IBM said today it's entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Cognos, a firm that provides business intelligence technologies to K-12 and higher education and other sectors. The deal is still dependent on shareholder and regulatory approval and other conditions but is expected to close in the first quarter of 2008 and is valued at about $5 billion.
The Software & Information Industry Association has elected eight new members to its Education Division Board of Directors and appointed six others to serve one-year terms on the board. The new members, along with seven currently serving, will represent 160 member companies in the SIIA that provide technology for education.
Women are falling further behind in information technology and computer science, according to a new report released by the National Center for Women & Information Technology (NCWIT). The study, the NCWIT Scorecard, compiled data on girls and women in computer science and IT as students at the K-12 and post-secondary levels, as well as women working as professionals in IT and as faculty in computer science in higher education. It painted a fairly bleak picture of the situation in the United States, where women make up the drastic minority of participants in science- and technology-related studies and where that minority shrinks further the higher one looks up the academic and corporate ladder.
The University of Tulsa has announced the appointment David Greer as the first executive director for its newly formed Institute for Information Security.
The University of Arizona named Sylvia Johnson, an attorney working in its Office of the General Counsel, as the university's first information security officer.
Women in Technology International, a professional organization for tech-savvy women, inducted Lucy Sanders, Executive in Residence at the University of Colorado's Atlas Institute, into its Hall of Fame. Sanders is also CEO and Co-founder of the National Center for Women & Information Technology.
Duke University named John Board, an associate professor and associate chair of electrical and computer engineering, as its associate chief information officer, Duke Chief Information Officer Tracy Futhey said.
Arizona State University named Robert Greenes, an expert in the field of medical information technology, to head its new Department of Biomedical Informatics. Greenes, who is 67, joins ASU after four decades at Harvard University.
William Wulf, who received the University of Virginia's first doctorate in computer science and who spent 11 years as president of the National Academy of Engineering, is returning to U.Va.'s Charlottesville campus to teach.
Anne, Margulies, the executive director of MIT's groundbreaking OpenCourseWare initiative, has been named chief information officer and assistant secretary of the Executive Office of Administration and Finance of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
