Jim Davis is the Associate Vice Chancellor Information Technology & CIO and a Professor in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at UCLA. In his Associate Vice Chancellor position, Jim has broad accountability for university-wide technology planning and implementation oversight. Through the Office of Information Technology, he both facilitates and coordinates campus IT planning, policy setting, prioritization and decision-making processes. In supporting the university’s central and distributed technology requirements, Jim is responsible for the strategic deployment of academic and administrative operations, services and resources.

Jim is also responsible for UCLA’s involvement in IT initiatives within the University of California system. Jim is currently the chair of UC’s Information Technology Leadership Council, the council of CIOs from the campuses, government labs and medical centers. Jim is the past Chair of the Board of Directors of CENIC (Corporation for Education Network Initiatives in California), the non-profit corporation responsible for network connectivity and services to all higher education and K-12 institutions in the state. Within UCLA, Jim is on the Executive Board of the Anderson School’s IS Associates bringing together the IT leadership of a number of companies in Southern California, and he chairs UCLA’s Advisory Board on Privacy and Data Protection. Jim is currently Principal Investigator on an NSF initiative on Cyberinfrastructure and Smart Manufacturing.

In the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at UCLA, Jim’s research is in the area of data analysis, decision support, and intelligent systems. With over 25 years experience in technology-based engineering research and application, he has been involved with research, development and deployment of information technology solutions in a variety of applications. Jim has consulted widely and is the founding co-director of the ‘Information Technology in Chemical Engineering’ divisional program area within the American Institute of Chemical Engineering. Jim began his academic career following several years of industrial experience at Amoco Chemicals Corporation.