Top IBM Research Stories of 2014

<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "HelvNeue Light for IBM",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">A Guinness World Record. A new kind of plastic. Oh, and a chip modeled after the human brain. Here are some of our most popular stories in 2014. It’s been a busy year! Thank you for reading, sharing, and commenting on them. But most of all, thank you for being curious about pushing the limits of science and technology. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><h2><b><span style="font-family: "HelvNeue Light for IBM",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><a href="http://ibmresearchnews.blogspot.com/2014/03/help-set-guinness-world-records-title.html">Help Set a Guinness World Record</a></span></b></h2><br /><i><span style="font-family: "HelvNeue Light for IBM",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt;">IBM scientists partnered with National Geographic Kids to set a Guinness World Records title for the world's smallest magazine cover.</span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br /></div><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/ucGbmsg5FvA" width="560"></iframe> <br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br /><br /><h2><b><span style="font-family: "HelvNeue Light for IBM",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><a href="http://asmarterplanet.com/blog/2014/03/smarter-planet.html">Meet Maria Dubovitskaya: Another Person for a Smarter Planet</a></span></b></h2></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br /><div style="text-align: left;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://asmarterplanet.com/files/2014/03/Maria.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://asmarterplanet.com/files/2014/03/Maria.jpg" width="133" /></a></div><i><span style="font-family: "HelvNeue Light for IBM",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt;">Ballet or mathematics? Most ordinary eight year olds girls would probably choose ballet, but Maria Dubovitskaya was anything but an ordinary eight year old.</span></i><br /><br /><i><span style="font-family: "HelvNeue Light for IBM",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt;">One day, after ballet lessons in the Moscow suburb of Domodedovo, Maria’s parents were running a little late. She heard other children, mostly boys her age, clacking away on IBM 286 PC keyboards in the classroom next door. Peeking through a crack in the door Maria was overcome with curiosity. </span></i><br /><i><span style="font-family: "HelvNeue Light for IBM",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt;"></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br /><br /><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><h2><b><span style="font-family: "HelvNeue Light for IBM",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><a href="http://asmarterplanet.com/blog/2014/05/ibm-researchs-jamie-garcia-fantastic-plastic.html">IBM Research's Jamie Garcia and Her Fantastic Plastic</a></span></b></h2></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br /><i><span style="font-family: "HelvNeue Light for IBM",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt;">When scientists succeed at IBM Research, they tend to stay. <a href="http://asmarterplanet.com/blog/2013/06/ibm-fellow-robert-dennard-wins-kyoto-prize.html">Robert Dennard</a>, the inventor of the DRAM, for instance, had been at IBM for 56 years when he retired earlier this year. But there are researchers at the opposite end of the seniority spectrum who are already making their marks—on IBM and the world.</span></i><br /><br /><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/uLqJ9IurF78" width="560"></iframe><span style="font-family: "HelvNeue Light for IBM",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br /><h2><b><span style="font-family: "HelvNeue Light for IBM",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><a href="http://asmarterplanet.com/blog/2014/02/project-lucy-confronting-africas-grand-challenges-watsons-help.html">Project Lucy: Confronting Africa’s Grand Challenges, with Watson's Help</a></span></b></h2><br /><i><span style="font-family: "HelvNeue Light for IBM",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt;">Amid the chaos of civil war, <a href="http://www.linkedin.com/pub/abdigani-m-diriye/10/a7/96b">Abdigani Diriye</a>’s family fled Somalia in a rush when he was just five years old. Diriye and his sister escaped to London in the care of a 19-year-old aunt; his father flew to Sweden; and his mother made her way through the battle zone to Kenya.</span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br /></div><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/O_VGuEkzsOk" width="560"></iframe> <br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br /><br /><h2><b><span style="font-family: "HelvNeue Light for IBM",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><a href="http://asmarterplanet.com/blog/2014/04/big-data-behind-quicken-loans-billion-dollar-bracket-challenge-yahoo-sports.html">The Big Data Behind Your College Basketball Brackets</a></span></b></h2></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://asmarterplanet.com/files/2014/04/ASPcollege_hoops.