Josephine Cheng, IBM Fellow & Vice President, IBM Research - Almaden, visited Prague earlier this year. During her one day visit organized by Jan Kleindienst, Head of the Prague Research Lab, Josephine met with selected clients, academicians and authorities in the field of medicine and medical research.One of the main goals of her visit was to identify opportunities how the Almaden, known among other accomplishments for its medical research, and Prague research team focused on voice recognition, conversational NLU technologies, and advanced user interfaces could work more closely together in the future.
Despite her busy schedule, Josephine found time to meet with reporters from Ekonom, Czech leading business weekly, and talked to them about the IBM’s research and a life of an “IT scientist." Below is a selection of Q&A from the article.
How important is the Czech research centre in the context of the worldwide IBM research?
It is very important. I would say it is one of the most important ones in the respective field, voice recognition technologies.
Could you describe your research activities in Prague?
We focus on the research in the field of human-machine dialogue modeling. But it is not easy to teach computers to understand and especially to engage in a natural conversation, even today after more than 50 years of research. The local group has contributed by cooperating on a number of patents.
What outcomes do you have?
For example those, who drive Honda or Toyota higher class models, have direct experience with voice control developed in the Prague lab. We also work on programs for language teaching or using computers for automatic real-time interpreting from one language into another.
You hold 28 patents, mainly related to software. What is your opinion of patents? Could it be they decelerate the development, when used by large companies against competition?
They are helpful, they protect us. It is not true that they decelerate the progress. IBM has donated hundreds of patents to the open-source community. We also support small companies to cross-licensing. And I have never heard of IBM using software patents as a weapon against competitors.
Scientists are said to be weirdos, the same goes for IT people. Does it mean that IT researchers are double weird?
This is the first time I have heard it, I think we are very much like anybody else. We do a lot for the society and I am proud of it. We – researchers - transform the world every day and we have contributed to developing things everybody uses. I have worked on databases and now they are used everywhere: in all companies, banks, airlines, but also hotels and restaurants. Ten years ago, I helped to develop first mobile applications and now I can see a lot of progress. Many things that we have invented make people’s lives easier and that is what I love about IT.
Back to scientists: does your research centre have exercise rooms, relax sofas and other unusual instruments?
Almaden is a quite an unusual place, surrounded by hills and trees. We have a gym, but many people just exercise outside, go cycling or taking part at Almaden Olympic Games organized every year. We have regular camping nights for employees and their families in the nearby forests. Wider public can benefit from educational programs on science and technology. We aim to promote science and bring it closer to people’s attention.
Is the promotion of science helpful?
I think so. Besides these camps, we also organize engineers´ weeks, when our employees visit schools, give lectures on research and development and motivate students. It is necessary, because many students, especially in poor regions have no idea what researchers do. They believe that scientists are there to repair a TV set or a car. They do not have a clue, who a software engineer is. Therefore we try to educate them, raise the awareness of elementary things. After this educational week program, some of them may focus on development. Some children even send me letters describing what they have learnt. I really believe such programs are beneficial.
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