Armenian President Vahagn Khachatruryan handed the2021 Global IT Award to IBM Vice President Leon Stok.
Leon Stok is IBM’s Vice President of IBM’s Electronic Design Automation group. His team delivers world-class design and verification flows and tools being used to design the world’s largest supercomputers, IBM Z and Power systems and IBM Quantum Systems.
IBM ranks among the world’s largest information technology companies, providing a wide spectrum of hardware, middleware and software as well as cloud computing and data analytics as well as consulting services in areas ranging from mainframe computers to nanotechnology.
The company has also served as a major research and development corporation over the years, with significant inventions like the floppy disk, the hard disk drive, and the UPC barcode.
Leon’s main contribution is in innovating chips for IBM products such as Automation, Robotics, Artificial intelligence, Cloud computing, Consulting, Blockchain, Computer hardware, Software, Quantum computing fueling IBM’s core strengths – its cloud, data analytics, mobile, social, and security businesses.
Leon Stok studied electrical engineering at Eindhoven University of Technology, the Netherlands, from which he graduated with honors in 1986. He obtained a Ph.D. degree from Eindhoven University in 1991. At IBM’s Thomas J. Watson Research Center, Leon Stok pioneered logic synthesis, as part of the team that developed BooleDozer. Subsequently he managed IBM’s synthesis group and drove the first commercial application of a fully integrated physical synthesis tool PDS, IBM’s Placement Driven Synthesis tool. From 1999-2004 he led all of IBM’s design automation research as the Senior Manager Design Automation at IBM Research. He drove key innovations in DFM using RRR (Radically Restrictive Rules), in static timing analysis using Statistical Timing in large block physical synthesis.
Dr. Stok has published over sixty papers on many aspects of high level, architectural and logic synthesis, low power design, placement driven synthesis and on the automatic placement and routing for schematic diagrams. He holds 13 patents in EDA. He was elected an IEEE Fellow for the Development and Application of High-level and Logic synthesis algorithms.
Inaugurated in 2009, the Global IT award honors individuals who have made extraordinary contributions to humanity through advancing the world of IT. The award highlights Armenia on the world IT map as a growing high-tech destination.
The Award consists of golden medal, diploma and trophy evoking High Technologies.
The medal for the Laureate of the State Award of the Republic of Armenia represents a winged lion authored by Karen Aghamyan, President of the Artists’ Union of Armenia.
