Dr. Parris is currently Vice President, Digital Convergence, in the IBM Research Group.  Under his leadership IBM has formed an emerging business which takes an end-to-end systems perspective to bringing highly visual, interactive interfaces into the world of business, science, healthcare and education.

Previously Dr. Parris was Vice President, System Assurance & Post-Sales Technical Support, in the IBM Systems and Technology Group where he was responsible for end-to-end quality and post-sales technical support for the IBM server and storage products. Prior to his Systems role Dr. Parris was Vice President, Strategic Growth Development and has also held several other technical and business executive positions at IBM, Tivoli, and Prodigy Services Company as well as several research positions at IBM’s Thomas J. Watson Research Center and AT&T Bell. He has published numerous papers and has patents in the areas of network management, multimedia systems, and mobile agents.

Dr. Parris has received a Doctorate of Philosophy in Electrical Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley, a Masters in the Science of Management from Stanford University, Stanford (Sloan Fellow), a Masters of Science in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the University of California, Berkeley, and a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering at Howard University.