Robert "Dr. Bob" Sullivan

Dr. Robert ("Dr. Bob") Sullivan joined the Uptime Institute and Uptime Institute Professional Services in 2000 after a 32-year career with IBM's Storage Systems Division in San Jose, CA. Prior to joining IBM, Dr. Bob received a BS in Mechanical Engineering from Northwestern University and an MS and Ph.D. in Applied Mechanics from Stanford University. In 1992, Dr. Bob originated the concepts now known as hot and cold aisle cooling.

During his 32-year career at IBM, Dr. Sullivan did a wide variety of work including technology, component, and new product development; customer hardware problem resolution support; installation planning; and consulting on computer room environment and hardware installation issues. He contributed to the development of the Winchester Technology-small, lightly loaded heads, flying very close to the disk surface and starting and stopping on that surface-that became well known in the disk drive storage business. The Winchester Technology led to the development of the small hard drives that are used today throughout the industry in both PCs and file servers. He also contributed to the development of the original floppy disk product.

Dr. Bob's pioneering work in computer room environments, and especially in the area of cooling and air flow, has had a major impact on the industry. Dr. Bob has been intimately involved in the diagnosis and solution of conductive contamination problems in computer rooms and is recognized as the leading authority throughout the world on the subject. He was part of the team that identified the phenomenon of zinc whisker contamination. He has also done testing and consulting in the area of seismic bracing of equipment and facilities, including co-authoring a paper reviewing a wide variety of equipment tethering techniques.

Dr. Bob served as a Judge for the Uptime Institute Green Enterprise IT Awards in 2010.