Biographies
Name |
Biographical Information |
|---|---|
| Brad Blumenthal joined Sun in 1999 as a consultant for Professional Services. Over the next five years, he worked around the world on a variety of engagements for ISPs, governments, financial institutions, and other on-line businesses. For the next two years, he provided technical leadership to the software support organization. He is now the software technical lead and chief technologist for global Professional Services Delivery. In previous lives, he has been an independent consultant, museum exhibit developer, assistant professor, and British civil servant. His Ph.D. is in Computer Sciences (sic.) from the University of Texas, Austin. | |
| Mike Bohlmann has been with the Office of Technology Management (OTM) on campus since 2002, when he joined the University as an information management specialist. Now, working as the Manager of Information Systems for the OTM at UIC as well, Mike performs IT services at all levels from end user support and application development to website development and management, which includes planning, strategy, and budgeting. Mike is currently working towards completion of a Master’s degree in MIS from UIS with his thesis research focused on creating a framework to help IT managers and organizational leaders better understand each other and the role of IT within an organization. | |
| After working in higher education IT for two years, Mike Bombich joined Apple as a Systems Engineer. For the past five years Mike has provided pre-sales technical consulting for higher education accounts in Missouri and Illinois. | |
| Randy Cetin joined CITES in 1986 as research programmer in the "Graphics Group," and has since held numerous positions in the organization. An alumnus of the University of Illinois, Randy is the Director of CITES Systems and Technology Services. The division encompasses a wide range of service responsibilities that include the CITES computer labs, cost-recovery services for Unix workstations, CITES' two data centers and Operations Center, management of numerous production servers and services, and the development of integration tools and infrastructure services. | |
| Erik Coleman has been with CITES since 2000, serving as technical lead for Windows Systems with the Systems Management Group (part of CITES Systems and Technology Services), supporting many core production systems based on Microsoft Windows Server platforms, in particular, the UIUC Active Directory. Erik also spent time as a UNIX system administrator with the former Production Systems Group (PSG). He graduated in 1990 from UIUC with a bachelor of science degree in computer engineering and has many years of experience in system management and support in a wide variety of operating systems. | |
| Michael Cornell, as the Technical Services Manager, is responsible for the overall implementation and support of Global Campus technologies. Michael joined the University of Illinois during the UI-Integrate project, where he helped implement the Banner Finance modules. Prior to his University work, Michael was a business process reengineering consultant and technology manager for a local computer consulting firm. He is also active in the community as a theatre director and as managing director for the Bright Lights Theatre Company. | |
| James Eyrich has worked for CITES in the Network Design Office since January of 2006, when he was hired into the Wireless group. Since that time, he has transitioned to doing both wired and wireless network designs and recently has been named the Wireless Service Manager. | |
| Cindy Fonner is the chief operator for the CITES Telephone Operator Services. She started with U of I Telecommunications in 1985 and became supervisor for the Telephone Operators in 1992. The Telephone Operators group uses Teledirectory integrated telephony from Conveyant Systems to provide telephone number, address information and more for faculty, staff, students, and departments on the UIUC campus and as backup for the UIS campus. Cindy's group also manages the CITES Teleconference Service for the UIUC campus with some users from UIS and UIC. The Teleconference Service has been a Centrex-based system up to this point and will soon be migrating to a new, more feature rich system provided by Cisco. | |
| David Gerstenecker has served the College of ACES since 1996. He currently is the team leader for Computer Support Services in the College’s Information Technology and Communication Services unit (ITCS). He became an expert in “graffiti” with the Palm III handheld and, a few PDAs later, is proficient with the Treo 650’s 5-way navigator. While now very involved in email infrastructure for the College, he is rarely seen without a trusty PDA at his side (which is checking his email). | |
| Sally Jackson was named Chief Information Officer (CIO) and Associate Provost at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in May 2007. Prior to becoming CIO at Illinois, Professor Jackson served as Vice President for Learning and Information Technologies and Chief Information Officer at the University of Arizona. | |
