Dr. Matthew Ganis, a member of IBM’s Academy of Technology, is currently an IBM Senior Technical Staff Member located in Somers, New York. His current areas of interest include social media analytics, the Internet of Things, and Agile software methodologies. He is an adjunct professor of computer science and astronomy at Pace University in Pleasantville, New York, where he teaches at both the undergraduate and graduate level.
Dr. Ganis holds a BS degree in computer science and an MBA in information systems from Pace University, an MS degree in astronomy from the University of Western Sydney, Australia, and a doctorate of professional studies in computing from Pace University. He has authored or co-authored over 40 papers in both of his fields of interest, ranging from programming techniques, computer system administration, computer networking, and topics on stellar evolution and radio astronomy. He is also the proud coauthor of A Practical Guide to Distributed Scrum published by IBM Press.
In his 30-year career at IBM, he has been responsible for a number of technological advances such as the creation of the first enterprise firewalls for IBM; the creation of highly available World Wide Web platforms to support the Atlanta, Sydney, and Nagano Olympics (which secured Dr. Ganis and his team a spot in the Guinness Book of World Records for the highest sustained rate of Internet web traffic); and the proliferation of advanced software development techniques across IBM’s worldwide development laboratories.
He can be found on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/mattganis), on Twitter as @mattganis, or on his blog at http://mganis.blogspot.com.
Avinash Kohirkar is currently Manager of Social Business Adoption in IBM. His current areas of interest include deployment and adoption of social technologies within an enterprise, social engagement dashboards, and social media analytics. Avinash Kohirkar holds a BS degree in electronics and communications engineering from Osmania University (India), an MS degree in industrial engineering from NITIE (India), and an MBA in finance from California State University. He has contributed to IBM white papers and has given numerous presentations on social analytics in IBM and outside IBM. He has authored a number of articles on this subject that have been published in the Cutter IT Journal and Infosys Lab Briefings.
In his 19-year career at IBM, he has leveraged technologies such as e-business, Web 2.0, social collaboration, social graph technologies, big data, and social media and text analytics for the business benefit of IBM and IBM’s customers. He is recognized as a thought leader in the project management profession within IBM and is certified as Executive Project Manager at the highest level within IBM. He has held several technical, business, and management positions during his career: Architect, Development Manager, Project Manager, Project Executive, Associate Partner, Project Executive, and Business Manager.
He can be found on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/ AvinashKohirkar) and on Twitter as @kohirkar.
