Pat O’Sullivan : Who Am I?

My passion in life is helping to solve challenging computer science problems and I am never afraid to ask for help if stuck. Several work colleagues say that I have a unique or ~different~ perspective on things, and that I see angles others may miss. Perhaps this is why I managed to file close to 500 patents in my career to date, or why I am in the top 10 innovators of the 425,000+ IBMers worldwide (and #1 outside of USA). Or perhaps this is why I’ve seen two spinout companies as a result of research that I have both conceived and led at the IBM lab (one of which was in conjunction with University College Dublin and which achieved the highest VC funding of any UCD campus company to date). Or perhaps this is why I am able to wire or plumb my own house, fix/service my own car, plumb my own house, and solve many other non-IT technical challenges for which I was never taught. I simply view these as interesting technology challenges “of a different kind”.

My parents might readily disagree with this latter thinking, especially as I electrocuted myself dismantling the family TV under stealth at aged 8, and because I dismantled their Canon camera in to 100 pieces at age 9 and broke one piece in the re-assembly. Sadly, this committed their camera to a premature grave (I just wanted to understand how things worked!!). They might also bring up a mini 8-speed 2-gear minature fan I made that same year with several AA batteries. This is the time where I borrowed my Dad’s Gillette razor blade as a propeller and which became airborne at the 6th speed. Alas, this 1.5 inch blade lodged in quite an unfortunate part of my older brother’s anatomy . Or indeed, my parents might remind me of their retaliating 10 year old who electrocuted his brother because he denied puncturing a pride-and-joy bicycle intentionally (I still believe this puncture was not an accident!!). In short summary, I cut the power to the main fuse box at home, I then removed a holy-cross bulb from a bedroom picture light (remember the tall red ones with the cross filament?) and placed a 20-pents coin on the live terminal before restoring the mains power. Mischeviously, I then encouraged my brother with “I can’t reach it, you are taller, pass it down and we’ll split it between us”. 45 amps of current squared the quest for retaliation and 5 mins later I was having a 60-minute heart to hard with my Dad (with my 11 year old brother looking on dazed from his experience!!). In fairness, most of this conversation was my Dad trying to reverse engineer how a 10 year old could plan such a devious plot . Anyways, assuming my parents brought any of this history up then I would simply remind them that Thomas Edison has the same DOB as I, and that he saw a great deal of damage, shocks and broken glass before his light bulb eventually worked !!!

At work my colleagues say that I tend to take on way too much at the office, but I somehow manage to get through it all. Oftentimes this comes at the cost of personal gain. Oftentimes this comes as the cost of popularity with my very forgiving (and amazing) wife, as I typically work late and several hours most weekends. For me, there are simply never enough hours in the day or week. Owed to this I have lost countless weeks of vacation leave and personal time year on year over 20+ years. In over 25 years of my professional career I have yet to phone in ill, so have been lucky with health, as indeed have my employers (maybe some day they will say so ). Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately) I learned my own personal limits in life the hard way. When I completed an MSc in 7 months I figured I could easily complete a PhD in 3 years. In both cases I was also working full time at IBM. I ended up spending several hours off and on over a few months as an outpatient at Blackrock Clinic Hospital at the end of year 3, under the guidance of a consultant neurologist (a really great lady) and a very concerned young wife. I learned a truly valuable lesson from this experience. I graduated with a PhD at the end of year 4, carefully following the advice of Dr.Redmond which was of course closely supervised by my wife. Dr. Redmond coached me on “that line I should never ever cross again”. She taught me that the destination is indeed far less important than the journey. Luckily, my absolutely amazing and fantastic wife (Angela) who is my best friend and childhood sweetheart now keeps me to the left of this line. She fully supports me in going as near as I want to it, but also pulls me back when she thinks I am too close. She might very well shoot me for saying this, but I was her first and only boyfriend (we met when she was 17), so it’s very hard for me to do anything wrong in her eyes when there is no frame of reference for a retrospective comparison.