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://asmarterplanet.com/files/2014/04/ASPcollege_hoops.jpg" width="144" /></a></div><i><span style="font-family: "HelvNeue Light for IBM",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt;">Every year, top U.S. men’s college basketball teams enter a month-long tournament for a chance to be crowned champion. And it always stirs up fan and pundit predictions to pick potential winners of all 63 games. </span></i><br /><br /><i><span style="font-family: "HelvNeue Light for IBM",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt;">To really give the pot a stir this year, Berkshire Hathaway, Quicken Loans and Yahoo Sports teamed up to create the <a href="https://tournament.fantasysports.yahoo.com/quickenloansbracket/challenge/?qls=BDB_B14qlb03.qlredirect">Billion Dollar Bracket Challenge</a>. Choose every match up correctly and win $1B. </span></i><br /><br /><a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/ibm_research_zurich/13642593765/in/set-72157643436869903" target="_blank"><i>(download a "Bracketology" infographic)</i></a><br /><br /><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><h2><b><span style="font-family: "HelvNeue Light for IBM",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><a href="http://ibmresearchnews.blogspot.com/2014/01/graphene-circuit-ready-for-wireless.html#fbid=3cXVy7Ijyhs">Graphene Circuit Ready for Wireless</a></span></b></h2><br /><i><span style="font-family: "HelvNeue Light for IBM",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt;">Graphene, one of the world’s thinnest electronic nanomaterials, has long held the promise as a wonder material in everything from flexible touchscreens to super-fast circuits. It’s that interest in semiconductors that led my team to build the world’s most advanced, fully functional integrated circuit made of wafer-scale graphene – 10,000 times better performance than previously reported efforts.</span></i><br /><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPdJNuPPj-eZcAVS4ezwdv5-RSrbA9P-hjp4Tb94ovROn6M_uruTFd9j07j3fhqMLJKTXRms1HXK9N7J5RKiCwDVOatkDUG12o0OYoWgdS8bV-GjcxXCQ4ZhXLBC1gFUsWp9kkT2qciW4/s1600/graphene.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPdJNuPPj-eZcAVS4ezwdv5-RSrbA9P-hjp4Tb94ovROn6M_uruTFd9j07j3fhqMLJKTXRms1HXK9N7J5RKiCwDVOatkDUG12o0OYoWgdS8bV-GjcxXCQ4ZhXLBC1gFUsWp9kkT2qciW4/s1600/graphene.jpg" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Tilted view scanning electron microscopic (SEM) image revealing the integration of key<br />components in IC with enlarged view showing the advanced gate structure<br />of the graphene field-effect transistors (GFET). Inset image shows crosssectional<br />SEM of embedded T-shaped gate. Scale bar, 500 nm.</td></tr></tbody></table></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><h2><b><span style="font-family: "HelvNeue Light for IBM",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><a href="http://ibmresearchnews.blogspot.com/2014/09/the-algorithms-of-show-business_14.html">The Algorithms of Show Business</a> </span></b></h2></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDU2Z6p_pi-N5XjH6ctFRlKnK5qTVSKqTthGXNfbP9UNnjMH544O2wqmw4L8P3foQN-9gKXWfmvtZGYHQnM1MrMZy4pOEBfohTLmeWFGHrVgIuBinRPdHny66UgNou-uGEwo-YMgkb5UI/s1600/vinith+misra+Headshot.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDU2Z6p_pi-N5XjH6ctFRlKnK5qTVSKqTthGXNfbP9UNnjMH544O2wqmw4L8P3foQN-9gKXWfmvtZGYHQnM1MrMZy4pOEBfohTLmeWFGHrVgIuBinRPdHny66UgNou-uGEwo-YMgkb5UI/s1600/vinith+misra+Headshot.jpg" /></a></div><i><span style="font-family: "HelvNeue Light for IBM",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt;">“We need to talk.” Generally not something you want to hear from your PhD advisor. But when it was followed by, “Have you heard of HBO?”, then-Stanford student, now-IBM Watson engineer Vinith Misra was intrigued (and as a film enthusiast, a little amused). </span></i><br /><br /><i><span style="font-family: "HelvNeue Light for IBM",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt;">His advisor, <a href="http://web.stanford.edu/%7Etsachy/" target="_blank">Dr. Tsachy Weissman</a>, had been contacted by the technical advisor for HBO’s <a href="http://www.hbo.com/silicon-valley#/" target="_blank">Silicon Valley</a> in 2013 to help the show’s creators develop fictionalized compression algorithms, and he wanted to bring Vinith on board.</span></i><br /><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><h2><b><span style="font-family: "HelvNeue Light for IBM",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><a href="http://asmarterplanet.com/blog/2014/05/greek-mythical-hero-storage-class-memory.html">The Greek Mythical Hero of Storage Class Memory</a></span></b></h2></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://asmarterplanet.com/files/2014/04/IoannisKolsidas.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://asmarterplanet.com/files/2014/04/IoannisKolsidas.jpg" width="153" /></a></div><i><span style="font-family: "HelvNeue Light for IBM",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt;">Theseus was a great hero in Greek mythology known for qualities such as strength, courage and wisdom. </span></i><br /><br /><i><span style="font-family: "HelvNeue Light for IBM",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt;">Therefore it’s no surprise that a team of Greek IBM scientists in Zurich and Professor Theodore Antonakopoulos and his team from the University of Patras, Greece, borrowed his name as a codeword for a groundbreaking new memory technology, which combines flash with <a href="http://www.zurich.ibm.com/news/11/pcm.html">phase change memory</a> (PCM) on a PCI-e card. Initial tests have clocked 12x and 275x improvements — and that’s no myth.