| Tom Jordan is manager of the Network Operations Center (NOC) at the University of Wisconsin Whitewater. The NOC provides infrastructure IT services to the Whitewater campus, including enterprise networking, server administration, ERP and database system administration and data center operations. Prior to coming to Whitewater, Tom worked as a technologist in identity management and middleware at the University of Wisconsin - Madison. Tom has been involved in public sector IT for over ten years and has led a number of initiatives, both technical and organizational in nature. | |
| Robin Kaler is Associate Chancellor for Public Affairs, where she is responsible for leading the campus’ marketing and public relations efforts. She is a frequent presenter on crisis communications to professional organizations and has served as an adjunct lecturer in the College of Communications and the College of Business. Before joining the university in 1994, Ms. Kaler served as the news director at WDWS-WHMS radio, where she received more than a dozen state and national awards for excellence in journalism. | |
| Charley Kline is the third person to hold the title of UIUCnet architect and has held the position since 1992. He manages the Network Engineering group within the CITES Division of Network Engineering and Services. He began work as a student computer operator on the IBM 360/75 and Cyber mainframes and went on to connect UIUC to the BITNET computer network as a graduate student. After graduating, he ported the 4.2bsd TCP/IP networking code to the Cray Timesharing System, while working for NCSA. Currently, the Network Engineering group is working on projects such as the next UIUCnet core, which will improve performance for research networking as well as provide better security for all users; new VPN and network authentication systems; readying UIUCnet for eventual support of telephony as well as data traffic; and supervising the deployment of the high-speed intercampus dark-fiber network, the ICCN. | |
| Margaret Krol is the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) for the Global Campus. As the CTO, she is a member of the Global Campus management team and is responsible for Global Campus technology planning, implementation, support and ongoing enhancements. In addition, Margaret is currently serving as the Interim Associate Vice President for Administrative Information Technology Services (AITS). Previously, she served as the Project Director for UI-Integrate and held various management roles in AITS. She is a graduate of the University of Illinois (BS in Math and Computer Science, and MBA). She is on the board of the OpenEAI (open source) Software Foundation (http://www.openeai.org). | |
| Thomas Kunka is the Coordinator of Network Systems and Operations and is responsible for support and planning in all aspects of computing technology and networking in the ITS classrooms as well as internal operations. Previous to his administrative and technical roles at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, he served Illinois State University as Assistant Director of Computer User Services, where he managed the campus’ technology training and student technology orientation programs. | |
| Brian McNurlen, Manager of Classroom Support and Training, provides assistance in the use of the audiovisual equipment in over 140 general assignment classrooms across campus. He also serves on several committees to address the campus' classroom needs. | |
| Evangeline S. Pianfetti (Vanna) is the Assistant Dean of Learning Technologies and the Director of the Office of Educational Technology at the College of Education. She is also a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of Educational Psychology. Her research interests include eLearning, technology integration in the P-12 curriculum, and professional development in technology for P-12 and higher education faculty. Vanna is a Smithsonian Laureate for classroom innovation in technology and a Gold Award winner in the ThinkQuest for Tomorrow's Teachers competition for a technology enriched curriculum she designed with teachers from Urbana Middle School. | |
| Kevin Rowett is Co-founder and Chief Technology Officer (CTO) for Gigafin Technologies, which was founded originally as Mistletoe Technologies in October 2002. He is the principle architect behind the RDX technology. Prior to Gigafin. Kevin was a senior architect and director of hardware engineering for Force 10 Networks. Kevin has filled engineering and architectural roles for Cacheflow (now Blue Coat), Cisco Systems, Tandem Computers, and IBM. Kevin is also a member of IEEE and ACM and has over 25 years of network expertise. | |
| Beth Scheid, CITES Director of Communications Technologies, has been a part of academic computing for over 25 years. During this time, she has overseen CITES groups that designed, implemented, and maintained network data, wireless, voice, and DNS services for the campus. Currently, she is involved with the five-year project to upgrade the networking infrastructure in 159 campus buildings and the project to upgrade the current campus voice system. | |
| Troy Sharpe has been working with higher education as a Technology Specialist with Microsoft’s Education Solutions Group since 2005. Prior to Microsoft, Troy spent eight years as an infrastructure consultant, assisting organizations with deploying, managing, and maintaining the Windows Server platform. | |