Another valuable personal and professional lesson I learned was not to leave the office at 10pm on a winter’s night and drive 200 miles to our 2nd home in Killarney, Co.Kerry (3.5 hours drive). On Dec 18 th 2013 we hit a black ice patch on the M7 motorway, and crashed straight in to concrete bollards whilst in cruise control at 120KPH (75MPH). I was too tired to notice the temperature dropping below freezing on the dashboard. In earnest, I almost killed my wife and I for lack of very simple concentration. Luckily, fate was on our side that night and we both came out without a scratch (albeit the car was written off). There was one positive from the accident that gave me yet another “I told you that you were wrong” to my Dad. He thought we were completely and utterly insane for buying a 4 year old S350 Merc which had 3.7L petrol engine and 350BHP. His justification was road tax=€1900, mpg=20ish, insurance levy=30%, Tyres=€1,250 every 12,000 miles, all parked (forgive the pun) in the same sentence with “madness”. We actually bought this car for a song (80% price depreciation) as no one else would buy it owed to these running costs. In any other car I am pretty certain that we would not be around today. Net net, this was absolutely “the” best buy I ever made !!

On the career side, I joined IBM as my 7th professional career move. I have been with IBM since 1996 (1994 if we count the Lotus acquisition). I have had various roles spanning various different technology verticals. I have worked under dozens of Executives and VPs and have had many great years with IBM (great employees). Prior to IBM I worked with Lotus Development. Prior to Lotus I spent time working in USA (Quark). Prior to Quark I had other roles in industry such as QSS and Penn Chemicals. I paid off my first car loan with a small start-up company (Ardeevin Designs) that I created for designing web-sites with my wife. I was also a System 36 RPG programmer

working at NatWest Bank in the UK, assisting with the Abbey National floatation. Way way back I started my career as a research intern with Cork Institute of Technology on a 12 month contract designing, developing and implementing a Mintel Communications Network for Cork City VEC. All of these professional engagements were R&D roles of one kind or another, on one technology or another, in one country or another. My work has brought me to many States in USA, as well as UK, Germany, France, Israel, China and Japan where I have met and worked with truly amazing people (several of whom remain good and trusted friends today).

At IBM I am an Exec, Industry, Academic and Customer facing IBM STSM today, with a broad range of interests and responsibilities. I dedicate a great deal of my time to helping others at IBM. At any one time I have several mentees, typically across a number of teams and geographies. Every day I get approached by some IBMers or University or Industry colleague asking for help or advice on something. At IBM this is oftentimes leaders in my own Brand or other IBM Brands, oftentimes less senior bands, oftentimes IBM sales or IBM support, and sometimes folks I'd least expect. Aside from the MRBI, Bord Gas and ESB cold calls looking for new business I have welcomed all of them! Today, along with two other senior MBA and PhD colleagues I am working to build a new Innovation Project Office at the IBM Ireland Software Lab. This is a first of a kind and new initiative for the IBM Software Group teams in Ireland and has my full and undivided attention. IBM Ireland is home to most of the IBM Software Group brands, hence our applied innovation interests are broad and include Cloud, Analytics, Social, Mobile, Security, as well as applied ICT innovation in Environment, Cognitive, Telco, Social Sciences, Green, Energy, Performance, Cognitive, Watson, Pharma, Bio-Tech, Agri, Big data, and lots more. The new IBM Ireland Innovation Project Office is being set up with an IBM Ireland-wide remit, in turn leveraging the skills and immense talent in IBM Ireland’s 4,000+ strong engineers. This new team will front the IBM IRL Lab teams & compete in Horizon 2020 and other EU Funded Projects. The team will also engage with IBM Clients to help with innovative POCs that can help IBM Clients solve challenging ICT prolems as well as partnering with IBM on win-win successes. We will also run several internal and externally funded MSc, PhD and Post Doc projects through this new team. And yes, we are indeed hiring, strong Java and RDBMS developers welcomed, particularly those with MSc and PhD degrees.

