Eugene Kolker

Recently Eugene Kolker became the Vice President and Chief Data Officer at IBM Global Technology Services (GTS), the largest business unit of IBM Corp. Eugene’s mission is to leverage data and analytics as strategic business assets of GTS and IBM for data-enabled, better-informed decisions and execution.

Eugene has 27 years of experience in multi-disciplinary data analysis, advanced analytics, and informatics and 17 years of experience in management, business, and community development. Prior to IBM, Gene was Chief Data Officer (CDO) at Seattle Children’s Hospital (SCH). At SCH, he created and led the CDO Analytics Program, which focused on leveraging complex data through analytics and informatics to improve safety, clinical and business outcomes, and customer services, reduce cost, and drive innovation. In turn, this will provide high quality care for consumers with the most effective use of resources and enable healthcare transformation.

Previously, Eugene was the Founder and President of BIATECH Informatics Innovation Center, which was acquired by SCH. Eugene has over 130 publications in 40 different journals and served as the Co-Founder and Executive Editor of the journals “Big Data” and “OMICS: A Journal of Integrative Biology”. He also provides advisory and consulting services to multi-disciplinary customers, including, for example, Gartner’s CDO Advisory Board, and NIH’s External Advisory Board of the dkNET NIDDK Information Network.

In April 2015, Eugene was honored by the HIMSS members to be one of the top three "Innovators" in their HIT Awards, which recognize industry leaders improving healthcare through technology. In May 2015, he was named one of the “Top 16 data-driven geeks to watch” by HIMSS. In June 2015, one of his papers on integrative analysis of personal biomedical data won the first prize in the Metabolites Best Papers Award. In October 2015, Eugene was placed into “Top 25 Chief Data Officers” by LinkedIn.