When Anna Topol first encountered a computer in the late 1980s at her high school in Poland, she wasn’t entirely impressed.
“I will be very honest, I didn’t think that I was good at it,” said Topol, recalling its greenish screen and rudimentary capabilities. “I’m like ‘I can draw a square in three seconds. Why would I code for five minutes to draw a square?’”
Still, the computer sparked her curiosity. The young booklover with a talent for physics and math began to imagine what this new technology could do in the future.
Thirty years later, Topol is the chief technology officer and a distinguished engineer at IBM’s Thomas J. Watson Research Center — the research headquarters of the renowned multinational information technology company. She leads the efforts to match IBM’s innovative research and emerging technologies to the strategic needs of a range of entities, from Fortune 500 companies and start-ups to government, nonprofits and academic institutions — like UAlbany. (IBM and the University are collaborating on multiple AI and supercomputing initiatives.)
Now, Topol imagines what her company’s research and technology can do for their partners. As a scientist, she is trained to solve problems. As a technologist, she answers questions like: “How can we collaborate together and what is the next step towards the technology development that we achieve together?”
Topol is energetic, passionate and prolific; she co-holds more than 90 patents, has authored or coauthored more than 100 research publications and has written book chapters on topics dealing with advances in artificial intelligence, such as “Promoting Economic Development and Solving Societal Issues Within Connect Industries Ecosystems in Society 5.0”
Working in Yorktown Heights, New York, at one of the world’s most prestigious research labs, is a far cry from her hometown of ´Swinouj´scie, a picturesque seaport on the shores of the Baltic where she recalls the seagulls, swans and the occasional beach takeover by wild boars.
“It’s beautiful. I absolutely loved being in Poland,” said Topol. But it was a visit to Wisconsin, at age 19, to see relatives that changed her address and, ultimately, the direction of her life.
After earning an undergraduate degree at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, she started work at Applied Science and Technology Inc. (ASTeX), a supplier of subsystems and sputtering tools for the semiconductor industry based in Wilmington, Mass. She enjoyed the firm and the work, but realized she was eager to continue learning about emerging sciences and new technologies.
“I’m a blessed technologist in IBM. I’m a distinguished engineer — all on the arms of people who carried me,” Topal says. “Therefore, it’s my obligation to make sure I do the same with others.”
On a recommended visit to UAlbany’s Institute for Materials (then part of Physics Department), Topol saw boxes of state-ofthe-art equipment from known technology companies — a sign of collaboration between industry and academia — and she knew that she had found what she was looking for.
“I felt that the labs were giving me the opportunity of getting my hands ‘dirty’ with electronics,” Topol earned a master’s and PhD in physics at UAlbany. “I felt I was part of something big.” She was the first postdoctoral fellow at the, then new, College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering (CNSE).
That “something big” came to Topol in the incredibly tiny form of optoelectronics (devices that emit, interact with and control light) embedded in semiconductors; it’s the field that brought her to IBM. In more than two decades with the company, she has garnered a wealth of experience in multiple departments and roles from researching technologies for the smallest SRAM (static random access memory) cells, being a principal investigator on government grants, leading patent operations and technology licensing and managing the research client experience center.
Today, as an executive, she insists that behind her success are people who served as teachers, mentors and inspirations, including computer pioneer Frances Allen ’54 — the first woman named an IBM Fellow and who also received the A.M Turing Award (often called the Nobel Prize for computing). Allen graduated from the New York State Teachers College, UAlbany’s predecessor.
Whenever visiting clients or speaking at conferences, she asks to meet with their women’s technology groups so that she can pay forward her good fortune and help them overcome barriers to their success. Topol, a confessed optimist, tells them: “Yes, there are many obstacles but you, yourself, are usually the biggest obstacle.”
It’s a lesson learned, all those years ago, after she encountered that early computer and, at first, didn’t think she was very good at it. Today, the distinguished engineer’s message to others is simple: Believe.
