Rocky Hill, CT – Kathleen McGroddy-Goetz, PhD, will deliver this year’s keynote address at the 42nd Annual Meeting and Dinner of the Connecticut Academy of Science and Engineering (CASE), Monday, May 22, 2017, at the University of Connecticut. CASE member McGroddy-Goetz is Vice President of Partnerships and Solutions at IBM Watson Health, and will speak on Transforming Healthcare – Cognitive Computing and Partnerships.

Dr. McGroddy-Goetz played a key role in launching the Watson Health business unit and is responsible for managing strategic collaborations with key industry leaders to address the world’s most pressing challenges. In addition to her business and solution leadership, she manages the ongoing relationship with IBM Research to foster continuing innovation for future offerings. Her keynote will address the value of cognitive computing in health care.

Dr. McGroddy-Goetz has spent much of her 24-year career at IBM innovating at the intersection of advanced technologies and new business models, with an emphasis on Healthcare and Life Sciences solutions. She has led teams in research & development spanning hardware and software, as well as business development organizations focused on research commercialization, strategic partnerships, mergers & acquisitions.

Helping to launch IBM Watson Health in 2014 became a confluence of skills and interests from throughout Dr. McGroddy-Goetz’s career, including her years as a young student. “I was lucky enough to grow up with a physicist father, who exposed me to technology at a young age,” she says. “I was an early user of computers, and by the time I went to graduate school in the late 1980s, I already had a vague idea that I wanted to do something involving computers and health care.”

A Physics graduate of SUNY Binghamton, McGroddy-Goetz studied Applied Physics at Stanford University, before earning her doctorate in Molecular Biophysics from Cornell University.