</span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br /><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><h2><b><span style="font-family: "HelvNeue Light for IBM",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><a href="http://ibmresearchnews.blogspot.com/2014/08/the-energy-to-innovate.html">The Energy to Innovate</a></span></b></h2><h2></h2></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br /><i><span style="font-family: "HelvNeue Light for IBM",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">Tanuja Ganu grew up in a small town in India about 400 kilometers south of Mumbai, where – like much of the country – energy outages happen all the time. </span><span style="font-family: "HelvNeue Light for IBM",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt;"><br /><br /><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">“The voltage was often so low that the lights were dim and the refrigerator would burn out. </span><br /><br /><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">“I studied for exams by candlelight, and endured summers without working fans. To deal with this as children, we learned to time-shift critical things we needed electricity for – like cooking and cleaning," Tanuja said.</span></span></i><br /><br /></div><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/ZuyJ4nKzPx8" width="560"></iframe> <br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br /><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><h2><b><span style="font-family: "HelvNeue Light for IBM",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><a href="http://asmarterplanet.com/blog/2014/03/cooking-computers.html">See What's Cooking in the Cognitive Kitchen</a></span></b></h2><br /><i><span style="font-family: "HelvNeue Light for IBM",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt;">Raise your hand if you have interests outside of your day job. Probably most everyone, I imagine. Now, how often do they serendipitously collide? Probably not that often, right? But that’s what happened for me two years ago when I applied my computer science skills to my love of the culinary arts as part of IBM’s <a href="http://research.ibm.com/cognitive-computing/computational-creativity.shtml">Cognitive Cooking</a> project.</span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br /><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/iTc3O0IqYwk" width="560"></iframe></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br /><br /><h2><b><span style="font-family: "HelvNeue Light for IBM",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><a href="http://research.ibm.com/articles/chipchallenge.shtml#fbid=sxOPNH4BWcY">Tackling tomorrow’s chip grand challenge today</a></span></b></h2></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br /><i><span style="font-family: "HelvNeue Light for IBM",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt;">Seven nanometers. That’s slightly longer than the 2.5 nm circumference of a DNA double helix. And 100,000 times smaller than the width of a human hair. It’s also the miniscule dimension that future semiconductors must push past to keep up with today’s computing demands being put on cloud, big data and cognitive systems.</span></i><br /><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://research.ibm.com/software/IBMResearch/image/chip_header_graphic.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="225" src="http://research.ibm.com/software/IBMResearch/image/chip_header_graphic.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;">[<a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/ibm_research_zurich/14615893365/">Download infographic</a>]</div><br /><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><h2><b><span style="font-family: "HelvNeue Light for IBM",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><a href="http://research.ibm.com/cognitive-computing/neurosynaptic-chips.shtml#fbid=sxOPNH4BWcY">Brain Power: The SyNAPSE “cognitive” chip</a></span></b></h2></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br /><i><span style="font-family: "HelvNeue Light for IBM",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt;">What is a cognitive chip? The latest SyNAPSE chip, introduced in August of 2014, has the potential to transform mobility by spurring innovation around an entirely new class of applications with sensory capabilities at incredibly low power levels. This is enabled by a revolutionary new technology design inspired by the human brain.</span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://research.ibm.com/software/IBMResearch/image/brain_banner_infographic.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="87" src="http://research.ibm.com/software/IBMResearch/image/brain_banner_infographic.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.research.ibm.com/cognitive-computing/brainpower/"><b>Infographic: Brain Power!</b></a></div></div>

brain chip cognitive computing cognitive cooking ibm research nanotechnology polymer synapse Top IBM Research Stories of 2014

A Guinness World Record. A new kind of plastic. Oh, and a chip modeled after the human brain. Here are some of our most popular stories in 2...