One critique or strength I am said to have (depending on perspective) is never saying "No" when someone asks for help, regardless of rank or band or division or persona. I fully accept this critique, and there is a compelling reason for this. IBM fully sponsored both of my MSc and PhD studies way back. I remain eternally grateful for this to the current date. In today’s currency this would be approx $60,000-$75,000 to fund both degrees, or over twice the average industrial wage in Ireland. Thanks to IBM's help both of these won industry prizes. Subsequent published papers from the same research won medals at industry conferences and led to multiple successful patent filings at the USPTO. Hence, I always feel a professional duty of care to "give back" wherever and whenever I can inside or outside of IBM. Owed to this latter perspective, I'm very well known throughout IBM, industry, academia, and have 2500+ LinkedIn professional connections today with lots of peers and colleagues world wide. I also have over 120 written recommendations and 350 endorsements on my LinkedIn profile . These are from prominent Industry, Academic, IRL Government and global leaders, Peers & Colleagues in and outside of IBM, as well as MSc, PhD and Post Docs that I have helped over the years. Significantly, four highly respected IBM DEs that have mentored and shaped me professionally over many years were Mr. Scott Prager, Dr. Edie Stern, Dr. Barry Willner and Dr.Dave Ogle. They have never said "no" when I came to them for help and I thank each of them for their time and their many hours of patience. Consequently, I try to follow their example and I take this example to the numerous customers, industry, client and academic professionals I interact with daily and weekly. In these engagements I carry the many words of my mentors’ wisdom, words like "....that my need to help with customer problems simply means that we (IBM) have likely done something wrong", or words like “never be afraid to do the right thing, even to a point of personal compromise or sacrifice, in the long run you will be a far better person for it”, or words like “academic and professional achievements mean very little, the real measurement is in how you leverage these to influence the world and those around you in positive and helpful ways”.

I believe/hope that I have influenced several individuals, society, businesses, customers, teams, peers, colleagues professionally in many ways. The numerous LinkedIn letters on my profile help me understand some of the where, how and when. My personal credo on life is integrity, openness and honesty in all relationships and following through on promises I make. My fantastic wife is always my top interest/priority above all other things, and I know this because she keeps telling me so. From time to time she also reminds me of the concluding words in her own wedding speech on Dec 6th, 1996 to a 200+ audience - - - these words went something alongs the lines of……. “Pat thinks he is the boss of the house, but he is really housing the boss” ).

Folks often ask me when I will leave IBM. This time will surely come, but not right now. My personal belief on technology and technology companies is that no industry product or solution is ever 100% perfect, but I believe that IBM have the most secure, reliable, integrated and innovative products in the market. I also believe that there is no large or small technical problem IBM cannot solve with our wealth of expertise, skills and technologies. I say this with confidence, as I use IBM cloud and on premise products/technologies each and every day of the week. I have indeed been approached on several opportunities outside of IBM year on year. What has kept me at IBM for so long is the heterogeneity of challenges, opportunities and some really and truly great leaders and genuine “want to do the right thing” people. I'll remain with IBM as long as I'm adding value to IBM and as long as the job stays both broad and interesting. I’ll part ways at speed if this ever changes .

So, who exactly am I? Not an easy question and not a quick answer, as the answer for those who “really” want to know is based on a foundation of context over many years, some of which is described above. For those who want the quick summary I would respond by saying I am firstly a husband and secondly a son, a brother, a nephew, a godfather, an uncle, a cousin, a colleague and a friend. I place honesty, loyalty and integrity as central to my way of life regardless of consequences this may bring. I am inquisitive, a researcher and a full time “student of life”. The single treasure that I hold most dear is my Wife, who will always remain my top priority above any and all things. I am an innovator, a DIY enthuasist and a risk taker. I tend to fix most things that I break and tend to

break plenty of things that I subsequently have to fix. I’m a strong believer in equal rights and that each individual is entitled to their own view and shaping their own path in life. I am also a cyclist, swimmer, golfer, angler and reader when I can find the time. I don’t have a permanent address as I live in two houses, and rarely know if I will be in the other one next week. I try to keep my glass half full and when I don’t I can always rely on my wife to top it up for me. I am both a mentor and a mentee, and am well known and respected in many circles, families, groups, companies, universities and countries. Those who know me well know that I honour all promises that I make regadless of the personal cost. In life I always give back more than I get, share with charities and find it hard to pass a needy person on the street without donating. Both life and fate have fully compensated by balancing the books significantly in my favour. I finally understand that life is indeed a journey, the destination for which will take care of itself, and I appreciate that the path to this destination is fractionally in my own control.

Feel free to check out my profile and professional resume on LinkedIn, or feel free to reach out to me through Gmail, Twitter, Facebook or Skype via dr.patosullivan@gmail.com. At IBM you can get me on patosullivan@ie.ibm.com.

Pat O’Sullivan