What is your title and what do you do?
My current title is Senior Director of Research Computing. I joke that most of my job entails “other duties as assigned.” Since I re-joined UW 3 ½ years ago, I’ve been assembling and nurturing teams. I started with a modestly sized Informatics team in the Cancer Center, added ICTR and CHI2 staff, hired a team for cloud computing, started building a team for high performance computing — and now I’m helping to create a unified Informatics and IT organization in the SMPH. I spend a lot of time meeting with researchers and leaders across Campus related to IT and Informatics topics with the goal of forming partnerships that will help us succeed. I’m working on a vision and roadmap for research computing that helps us recruit and retain outstanding faculty. I also do code reviews, performance reviews, Linux administration, solution architecting, troubleshooting, and a ton of presentations.
What motivated you to pursue this career?
I credit my parents with sparking my interest in technology and health care research. I started computing programming when I was young (13) and got interested in it because my mom was taking programming classes. My dad worked at the university for years doing health systems research. I’ve always felt that health care as an industry could benefit from technology and better data management. Research really stimulates my intellectual curiosity. I like working with smart people, those who experiment and innovate.
Why are you excited about the IITC?
There are so many different tools and processes we’ve all independently developed over the years. I’ve seen the benefits of standardizing on fewer tools (even with their imperfections), developing repeatable processes, and automating where possible. We’ve all accumulated experience that should be shared. Let’s learn from each other, automate the mundane, reduce the duplication and spend our effort on forward progress.
What do you hope the unified IIT team can accomplish together?
World domination. (Kidding!) I want peers in our field to know who we are because that means we’ve achieved great things and shared them broadly. I truly believe that we can accomplish more by working together. There are great things happening in the departments, centers, and institutes that I think should be elevated and shared. All of us working towards a common vision will get us there. I’ve had some success in previous institutions and companies achieving national recognition. With the resources and the team at UW, I know we’ll achieve great things.