Stephen Brobst (born September 21, 1962) is an American technology executive.

Early life and education

Stephen Brobst was born September 21, 1962 at the hospital on

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...

campus where both of his parents did their undergraduate studies. In his childhood years he participated in chess tournaments sponsored by the

United States Chess Federation The United States Chess Federation (also known as US Chess or USCF) is the governing body for chess competition in the United States and represents the U.S. in FIDE, the World Chess Federation. US Chess administers the official national rating s ...

(USCF) and in league competitions between high schools in

Silicon Valley Silicon Valley is a region in Northern California that serves as a global center for high technology and innovation. Located in the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area, it corresponds roughly to the geographical areas San Mateo County ...

. He was president of his high school chess club. He graduated as valedictorian from Milpitas High School in 1980. For his undergraduate work he studied Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...

where he graduated in just three years and was bestowed the Bechtel Engineering Award as the highest honor for a graduating senior in the college of engineering for academic excellence and leadership. Brobst performed masters and PhD research at the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the ...

(MIT) at the

Laboratory for Computer Science Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) is a research institute at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) formed by the 2003 merger of the Laboratory for Computer Science (LCS) and the Artificial Intelligence Lab ...

where his dissertation work focused on load balancing and resource allocation for

massively parallel computing Massively parallel is the term for using a large number of computer processors (or separate computers) to simultaneously perform a set of coordinated computations in parallel. GPUs are massively parallel architecture with tens of thousands of t ...

architectures. He also holds an MBA with joint course and thesis work at the

Harvard Business School Harvard Business School (HBS) is the graduate business school of Harvard University, a private research university in Boston, Massachusetts. It is consistently ranked among the top business schools in the world and offers a large full-time MBA p ...

and the

MIT Sloan School of Management The MIT Sloan School of Management (MIT Sloan or Sloan) is the business school of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a private university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. MIT Sloan offers bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degree programs, ...

. At MIT he was bestowed the William Stewart Award for contributions to student life during his nearly ten years as a graduate resident and tutor at the Baker House undergraduate dormitory.

Career

Early career

After working at

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) is a federal research facility in Livermore, California, United States. The lab was originally established as the University of California Radiation Laboratory, Livermore Branch in 1952 in response ...

, IBM Research Division in San Jose, and

Hewlett-Packard The Hewlett-Packard Company, commonly shortened to Hewlett-Packard ( ) or HP, was an American multinational information technology company headquartered in Palo Alto, California. HP developed and provided a wide variety of hardware components ...

Laboratories in Palo Alto, Brobst founded multiple start-up companies focused on data management products and services. He founded Strategic Technologies & Systems (STS) in 1983 while he was a graduate student at MIT. STS was acquired by NCR Corporation in 1999. From 1993 through 2000 he was co-founder and chief technology officer at Tanning Technology Corporation, a services firm focusing primarily on the implementation of

Oracle An oracle is a person or agency considered to provide wise and insightful counsel or prophetic predictions, most notably including precognition of the future, inspired by deities. As such, it is a form of divination. Description The word '' ...

databases for transaction processing. Tanning executed an

initial public offering An initial public offering (IPO) or stock launch is a public offering in which shares of a company are sold to institutional investors and usually also to retail (individual) investors. An IPO is typically underwritten by one or more investment ...

in 1999 and was later acquired by Platinum Technologies. He co-founded NexTek Software in 1994, a firm that created a software product for workload management for relational database management systems, as a spinoff from Tanning Technology Corporation. IBM acquired technology from NexTek in 1998 which provided the software foundation for early versions of the DB2 Query Patroller. Brobst was involved in the creation of eHealthDirect, a software start-up for automated claims adjudication using

rule-based system In computer science, a rule-based system is used to store and manipulate knowledge to interpret information in a useful way. It is often used in artificial intelligence applications and research. Normally, the term ''rule-based system'' is appli ...

s for the health care industry, between 1999 and 2002. eHealthDirect (later renamed to DeNovis) was acquired by HealthEdge in 2003.

Teradata

Simultaneous with the acquisition of Strategic Technologies & Systems in 1999,

NCR Corporation NCR Corporation, previously known as National Cash Register, is an American software, consulting and technology company providing several professional services and electronic products. It manufactures self-service kiosks, point-of-sale termin ...

created a separate division for the

Teradata Teradata Corporation is an American software company that provides cloud database and analytics-related software, products, and services. The company was formed in 1979 in Brentwood, California, as a collaboration between researchers at Caltech a ...

relational database management system. Brobst was appointed as Chief Technology Officer for the newly formed Teradata Division and continues to serve in this capacity today. Teradata was spun off as a separate company and went public on the

New York Stock Exchange The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE, nicknamed "The Big Board") is an American stock exchange in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan in New York City. It is by far the world's largest stock exchange by market capitalization of its listed c ...

on October 1, 2007.

PCAST

During

Barack Obama Barack Hussein Obama II ( ; born August 4, 1961) is an American politician who served as the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, Obama was the first African-American president of the U ...

's first term Brobst was appointed to the

United States President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology The President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) is a council, chartered (or re-chartered) in each administration with a broad mandate to advise the president of the United States on science and technology. The current PCAST w ...

