Murray Campbell

Murray Campbell is a Canadian computer scientist.

He is a Senior Manager in the Business Analytics and Mathematical Sciences Department at the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, New York, USA. The mission of the Services Modeling group is to apply deep technical expertise in areas such as optimization, forecasting, probabilistic analysis, and expertise sharing to a broad range of problems relevant to the IBM Services business. The primary focus is in the area of Business Analytics and Workforce Management, where solutions are developed that include services project/portfolio management, skill analytics, demand forecasting, workplace learning, workforce optimization, and strategic planning. Prior to the current position, Campbell was involved in surveillance projects related to petroleum production, disease outbreak, and financial data. In earlier work, Campbell was a member of the teams that developed chess machines: HiTech and a project to culminate in Deep Blue, the latter being the first computer to defeat the reigning world chess champion, Garry Kasparov, in a challenge match, in 1997. Kasparov had won an earlier match the previous year. (Based on text taken from a newsletter by Mike Oettel, of the Shriver Center at UMBC.)

Campbell visited UMBC for a speech called "IBM's Deep Blue: Ten Years After" on February 5, 2007. In the University Center building, he presented the background that led up to the decisive match with Kasparov, reviewed the match itself (with Kasparov and similar matches), and explored some of the design decisions that were made when building Deep Blue. Murray put emphasis on some of the broader implications of Deep Blue's development and victory on the information technology industry and artificial intelligence.

Campbell himself played chess at near National Master strength in Canada during his student days, but has not played competitively for more than 20 years. His peak Elo rating was around 2200