DANBURY, Connecticut — The Western Connecticut State University Math Club will host an IBM Research Panel, featuring five esteemed individuals who are experts in quantum computing, AI, and cloud computing. The event will be from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. on Friday, Oct. 10, 2025, in the Campus Center Ballroom on the university’s Westside campus, 43 Lake Ave. Extension in Danbury. The event is free, and the public is invited.
The panel will include a distinguished engineer with more than 150 patents and research publications, alongside other highly accomplished researchers who are at the forefront of technological advancements. These experts will share their journeys, insights, and strategies for success in a rapidly evolving field.
The panel will be moderated by WCSU alumna Nikita Karim, a former IBM employee who is pursuing her M.S. in Artificial Intelligence at WCSU.
The panel participants will include:
Dr. Daniela Bogorin, Senior Research Engineer, IBM Quantum
Dr. Daniela Bogorin is a Quantum Research Scientist at IBM Research’s Thomas J. Watson Center in Yorktown Heights, New York. She joined IBM and the Quantum team in 2018. Bogorin leads the laboratory responsible for selection of quantum computer processors, ensuring the hardware meets stringent performance standards ahead of deployment in IBM Quantum systems around the world. Over the years, she worked on the development of Falcon 27 qubits; hummingbird 50 qubits; Eagle 127 qubits; Condor 1121 qubits and Heron with 156 qubits. Bogorin earned her Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Miami. She has authored more than 50 peer-reviewed publications and patents on superconductivity, microwave/low-temperature physics, thin-film materials, and qubit engineering.
Dr. Hubertus Franke, Research Scientist, IBM T.J. Watson Research Center
Dr. Franke is a Distinguished Research Scientist at the IBM T.J. Watson Research Center, Yorktown Heights, New York. He received a Diplom Informatik degree from the Technical University in Karlsruhe (KIT), Germany (1987) and a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennesse (1992). Since joining IBM Research in 1993, Franke has worked in many areas of the system stack. He was responsible for the ASCI-supercomputing MPI messaging and gang scheduling system, he has extensive experience in Operating Systems being responsible for the Enterprise Linux Research strategy in the early 2000s with several contributions to the Linux kernel, and he was a lead architect for the PowerEN architecture and in particular the novel on-chip accelerator integration. Franke was senior manager of the software defined systems and cloud department working on networking, scheduling and infrastructure management. Most recently, he works on confidential computing and AI integration. Franke has received eight Outstanding Technical Achievement Awards from IBM, and has given many keynote addresses at renowned conferences. He is an ACM Fellow (Association for Computing Machinery), an IBM Master Inventor (184 patents) and is widely published (150+).
Nigel Hinds, Technical Staff Member, IBM Research
Nigel Hinds is a technical staff writer within the IBM Research Division. He developed a scalable data work-flow architecture in Java to process NASA datasets and load into Hadoop analytics system. He initiated and led meetings to bridge technical divide between Board and Host system design teams, advancing a stalled multi-million dollar project. Hinds developed customer critical (firmware and FreeBSD) Ethernet drivers for a new IBM multi-core system. As a leading member of a small engineering team developing multi-core system software, Hinds also engineered system initialization code and led some project planning. He also wrote technical Statement-Of-Work and developed customer critical (firmware and FreeBSD) Ethernet drivers ($1 Million contract) for a new IBM multi-core system. Hinds also developed a distributed system to collect and analyze results from thousands of kernel tests, and used Postgres and Python to create a system to collect data and allow users to query and correlate results. He worked to develop a system to iteratively combine and test thousands of kernel patches; a Python-based engine that searched the combinatorial space of kernel configurations. The system interacted with a distributed job execution server to schedule and retrieve results. Hinds also is a major contributor to the code coverage sub-project and developed/distributed network bandwidth allocator for large data centers.
