Colin Parris, GE Digital

As GE Digital’s Chief Technology Officer, Colin Parris leads teams that work to leverage technologies and capabilities across GE to accelerate business impact and create scale advantage for digital transformation. He also champions strategic innovations and identifies and evaluates new, breakthrough technologies and capabilities to accelerate innovative solutions to solve emerging customer problems. Colin created and leads the Digital Twin Initiative across GE.

Colin previously held the position of Vice President, Software and Analytics Research at GE Research in Niskayuna, NY. He holds a PhD, Electrical Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley; an MS from Stanford University; an MS, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the University of California, Berkeley and a BS, Electrical Engineering from Howard University.

Prior to joining GE, Colin worked at IBM where he was an IBM executive for 16 years in roles that spanned research, software development, technology management, and P&L management. He was the Vice President, System Research at the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Division, the Vice President Software Development for IBM's largest system software development lab (6,000+ developers worldwide), Vice President of Corporate Technology, and the Vice President and General Manager of IBM Power Systems responsible for the company's $5B+ Unix System and Software business.