(PCAST) in the working group on

Networking and Information Technology Research and Development The Networking and Information Technology Research and Development (NITRD) program consists of a group of U.S. federal agencies to research and develop information technology (IT) capabilities to empower Federal missions; support U.S. science, eng ...

(NITRD). As part of this work he co-authored a report, “Designing a Digital Future: Federally Funded Research and Development in Networking and Information Technology”, delivered to Obama and the

United States Congress The United States Congress is the legislature of the federal government of the United States. It is bicameral, composed of a lower body, the House of Representatives, and an upper body, the Senate. It meets in the U.S. Capitol in Washing ...

in December, 2010. This report recommended that all federal agencies should have a

Big Data Though used sometimes loosely partly because of a lack of formal definition, the interpretation that seems to best describe Big data is the one associated with large body of information that we could not comprehend when used only in smaller am ...

strategy and initiated government investment in this area. Brobst served as an advisor to the

National Academy of Sciences The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, non-governmental organization. NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the Nati ...

in the area of IT workforce development in 1998 and 1999.

Teaching

Brobst lectured at

Boston University Boston University (BU) is a private research university in Boston, Massachusetts. The university is nonsectarian, but has a historical affiliation with the United Methodist Church. It was founded in 1839 by Methodists with its original campu ...

in the

computer science Computer science is the study of computation, automation, and information. Computer science spans theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, information theory, and automation) to Applied science, practical discipli ...

department between 1984 and 1992 while working toward his PhD at MIT. He taught undergraduate courses in

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems schedule tasks for efficient use of the system and may also in ...

design,

data structure In computer science, a data structure is a data organization, management, and storage format that is usually chosen for efficient access to data. More precisely, a data structure is a collection of data values, the relationships among them, a ...

s and

algorithm In mathematics and computer science, an algorithm () is a finite sequence of rigorous instructions, typically used to solve a class of specific Computational problem, problems or to perform a computation. Algorithms are used as specificat ...

s. He taught graduate courses in advanced database design as well as parallel computer architecture. Brobst has taught at the Data Warehouse Institute (later renamed Transforming Data With Intelligence) since 1996. In 2001 Brobst worked with a team of academics in Pakistan to develop a course curriculum for database design and analytics. He participates in the

Girls Who Code Girls Who Code (also known as GWC) is an international nonprofit organization that aims to support and increase the number of women in computer science. The organization works toward closing the gender employment difference in computing. They h ...

initiative, teaching computer science concepts to high school girls.

Recognition

In 2014 Brobst was ranked by Advisory Cloud as the fourth best CTO in the United States. He is an elected member of the

Eta Kappa Nu Eta Kappa Nu () or IEEE-HKN is the international honor society of the Computer Science and Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). "The organization promotes excellence in the profession and in education through an emphasis ...

Tau Beta Pi The Tau Beta Pi Association (commonly Tau Beta Pi, , or TBP) is the oldest engineering honor society and the second oldest collegiate honor society in the United States. It honors engineering students in American universities who have shown a ...

, and Sigma Pi engineering honor societies. He is also a nominated member of the

New York Academy of Sciences The New York Academy of Sciences (originally the Lyceum of Natural History) was founded in January 1817 as the Lyceum of Natural History. It is the fourth oldest scientific society in the United States. An independent, nonprofit organization wit ...

Publications and patents

Brobst co-authored the chapter on

big data Though used sometimes loosely partly because of a lack of formal definition, the interpretation that seems to best describe Big data is the one associated with large body of information that we could not comprehend when used only in smaller am ...

for the ''Handbook of Computer Science'' (published by the Association for Computing Machinery in 2014). He also co-authored a report, “Designing a Digital Future: Federally Funded Research and Development in Networking and Information Technology”, delivered to President Barack Obama and the United States Congress in December, 2010. In addition, he co-authored “Building a Data Warehouse for Decision Support” (published by

Prentice Hall Prentice Hall was an American major educational publisher owned by Savvas Learning Company. Prentice Hall publishes print and digital content for the 6–12 and higher-education market, and distributes its technical titles through the Safari B ...

PTR in both English and Polish in 1997 and 1999, respectively). Brobst authored journal and conference papers in the fields of data management and parallel computing environments. He was a contributing editor for Intelligent Enterprise Magazine and published technical articles in The International Journal of High Speed Computing,

Communications of the ACM ''Communications of the ACM'' is the monthly journal of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). It was established in 1958, with Saul Rosen as its first managing editor. It is sent to all ACM members. Articles are intended for readers with ...

, The Journal of Data Warehousing, Enterprise Systems Journal, DM Review, Database Programming and Design, DBMS Tools & Techniques, DB2 Magazine, Oracle Magazine, Teradata Magazine and many others. Brobst holds patents in the area of advanced data management primarily in areas of workload management for database systems, advanced algorithms for cost-based optimization and

SQL query The SQL SELECT statement returns a result set of records, from one or more tables. A SELECT statement retrieves zero or more rows from one or more database tables or database views. In most applications, SELECT is the most commonly used data man ...

re-writes, and health care analytics.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Brobst, Stephen 1962 births American chief technology officers Living people MIT Sloan School of Management alumni NCR Corporation people Teradata UC Berkeley College of Engineering alumni