Newswise — COLLEGE PARK, Md. – The University of Maryland has named Brian D. Voss as its new vice president of information technology (IT) and chief information officer (CIO). His IT experience spans 25 years, much of it spent in leadership positions at public, flagship research universities.
Voss has been active in major national higher education technology initiatives, and is a nationally recognized leader in cybersecurity, cyberinfrastructure, IT strategy and disaster recovery planning. Currently, he serves as Louisiana State University’s (LSU) first-ever vice chancellor for information technology.
Voss begins at Maryland in August 2011.
At LSU for the past six years and at Indiana University for nearly 20 years before that, Voss has been instrumental in the use of IT in transforming the institution’s environment. Among his recent areas of focus at Louisiana, he includes: IT strategic planning and governance; expanding cyberinfrastructure to support emerging research needs, especially in the area of high-performance computing and networking; shifting campus IT services and applications to “the cloud” to improve effectiveness and cut costs; and expanding opportunities for online education and support of classroom teaching and learning.
Voss also was involved in the LSU effort to aid recovery in Louisiana following Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, and gained recognition nationally for his experiences in IT disaster planning.
"Information technology is the central nervous system of a major public research institution, and vital to our statewide service mission," says University of Maryland President Wallace Loh. "Brian's experience, approach and leadership will keep us on the path to a first-class information technology infrastructure. We're fortunate to have someone of Brian's stature at the helm."
Philosophically, Voss describes himself as a believer in “user-centric, community-driven IT planning and governance,” implemented with a “nurturing leadership style.” He embraces the principle of “IT abundance” – providing an environment that features advanced technology readily available to the university community. Also, Voss advocates “humanware” – ensuring that investments in hardware and software are well supported by the human resources needed to get the most value possible from the IT environment.
“All areas of IT must be addressed to help the institution move forward; no one area can be addressed at the expense of another,” Voss stresses.
On the national stage, Voss has actively collaborated with other higher education institutions and organizations, particularly on issues of cybersecurity and cyberinfrastructure. He has served on key advisory boards, councils, management groups, as well as organizations such as EDUCAUSE, Internet2, ACUTA, Campus Technology, Microsoft, and REN-ISAC.
Among his accomplishments, Voss includes his role securing over $10-million in funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF) in the past decade, helping both IU and LSU become part of the national Teragrid – an NSF network extending high-performance computing.
Voss led efforts at LSU to adopt the open source Moodle Learning Management system, helping teachers create instructional web sites and doing so on a large scale without increasing costs. While at Indiana, he helped pioneer the campus/enterprise software licensing model – with Microsoft as the prime example – providing access to a broad suite of products for the entire campus community; this model is widely used today and benefits many universities nationally.
His publications span the IT discipline, including IT support models and best practices; campus networking (wireless and wired infrastructure) and regional and national optical networking; disaster recovery and campus crisis notification; cyberinfrastructure for research; cybersecurity and policy; and IT leadership.
“The pace of technological advance, as well as growing challenges, such as cybersecurity, demand that universities like Maryland remain lithe, responsive and yet prudent in their deployment of IT,” Voss adds. “I am very pleased to join the Maryland team, as I believe President Loh and the campus community grasps the critical role that IT plays in the strategic advance of a public, flagship, research university in the 21st century.”
Voss will succeed interim IT vice president and CIO Joseph JaJa, and the late Jeffrey Huskamp.
See Voss’ bio here: http://newsdesk.umd.edu/vibrant/vossbio.cfm
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