Josephine Cheng

Josephine Cheng has been at the forefront of relational database technology for more than 20 years. Currently, she is responsible for advanced technologies for IBM database products in pervasive computing. Her expertise is in introducing IBM's database technology to the Web, allowing people to access dynamic data via the Internet.Her teams have produced such landmark database technologies and products as: DB2 World-Wide Web and its follow-on, Net.Data, which provide Web access to corporate databases; XML Extender for DB2, which permits popular XML-formatted data to be integrated into DB2; and DB2 Everyplace, a tiny, totally self-managing database system with synchronization capability that extends the power of DB2 to convenient pervasive computing devices such as handheld computers and cellular phones. Cheng led development of the DB2/390 query optimization in the early 1980s and then, in 1987, joined IBM Patricia Selinger of IBM Research forming the Database Technology Institute (DBTI) to focus the creation of database technology in IBM's Research and Software divisions on common goals.

Josephine is appointed to IBM Fellow in 2000. In 1996, she received the YWCA's Tribute to Women and Industry Award and in 1997 the book "Web Gateway Tools," which she was a co-editor and co-author of was published by Wiley Computer Publishing. Cheng served on National Research Council Information Panel for technology assessment from 1998-2000. She received an Honorary Professorship from Shanghai University in China for the duration of 2000-2003. She received Women of Color 2001 Technology Innovation Awards. She received Asian American Engineer of the Year Award in 2003.