C. Mohan

Primary inventor of the ARIES family of recovery and concurrency control methods, Mohan is also known for the industry-standard Presumed Abort commit protocol. Mohan joined IBM Research in 1981, where he worked on a number of topics in the areas of database, workflow, and transaction management. From June 2006 until January 2009, he worked as the IBM India Chief Scientist, based in Bangalore, India. Mohan has served as an IBM Fellow—IBM's highest technical position—since being named to that role in 1997, recognized worldwide as a leading innovator in transaction management.

In 2009, he was elected to the US National Academy of Engineering (NAE). He received the 1996 ACM SIGMOD Innovations Award in recognition of his innovative contributions to the development and use of database systems. In 2002, he was named an ACM Fellow and an IEEE Fellow. At the 1999 International Conference on Very Large Data Bases, Mohan was honored with the 10 Year Best Paper Award for the widespread commercial and research impact of his ARIES work, which has been widely covered in textbooks and university courses.

From IBM, he received 2 Corporate and 8 Outstanding Innovation/Technical Achievement Awards. He is an inventor on 34 patents and was named an IBM Master Inventor in 1997. Mohan worked very closely with numerous IBM product groups, and his research results were implemented in numerous IBM and non-IBM prototypes and products like DB2, MQSeries, WebSphere, Informix, Cloudscape, Lotus Domino/Notes, Microsoft SQLServer, and System Z Parallel Sysplex.

He has served on the advisory board of IEEE Spectrum and as an editor of VLDB Journal and Distributed and Parallel Databases. He has served as a Steering Council member of IBM's Software Group Architecture Board, and as a member of IBM's Technical Leadership Team (TLT), Academy of Technology, and Information Management Architecture Board. In the past, Mohan has been a member of IBM's Research Management Council (RMC), IBM India's Senior Leadership Team, the IBM Asset Architecture Board, and the Bharti and Vodafone Technical Advisory Councils. He also served on the Academic Senate of the International Institute of Information Technology (IIIT) at Bangalore.

He received his Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Texas at Austin in 1981. In 2003, he was named a Distinguished Alumnus of IIT Madras, from which he received a B.Tech. degree in Chemical Engineering in 1977. Mohan has been a frequent speaker in North America, Western Europe, and India, and has given talks in 35 countries.