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Cognitive Cooking: Applying Computational Creativity to Recipe Generation

<br /><script src="http://static.meteorsolutions.com/metsol.js" type="text/javascript"></script><script src="http://cdnt.meteorsolutions.com/api/multi_track?application_id=6787616a-bec6-48d3-8b3c-0f08ab2bf44a&url_storage_source=hash&query_string_tag_key=mtag&query_string_tag_key=source&query_string_tag_key=src" type="text/javascript"></script> <br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0X-twQEZ0c6y2aSbRu3MhW7mjFTlghwcxxw5UAyph3Iycy7YWhLH6ZK-4r9fwdEDzLfGjIH6kfQqBqiHB96Moke02dSfYVRW8qyZ-QJiVI1iTyLv4813cA4RdqT9jHvM_zk2g6qQ21OUk/s1600/pavan_foodtruck.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0X-twQEZ0c6y2aSbRu3MhW7mjFTlghwcxxw5UAyph3Iycy7YWhLH6ZK-4r9fwdEDzLfGjIH6kfQqBqiHB96Moke02dSfYVRW8qyZ-QJiVI1iTyLv4813cA4RdqT9jHvM_zk2g6qQ21OUk/s1600/pavan_foodtruck.jpg" width="200" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><i>Editor's note: This article is by Pavankumar Murali, an IBM Research staff member in Business Solutions and Mathematical Sciences.</i></span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Pulse is IBM’s Cloud Computing conference. Public clouds. Private cloud. Clouds as a service. Even a new developers’ cloud called <a href="https://ace.ng.bluemix.net/">BlueMix</a>. At this year’s conference, I was there to demonstrate something that runs on the cloud – our <a href="http://research.ibm.com/cognitive-computing/computational-creativity.shtml">Cognitive Cooking</a> technology.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">I’m part of an IBM Research team exploring whether a computer can be creative. And we chose the culinary arts in our effort to design a system that generates surprising yet flavorful recipes not found in any cookbook. So, there I was, a computer scientist standing in front of the IBM Food Truck, showing conference goers how a cognitive system can generate unique recipes – all the while, they picked up machine-generated, Institute of Culinary Education (ICE) chef-prepared dishes like Austrian chocolate burritos (as voted on Twitter by the public).</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">This cognitive cloud-based system can reason about flavor the same way we use our palate. It combines databases of recipes, ingredients, flavor compounds, food-pairing theories, as well as psychological data about human perception of taste to come up with a novel, yet pleasant, recipe. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The system starts the recipe genesis process by combing through tens of thousands of existing recipes to learn about ingredient pairing, ingredient-cuisine pairing, and dish composition. It then designs recipes by cross-referencing data on the chemistry of the ingredients, and the psychology of people’s likes and dislikes (hedonic perception theory) to model how our palate might respond to different combinations of flavors. This results in quintillions of possible recipes, which are narrowed down to around 5,000 options by employing sampling techniques. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">At Pulse, the ICE chefs then chose what dish to prepare from the samples, including this Creole shrimp-lamb dumpling (find other recipes, <a href="http://research.ibm.com/cognitive-computing/computational-creativity.shtml" target="_blank">here</a>).</span><br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmiokJEqCzrUDao7mK8saPc_RLoYazf4sCrtUKpywHsU-qW2_2TCZBU2yybdXEzdvrTEPFGaF_RSuDYZWTgVgs79Li24tIt9LrkNvpGOMyduJ3DYBFprLbADyT0ZXMVe45QQ4GXsEpRy5u/s1600/creole_dumpling.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmiokJEqCzrUDao7mK8saPc_RLoYazf4sCrtUKpywHsU-qW2_2TCZBU2yybdXEzdvrTEPFGaF_RSuDYZWTgVgs79Li24tIt9LrkNvpGOMyduJ3DYBFprLbADyT0ZXMVe45QQ4GXsEpRy5u/s1600/creole_dumpling.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The capabilities of such a cognitive computing system will be truly realized when it can scale and meet performance guarantees. For this purpose, we are currently developing novel optimization algorithms that can generate recipes that, while adhering to knowledge of food chemistry, and human perception, are guaranteed to deliver one or more of our evaluation metrics, such as surprise, pleasantness and flavor pairing. Due to the nonlinear and non-convex nature of the search space (the quintillion ways in which ingredients can be combined), and the constraints on the algorithm's run-time, developing such search algorithms can be quite