| Chris Skaar, Iris Service Manager, is a member of the CITES Network Maintenance group in CITES Communications Technologies. He has worked for CITES since 2001. Previous to his current placement, he has held positions in the Operations Center and Network Design Office. He previously worked as a systems engineer for a small consulting firm in Sioux Falls, SD, which, through several buyouts, eventually became part of McLeodUSA. | |
| Mike Smeltzer has been Director of Network Communications for CITES, since March of 2005. In that role, he has focused on coordinating campus input and collaboration on the Campus Network Upgrade project and also works with campus units on projects that are "outside the box." In February of 2007, Mike assumed responsibility for the CITES Network Design and Network Maintenance groups. He came to CITES from McLeodUSA, where he was the local Operations Manager. In that capacity, he worked with the campus on a variety of voice and data projects. In addition to working in the communications industry, Mike has been a faculty member in both the UIUC College of Communications and University High School, and was publisher and general manager of the Illini Media Company. | |
| Marc Snir is director of the Illinois Informatics Initiative, and PI for the software of the Blue Waters systems. Until recently, he was head of the CS department. Marc has more than 25 years experience in high performance computing research. He worked 15 years at IBM T.J. Watson Research Center, where he led the IBM research on the software for the line of products that evolved into Blue Waters and initiated the Blue Gene project. He co-led the development of the MPI standard -- the message-passing library that is almost universally used by high-performance codes. In recent years, he co-chaired a National Academy study on the future of supercomputing and co-led a DCS team that collaborated with IBM on research for the Blue Water system. He is ACM, IEEE and AAAS Fellow. | |
| Mary Stevens has worked with CITES since 1997. She has been working in Network Engineering since 2001. Her primary focus has been on the campus firewalls, IPS devices, and the campus VPN. | |
| Chuck Thompson manages IT services for the Department of Computer Science where he has spent most of the last 20 years as either a student or staff member. He is also currently serving as the Interim Director of Information Services for the College of Engineering. Chuck qualified for CCSP Fall 2007 by co-chairing the Campus Exchange Working Group, serving on the technical team for the uiuc.edu to illinois.edu transition and recently attending the EDUCAUSE Leadership Institute Program. | |
| Allan Tuchman, a Principal Research Programmer and Manager of the Production Applications Group, has been with CITES for over 25 years. He has worked in diverse areas, including user services, software development, and networking. He did research for several years in computer graphics and published several papers on the topic. Through the years, he’s developed and managed several services for the campus. His current position focuses on the responsibilities of service development and service management. The mission of his group is to develop and manage robust, reliable, and scalable services. Allan has both a B.S. and M.S. in Computer Science from Illinois. | |
| Melissa Woo joined CITES in 2000 as a UNIX system administrator in the former CITES Workstation Services Group. Since then, she has held positions of progressively greater responsibility within CITES and is currently Assistant Director, CITES Systems and Technology Services Division. Melissa oversees the CITES groups responsible for production Windows and UNIX system administration, the campus Active Directory, the operations center and data centers, and the new ITPro Services Group. She also assists the Director with overall management of the Division. | |
Becky Wauthier, Associate Registrar has been with the office of the registrar for over 25 years. During the UI-Integrate Project she served as the Team Lead for Student Records, UIUC Functional Lead for the Conversion of Student Academic History as well as the Application Team Co-Lead for Training and Education. Currently Becky oversees the Academic Records unit responsible for maintaining data that ultimately lands on the official student transcript. She assists the Registrar with the campus’ adherence to FERPA regulations, compliance with the NCAA, and the University's student academic records policies. |
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Jon Weber has worked as a Network Administrator in the Electrical and Computer Engineering department at the University of Illinois, since 2004. In that time, Jon has been responsible for managing the deployment and support of all instructional workstations and computing resources in the ECE instructional lab facilities. Prior to joining ECE, Jon worked for the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, providing software image development and support for the Kellogg Laptop Program and computing labs. |
