PeopleofSuperintelligence

Researcher

Myron Flickner

Also known as Flick Flickner, Myron D. Flickner

Myron Flickner is an IBM Research engineer and inventor whose career runs from machine vision to brain-inspired computing. After earning electrical engineering degrees at Kansas State University in 1980 and 1982, he joined IBM Research San Jose in 1982, created the QBIC (Query by Image Content) system for content-based image retrieval at Almaden, and founded the BlueEyes project on attentive environments. From 2003 to 2010 he was IBM Research's Global Retail Industry Leader, and in 2010 and 2011 he was a product manager at Google. Two chip papers in Science, the million-neuron circuit of 2014 and NorthPole in 2023, list him as a coauthor. He is Manager of Brain-Inspired Software at IBM Research, where he works on low-power, brain-inspired computer systems.

Badges

Timeline

  1. 1980–1988

    From Kansas State to IBM Research

    He earns a B.S. in 1980 and an M.S. in 1982 in electrical engineering at Kansas State University, and joins IBM Research San Jose in 1982 to work on automated inspection of thin film disk heads. In 1987 and 1988, at IBM's Thomas J. Watson Research Center, he researches image processing languages and represents IBM on the ANSI X3H3.8/ISO image processing standards committee.

  2. By 1995

    The QBIC image search system

    Back in the Machine Vision Group at IBM's Almaden Research Center, he works on content based image retrieval and creates the QBIC (Query by Image Content) system. In May 1995, he coauthors "The Query By Image Content (QBIC) System" in SIGMOD Record with Jonathan Ashley, James Hafner, Denis Lee, Wayne Niblack and Dragutin Petkovic.

  3. By 2000

    BlueEyes and attentive environments

    He founds the BlueEyes project to explore how computing changes when the computer understands the emotional state of its users. In May 2000, as manager of the attentive environment project at Almaden, he gives Stanford's People, Computers, and Design seminar an overview of BlueEyes, with MAGIC pointing, the Emotion mouse and the attentive robot Pong as demonstrations. The work becomes an early foundation for IBM's Smart Surveillance System (S3) offering.

  4. 2003–2010

    Retail industry leader at IBM Research

    From 2003 to 2010, he is Global Retail Industry Leader for IBM Research. He creates and manages research projects relevant to the retail industry and educates industry leaders on disruptive technologies.

  5. 2010–2011

    Product manager at Google

    In 2010 and 2011, he works as a Product Manager at Google. Before Google, he works at IBM Research on the Smarter Planet platform for Analysis and Simulation of Health (SPLASH) and on the SyNAPSE Virtual Environment projects.

  6. 2014

    A million-neuron chip in Science

    He is one of the coauthors, with Paul Merolla and Dharmendra Modha among others, of "A million spiking-neuron integrated circuit with a scalable communication network and interface," published in Science in 2014. The paper describes a 5.4-billion-transistor chip with 4096 neurosynaptic cores that integrates 1 million programmable spiking neurons and 256 million configurable synapses.

  7. 2023

    NorthPole in Science

    He is among the coauthors of the NorthPole paper in Science in 2023, which introduces a brain-inspired, silicon-optimized chip architecture for neural inference. The chip is implemented in a 12-nm process and has no off-chip memory.

  8. As of October 2026

    Brain-inspired software at IBM

    He is Manager of Brain-Inspired Software at IBM Research, where he works on brain-inspired, low-power computer systems and on algorithms for neuromorphic hardware. In November 2025, he is a coauthor of a paper that builds the NorthPole chip into an LLM inference system of 288 accelerator cards.

Career

  1. Since 1987IBM ResearchManager of the attentive environment project, Global Retail Industry Leader
  2. 2010–2011GoogleProduct Manager
  3. From 1982IBM

Education

  1. 1982Kansas State UniversityB.S., M.S.

From the biography.

  1. Google alumni have founded or led 133 other organizations, more than any other AI labIncludes Myron Flickner. We estimate that alumni of 17 major AI labs went on to found or lead 350 other organizations, including 226 they founded, and we trace 472 career moves directly between 23 labs since 2010.
  2. 23% of people shaping AI who left a university for a company later returned to a universityIncludes IBM. We estimate that 468 of the 2,011 people shaping AI who left a university for a company (23%) later returned to a university after a median of 5 years, and 163 of 829 (20%) made the reverse round trip.
  3. Universities keep AI researchers for a median of 6 years, compared with 2 years at frontier labsIncludes IBM. Across 15,811 dated work stays (6,529 people), median role tenure runs from 6 years at universities to 2 years at frontier labs. We compare all five organization types, starting decades from the 1970s to the 2020s, and the organizations that keep people longest.
  4. People shaping AI work at a median of 3 organizations over a career: 3 for university starters and institute and lab starters, versus 2 for company startersIncludes IBM. Across 6,853 people shaping AI with a dated work role, we estimate a median of 3 parent organizations over a career (mean 3.6), comparing role groups, starting sectors and starting decades from the 1950s to 2020–2026.

Colleagues

People with dated positions at the same organization in the same years.

Sources and credits

Photo: We have no published photo of Myron Flickner yet. Send us a free-licensed photo.

  1. Myron Flickner - IBM Research research.ibm.com. Checked 21 October 2026.
  2. Frontiers in Attentive Environments: An overview of IBM Almaden Research Center's BlueEyes project (Stanford HCI seminar, May 26, 2000) hci.stanford.edu. Checked 21 October 2026.
  3. The Query By Image Content (QBIC) System for SIGMOD Record - IBM Research research.ibm.com. Checked 21 October 2026.
  4. A million spiking-neuron integrated circuit with a scalable communication network and interface for Science - IBM Research research.ibm.com. Checked 21 October 2026.
  5. A Million Spiking-Neuron Integrated Circuit with a Scalable Communication Network and Interface csl.yale.edu. Checked 21 October 2026.
  6. NorthPole: Neural Inference at the Frontier of Energy, Space, and Time modha.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  7. A Scalable NorthPole System with End-to-End Vertical Integration for Low-Latency and Energy-Efficient LLM Inference modha.org. Checked 21 October 2026.