived and worked out completely new IT concepts. Ton has conceived and worked out completely new IT concepts.
In addition, he has quickly grasped what IT in the right form can actually do for an organisation. This makes Ton a global authority in this field.
Profile
At IBM Research, Ton has held various positions and led a wide variety of projects. Since 1987, he has led projects for IBM Research. For example, he contributed to the designs of the first digital chips to build routers, facilitated collaborations between IBM Research and companies outsourcing their IT to IBM, and managed a team of forty people in their reorientation from communications technology to mainframe technology. More recently, Ton managed the collaboration between ASTRON (Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy) and IBM Research in which new, energy-efficient computing technology was developed to build the Square-Kilometre-Array (SKA) radio telescope. Technology that has not reached the market to date and is expected to reach the market in the next few years.
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Because of his extensive experience in this field, Ton has excellent knowledge of what IT can and cannot do for society. He can easily look ahead and see changes in the IT landscape coming. For instance, he had already realised the possibilities and dangers of artificial intelligence over a decade ago. He is then experiencing the same now with Quantum Computing. He himself says the following about his experience:
"I see myself as someone who has experienced digitalisation from zero to now. Not only have I experienced it, but I have actively worked in it myself. Therefore, from experience, I know pretty well what to expect from IT, such as artificial intelligence, and what not."
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Ton as a World Improver
With his work at IBM Research, Ton has done a lot to spread knowledge about information technology. Within The World Improvers, Ton wants to contribute to the strategic deployment of information technologies at organisations. Together with the organisation, he looks at how IT can be deployed to make business processes run better and thus better support the core business and, if desired, also open up new areas. The quality of IT across the board can also be an issue. Ton will play a coaching, guiding role in the teams. The sector or industry does not matter to him in this.
Core themes:
Strategic Deployment of IT
Change management
IT Transformation
Artificial Intelligence (AI)
Chip Design