Stephen Ibaraki, founding managing partner with REDDS Venture Investment Partners in Vancouver, has received the Silver Core Award for excellence from the International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP).
Given out every three years, Ibaraki is the only Canadian of eight individuals recognized.
Ibaraki was born in Kelowna, but now resides in Vancouver.
In May Ibaraki was a keynote speaker at the International Conference on Software Engineering, the world’s top conference in the field, funded by the National Science Foundation.
In June, he was the only Canadian to receive the United Nations' International Telecommunications Union WSIS Champion Prize for founding the IFIP Global Industry Council.
The International Telecommunications Union represents 193 countries, 800 organizations including 130 universities and research institutes. Earlier in the year, Ibaraki spoke to the UN General Assembly, was recognized by Microsoft with its Most Valuable Professional Award and is a top five blogger.
In October, Ibaraki chaired the 60th anniversary Special Sessions at the United Nations ITU World Telecommunications Standardization Assembly held every four years.
The results of the work is highlighted in the UN WTSA snapshot summary report that went out to 77,000 leaders in government, industry, and academia. He keynoted the sessions on digital financial services and AI.
In November Ibaraki was the only Canadian invited to review and edit the first UN ITU Emerge report on technology startups and small, and medium enterprise (SME) entrepreneurship and innovation. The publication, A Review of Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprises in the Information Communication Technology Sector, provides a review of this tech sector, as well as the environment and stakeholders which support these firms to grow and create jobs.
He was invited to jury for the global innovation awards and chaired the B2B between MSMEs and multinationals. Ibaraki also chaired the first UN ITU sessions on artificial intelligence at its annual UN ITU Telecom World conference for governments and industry and its flagship UN ITU Kaleidoscope conference for academia.
Ibaraki is currently organizing the first UN ITU conference on artificial intelligence and is the only Canadian to be selected an IBM Watson AI XPRIZE Ambassador.
IFIP president Mike Hinchey lauded Ibaraki for developing and progressing the profession over many years. IFIP was founded in 1960 by UNESCO, is the largest federation of information communication technology societies from more than 50 countries representing over half a million scientists and professionals.