The Grainger College of Engineering

Arvind Krishna

Arvind Krishna
Arvind Krishna

For his guiding influence in technical management, network, computer security and strategic leadership for IBM Research.

Senior Vice President and Director, IBM Research

  • B. Tech., 1985, Electrical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology
  • MS, 1987, Electrical & Computer Engineering, University of Illinois
  • Ph.D., 1991, Electrical & Computer Engineering, University of Illinois

Arvind Krishna began his career with IBM in 1990 and has since influenced the organization in many capacities including, executive, product management, and technical research positions. Most recently, Krishna was named Senior Vice President and Director of IBM Research in January 2015. He is only the 11th person to hold this position in the seven decade history of IBM Research. In this role, he helps guide the company’s overall technical strategy, overseeing a global organization of approximately 3,000 scientists and technologists, located in 12 labs, on six continents. 

Prior to being named director of research, Krishna was general manager of IBM Systems and Technology Group’s Development and Manufacturing organization. In this role he was responsible for the advanced engineering and development of a full technology portfolio, ranging from advanced semiconductor materials to leading-edge microprocessors, servers and storage systems. His team developed Power 8, the industry’s first processor designed for Big Data; introduced OpenPOWER; brought the world’s fastest 22nm silicon process to the market; announced Software Defined Storage scaling to exabytes; and brought other innovations across Mainframe and Storage products to the marketplace.

He served as general manager of IBM Information Management from 2009-2012, which included database, information integration and Big Data software solutions. Over his years in Information Management, Krishna helped grow the division’s revenue by roughly 50 percent through a mix of organic innovation and acquisition. Prior to that, he was Vice President of Strategy for IBM Software, where he identified more than 10 companies to acquire and led the integration of their operations into IBM.

He has held several key technical roles at IBM Software and IBM Research, where he pioneered the company’s security software business. As Vice President for Database Servers, he oversaw worldwide development of information software, defined business and technical strategy, and developed delivery, sales, and ecosystem for IBM’s multi-billion dollar data servers segment.

Krishna is the co-author of 15 patents, acted as editor of IEEE and ACM journals, and has published extensively in technical conferences and journals. In addition to his Illinois degree, he has an undergraduate degree from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur. In 2007, he received the Distinguished Alumni Award from the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Illinois.

Current as of May 2022.