Title
Schechtman, Barry oral history
Catalog Number
102717905
Type
Moving image
Description
This oral interview is with Dr. Barry H. Schechtman, who held numerous positions at IBM in research, technology development and manufacturing, and then he went on to become executive director of INSIC, the Information Storage Industry Consortium. Dr. Schechtman obtained his Ph.D. from the electrical-engineering department at Stanford University, working under Professor William E. Spicer on photoelectron-emission spectroscopy of organic solids, a relatively unexplored area at the time. His graduate studies at Stanford were supported by fellowships from the Hughes Aircraft Company and the National Science Foundation, or NSF. Upon completing his Stanford degrees, he joined IBM as a research staff member at San Jose Research Laboratory. At IBM, his initial technical interest focused on modeling and experimental characterization of the charge transport in photoconducting polymers, as well as the use of process-control computers to collect and analyze data in physics laboratory. Many of these studies were done in collaboration with various colleagues in IBM research. After three years of research in these areas, he moved into management positions, where he had opportunities to impact IBM’s product engineering and manufacturing operations. A one-year assignment in IBM headquarters working with the chief scientist and science advisory committee further steered his technical interest toward IBM’s product areas. From 1995 to 1999, Dr. Schechtman served as the executive director of the National Storage Industry Consortium, or NSIC. At NSIC, he added to and managed a product portfolio that grew to more than two hundred million dollars of storage-related research conducted jointly by the industry members with numerous universities. This effort led to accelerated technical progress of the storage industry, and it also generated trained students, who were excellent candidates for hire, into the sponsor companies. In addition, NSIC’s very detailed technology roadmap studies gave the storage technology community and its customers a consistent 5-to-10-year outlook for future technology improvements and the specific challenges that have to be addressed to achieve those improvements. Dr. Schechtman ensured that NSIC’s research programs maintained a pragmatic perspective so that technology improvements did not occur in isolation but rather were focused on addressing the needs of the customer applications.
Date
2019-08-08
Participants
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Schechtman, Barry, Interviewee
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Yamashita, Tom, Interviewer
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Publisher
Computer History Museum
Place of Publication
Mountain View, CA
Duration
04:43:39
Format
MOV
Category
Oral history
Collection Title
CHM Oral History Collection
Credit
Computer History Museum