Radha Ratnaparkhi, Vice President and CTO of Services Research Collaboration Program
Radha Ratnaparkhi currently leads the Open Innovation project for Granite Feedback within IBM for Research’s Gen AI Granite model. She also leads the Granite for Developers initiative within IBM Research. Her prior responsibilities include being the Vice President and CTO for RCP (Research Consulting Partnership); VP, Research Technical Community; VP Research Operations; VP Software Defined Environments; VP IT and Wireless Convergence; Director of Commercial Systems; and WebFountain. Ratnaparkhi’s experience at IBM also includes her development leadership for DB2 z/OS. Prior to IBM, Ratnaparkhi was leading the Java products development team at Informix Software and her earlier responsibilities included leadership of the Connectivity libraries, IDS 7.x, Informix NewEra & 4GL. She also was part of the leadership team that launched the India Development Centre for Informix Software in Mumbai, India. Ratnaparkhi started her career in Mumbai, India, with Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) as a System Software engineer working on Burroughs & Tandem systems, as well as being part of TCS’s Tata Research Design & Development Centre in Pune, India where her focus was on C++ Compiler Testing and ISO9000 certification. Ratnaparkhi has a Bachelor of Science with a Major in Statistics (Minor in Mathematics) from the University of Mumbai, a Master of Statistics (M.Stat) from the Indian Statistical Institute in New Delhi, and an M.Tech in Computer Science from the Indian Institute of Delhi.
Mary Beth Rothwell, Senior Manager, IBM Quantum
Mary Beth Rothwell is a Quantum Research Scientist at IBM Research’s Thomas J. Watson Center in Yorktown Heights, New York. She joined the Quantum team in 2007 after 20+ years supporting various roles in Semiconductor Research Fabrication, including Electron Beam Lithography, Flat Panel Display, Packaging and MRAM technologies. Rothwell pioneered the fabrication of quantum devices in the MRL (Microelectronics Research Laboratory) to improve their performance by leveraging the MRL toolset. Going forward, she was the Lead Fabrication Integrator for quantum devices, becoming a manager in 2015, leading the Fabrication/Integration team for quantum devices. In 2020, she became a Senior Manager leading Characterization, Fabrication and Integration. In 2021, she was promoted to Senior Technical Staff Member and continues to manage and contribute to the IBM Quantum program’s mission of bringing “useful quantum computing to the world.” Rothwell earned her B.S. in Chemistry from Pace University in Pleasantville, New York. She has contributed to more than 50 patents during her IBM career thus far.
Nikita Karim, Graduate Research Fellow, Western Connecticut State University (Moderator)
Nikita Karim is a Graduate Research Fellow in Artificial Intelligence at Western Connecticut State University, where she also earned her Bachelor of Science in Computer Science. The program is jointly administered by the Mathematics and Computer Science Departments. She began her career as a Software Engineer Co-Op at IBM Research’s Thomas J. Watson Research Center for Emerging Technologies and Solutions, leading a team to first place in the first 72-hour virtual BlueHack competition, which brought together 77 teams from 20 IBM sites across the United States to compete in four categories. She later joined IBM Consulting as a Senior Automation Engineer, specializing in software development, test automation, and CI/CD pipelines for enterprise and financial applications, earning the IBM Service Excellence Award and Manager’s Choice Award. Karim received the 2025 Mathematical Association of America (MAA) Student Scholar Award, the D.E. Shaw Student Grant, and the WCSU Tao Scholarship. She presented at the 2025 MAA MathFest Conference on an agentic AI framework for breast cancer detection, applying wavelet-enhanced multi-view learning, spatial transcriptomics, and matrix factorization to improve subtype classification and clinical decision support. She actively mentors and inspires future STEM leaders through her roles as a STEM Research Mentor at Western Connecticut State University, a Software Engineer Mentor for IBM Research’s GirlsGoTechKnow, and a volunteer with the Society of Women Engineers THINKSteam, Black Girls Code, and Girls Who Code.
This panel aims to inform attendees from all backgrounds to realize that success in STEM is within your reach — through education, determination, and resilience. Networking & hors d’oeuvres will be provided. This is an opportunity to learn, connect with industry experts, and be inspired.
Western Connecticut State University changes lives by providing all students with a high-quality education that fosters their growth as individuals, scholars, professionals, and leaders in a global society. Our vision: To be widely recognized as a premier public university with outstanding teachers and scholars who prepare students to contribute to the world in a meaningful way.