Edith Stern To Receive The ASME Kate Gleason Award

NEW YORK, Oct. 9, 2012 – Edith Stern, a resident of Yorktown Heights, NY, and distinguished engineer at IBM (Somers, NY), will be honored by ASME. She is being recognized for lifetime achievement in developing novel applications of new technologies, from the intersection of telephony and the internet, to remote health monitoring, to digital media. She will receive the Kate Gleason Award.

Established in 2011, the award recognizes a female engineer who is a highly successful entrepreneur in a field of engineering or who has had a lifetime of achievement in the engineering profession. The award honors the legacy of Kate Gleason, the first woman to be welcomed into ASME as a full member. It will be presented to Ms. Stern at a special Honors Assembly held in conjunction with ASME’s 2012 International Mechanical Engineering Congress and Exposition, to be held in Houston, Nov. 9 through 15.

Stern has spent nearly 40 years contributing insights and technology to industries leveraging information technology (IT). She is named as an inventor on more than 100 issued U.S. patents, and educates on the patent process worldwide. An innovator that has made a real impact, Stern’s broad contributions span multiple industries—she was at the forefront of integrating the internet and telephone networks, put tablet computers on 18-wheeler trucks, and was part of the team that won a technical Emmy for digital commercial insertion on the Warner Bros. Television Network. She also initiated several projects related to remote monitoring and the use of radio frequency identification systems in the healthcare industry to improve safety and efficiency.

She began her career at IBM in the early ’70s, working on applications of information technology to telephony, with projects designed to extend the life of existing mechanical equipment, or to replace it with IT solutions. Her efforts led to many new software products in the nascent IBM family of real-time computing, enabling services such as direct dialing (1 + phone number) in areas where existing services were only handled by telephone operators; and custom calling features, such as *69 to return the last unanswered call received.

Stern’s group took all areas of the telephony world and applied technology to it—from the switching itself, to the billing, to the operators’ actions. She led a project to replace mark sense cards used for billing with clean, fast keyboards, eliminating the operator’s tedious and dirty task of using soft pencils to fill in bubbles on computer cards. In the mid-80s, Stern managed a new iteration of IBM’s directory assistance system (DAS), which allowed 411 operators to eliminate paper phone books that were re-published nightly to account for new listings, and drastically improved directory assistance response times; DAS enhancements provided reverse lookup capabilities (name and address search based on phone number).

For the last 15 years, Stern has focused on bringing IBM’s leading-edge research technologies to their first use in a commercial environment, such as multimedia digital conferencing and data center energy management. An IBM distinguished engineer since 2008, she is currently responsible for applying analytics in products for service management in the data center.

Stern is a role model, combining talent, passion, hard work and a commitment to mentoring. She was named an IBM master inventor in 1998 and has been a member of the IBM Academy of Technology since 1999.

Stern earned her associate’s degree at Miami-Dade Jr. College, Florida, in 1966; her bachelor’s degree in mathematics at Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton, in 1968 at the age of 15; and her master’s degree in mathematics at Michigan State University, East Lansing, in 1970.

About ASME ASME helps the global engineering community develop solutions to real world challenges. Founded in 1880 as the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, ASME is a not-for-profit professional organization that enables collaboration, knowledge sharing and skill development across all engineering disciplines, while promoting the vital role of the engineer in society. ASME codes and standards, publications, conferences, continuing education and professional development programs provide a foundation for advancing technical knowledge and a safer world. For more information visit www.asme.org.