Caroline Ann Kovac is an American chemist, technologist, executive, and consultant. Kovac initiated the computational life sciences division at IBM in 1999. She retired from IBM in 2007, having grown the division to over 1500 people globally.

Education

By Kovac's own account, she was "one of the first" in her family to attend and graduate from university,

Oberlin College Oberlin College is a Private university, private Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college and conservatory of music in Oberlin, Ohio, United States. Founded in 1833, it is the oldest Mixed-sex education, coeducational lib ...

. She obtained a Ph.D. from the

University of Southern California The University of Southern California (USC, SC, or Southern Cal) is a Private university, private research university in Los Angeles, California, United States. Founded in 1880 by Robert M. Widney, it is the oldest private research university in ...

in 1981.

Career

From 1981 to 1983, Kovac was employed as a chemist working on carbon-based materials. Kovac was employed at

IBM International Business Machines Corporation (using the trademark IBM), nicknamed Big Blue, is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, and present in over 175 countries. It is ...

from 1983 to 2002. She initially entered the company as a bench chemist, specializing in fine-contact metallurgy, packaging, and mainframe computer components at the San Jose Research laboratory (later

IBM Almaden IBM Research is the research and development division for IBM, an American multinational information technology company. IBM Research is headquartered at the Thomas J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, New York, near IBM headquarters in ...

). Kovac would later take roles in various other segments of IBM, to include manufacturing, supply-chain management, software, and multiple stints in IBM Research. She was named VP of Research from 1997 to 2000. In 2004, the New York Times profiled Kovac's division as it ventured into distributed computing power to solve structures for the

Human Proteome Folding Project The Human Proteome Folding Project (HPF) is a collaborative effort between New York University ( Bonneau Lab), the Institute for Systems Biology (ISB) and the University of Washington (Baker Lab), using the Rosetta software developed by the Rosetta ...

. She was also a founding member of the National Geographic

Genographic Project The Genographic Project, launched on 13 April 2005 by the National Geographic Society and IBM, was a Molecular anthropology, genetic anthropological study (sales discontinued on 31 May 2019) that aimed to map historical human migrations patter ...

to track human migration across the centuries using DNA sequencing and data analysis. Kovac is a member-emerita of the IBM Academy of Technology.

Awards

* 2004 - Forbes '50 Most Powerful Women in Business' * 2003 - Stevie Award finalist, Best CEO or COO * 2003 -

Turing Talk The Turing Talk, previously known as the Turing Lecture, is an annual award lecture delivered by a noted speaker on the subject of Computer Science. Sponsored and co-hosted by the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET) and the British Comp ...

from the

British Computer Society image:Maurice Vincent Wilkes 1980 (3).jpg, Sir Maurice Wilkes served as the first President of BCS in 1957. The British Computer Society (BCS), branded BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT, since 2009, is a professional body and a learned ...

* 2002 - Women in Technology Hall of Fame inductee

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Kovac, Caroline Living people Year of birth missing (living people) American women chemists 20th-century American businesswomen 20th-century American businesspeople IBM employees Oberlin College alumni University of Southern California alumni 21st-century American women