complex. <br /><br />The cognitive cooking system runs on the bare metal servers of IBM’s SoftLayer cloud. Bare metal machines in the cloud allow us to get every ounce of performance possible, and also eliminate sharing system resources typically found in other cloud arrangements. </span><br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span class="bio"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS Mincho"; mso-fareast-language: JA;"><iframe allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen" frameborder="0" height="266" mozallowfullscreen="mozallowfullscreen" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/OsSVRkk6PG0?feature=player_embedded" webkitallowfullscreen="webkitallowfullscreen" width="320"></iframe></span></span></span></div><br /><br /><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Surmounting this “creative” challenge also helps us then examine how the technology could make a bigger societal impact. For example, the system could be adjusted to take into account food allergies, dietary restrictions, or other nutritional needs. This could mean school cafeteria lunches that students like, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">and</i> meet diet nutritional requirements.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Beyond food, what we learn from this research will also lay the groundwork for how the system could apply to the design and discovery of things in other domains. “Taste” could refer to how we experience retail or a good. What if computational creativity helped develop new clothing fashion or scent of cologne? These are the kinds of ideas where we’re applying this technology.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">In the meantime, we’re still working on perfecting creative recipes. You can try some of what we cook up with <a href="http://asmarterplanet.com/blog/2014/03/ingredients-man-machine-food.html" target="_blank">ICE Chef Michael Laiskonis</a> at the South by Southwest Interactive Conference, March 7-11. You will also meet my colleagues <a href="http://asmarterplanet.com/blog/2014/03/cooking-computers.html" target="_blank">Florian Pinel</a>, who not only wrote many of this system’s algorithms, but is a trained chef; and <a href="http://asmarterplanet.com/blog/2014/02/food-thought-ibm-watson-whips-creativity.html">Rob High</a>, an IBM Fellow and the Chief Technology Officer for IBM’s Watson Group. So, vote for a dish you want to try by tweeting it, <a href="http://ibm.com/cognitivecooking">here</a>).</span><br /><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> </span><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span class="bio"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS Mincho"; mso-fareast-language: JA;"><iframe allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen" frameborder="0" height="266" mozallowfullscreen="mozallowfullscreen" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/EWF4sC5wuqs?feature=player_embedded" webkitallowfullscreen="webkitallowfullscreen" width="320"></iframe></span></span></span></div><br /><b>About the IBM Food Truck</b><br /><ul><li><i>For more about this research and how it can transform your business, contact Research Staff Member and Manager of Consumer Modeling <a href="mailto:sheopuri@us.ibm.com">Anshul Sheopuri</a>. </i></li><li><i>To learn more about Watson and the Food Truck project, read IBM Research scientist <a href="http://asmarterplanet.com/blog/2014/03/cooking-computers.html">Florian Pinel’s perspective</a>. </i></li><li><i><i>To learn more about Watson and the Food Truck project, <a href="http://asmarterplanet.com/blog/2014/02/food-thought-ibm-watson-whips-creativity.html">read IBM Fellow Rob High’s perspective</a>.</i> </i></li><li><i>Get a chef’s perspective from ICE <a href="http://asmarterplanet.com/blog/2014/03/ingredients-man-machine-food.html">Creative Director Michael Laiskonis</a>.</i></li><li><i>Download images of the <a href="http://ibm.co/1nkiuGi">Watson Food Truck</a>.</i></li><li><i>Have more questions? Check out the <a href="http://www.research.ibm.com/software/IBMResearch/multimedia/Cognitive-Cooking-Fact-Sheet.pdf">Watson Food Truck fact sheet</a>.</i></li></ul>

cloud computing cognitive computing cognitive cooking IBM Watson virtual chef Cognitive Cooking: Applying Computational Creativity to Recipe Generation

Editor's note: This article is by Pavankumar Murali, an IBM Research staff member in Business Solutions and Mathematical Sciences. Puls...

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