Stephen Brobst

Stephen Brobst (born September 21, 1962) is an American technology executive.

Early life and education Brobst was born September 21, 1962, at the hospital on Stanford University campus where both of his parents did their undergraduate studies. In his childhood years he participated in chess tournaments sponsored by the United States Chess Federation (USCF) and in league competitions between high schools in Silicon Valley. He was president of his high school chess club. He graduated as valedictorian from Milpitas High School in 1980.

For his undergraduate work, he studied Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at University of California, Berkeley where he graduated in just three years and was bestowed the Bechtel Engineering Award as the highest honor for a graduating senior in the college of engineering for academic excellence and leadership.

Brobst performed master's and PhD research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) where his dissertation work focused on load balancing and resource allocation for massively parallel computing architectures. He also holds an MBA with joint course and thesis work at the Harvard Business School and the MIT Sloan School of Management. At MIT he was bestowed the William Stewart Award for contributions to student life during his nearly ten years as a graduate resident and tutor at the Baker House undergraduate dormitory. Tanning executed an initial public offering in 1999 on NASDAQ and was later acquired by Platinum Technologies. He co-founded NexTek Software in 1994, a firm that created a software product for workload management for relational database management systems, as a spinoff from Tanning Technology Corporation. IBM acquired technology from NexTek in 1998 which provided the software foundation for early versions of the DB2 Query Patroller. Brobst was involved in the creation of eHealthDirect, a software start-up for automated claims adjudication using rule-based systems for the health care industry, between 1999 and 2003. eHealthDirect (later renamed to DeNovis) was acquired by HealthEdge in 2003. He and the systems integration and consulting company that he founded, Strategic Technologies & Systems, had worked on many of the early deployments of the Ab Initio Co>Operating System prior to his company being acquired by NCR Corporation in 1999.

PCAST During Barack Obama's first term, Brobst was appointed to the United States President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) in the working group on Networking and Information Technology Research and Development (NITRD). As part of this work, he co-authored a report, “Designing a Digital Future: Federally Funded Research and Development in Networking and Information Technology”, delivered to Obama and the United States Congress in December 2010. This report recommended that all federal agencies should have a Big Data strategy and initiated government investment in this area.

Brobst served as an advisor to the National Academy of Sciences in the area of IT workforce development in 1998 and 1999. He is an elected member of the Eta Kappa Nu, Tau Beta Pi, and Sigma Pi engineering honor societies. He is also a nominated member of the New York Academy of Sciences. He also co-authored a report, “Designing a Digital Future: Federally Funded Research and Development in Networking and Information Technology”, delivered to President Barack Obama and the United States Congress in December 2010.

Brobst authored journal and conference papers in the fields of data management and parallel computing environments. He was a contributing editor for Intelligent Enterprise Magazine and published technical articles in The International Journal of High-Speed Computing, Communications of the ACM, The Journal of Data Warehousing, Enterprise Systems Journal, DM Review, Database Programming and Design, DBMS Tools & Techniques, DB2 Magazine, Oracle Magazine, Teradata Magazine, and many others.