Didier Contis named UW–Madison chief information officer

Didier Contis has been named the University of Wisconsin–Madison’s next chief information officer and vice provost for information technology (CIO). He will replace Lois Brooks, who announced her retirement last year after serving as CIO since 2018. Contis will start on July 7.

Contis brings more than 26 years of experience in higher education IT leadership, most recently as executive director of academic technology, innovation and research computing at the Georgia Institute of Technology. He has a strong record of IT leadership and experience, with particular emphasis on protecting research data, creating collaborative partnerships across academic and research units, and providing equitable access to technology.

“Didier’s appointment marks an exciting new chapter for UW–Madison’s technology infrastructure and strategy,” says Provost Charles Isbell. “His extensive experience and talents will be critical as we navigate this ever-changing landscape and support our teaching, research and outreach mission.”

“UW–Madison’s unwavering commitment to improving lives across Wisconsin, the nation, and the world — combined with its bold focus on tackling complex, high-impact challenges through the RISE initiative — makes this opportunity both inspiring and exciting,” Contis says.  “I’m humbled by the opportunity to serve in this role and lead such a thoughtful and strong IT community.”

A track record of IT excellence

Contis began his career at Georgia Tech in 1999 as a research engineer in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering. He advanced through several IT leadership roles at Georgia Tech, including chief information security officer, associate vice president for data strategy and analytics, and director of technology services. Some of his major accomplishments at Georgia Tech include:

• Leading campus efforts to improve data protection and endpoint security
• Partnering with faculty to secure a grant from Cisco Systems to create the first hands-on network security laboratory
• Launching the first large-scale GPU-enabled virtual computer lab providing students access to scientific applications regardless of time, place and device constraints
• Co-Authored an Educause Whitepaper on Navigating the eXtended Reality (XR) Educational Landscape: Privacy, Safety, and Ethical Guidelines
• Establishing partnerships between central IT and academic units to create a federated private academic cloud to support research and instruction
• Helping the College of Engineering launch a multi-year initiative to establish an AI Makerspace to support AI-Enabled Instruction, and empower students to experiment with and present AI-driven ideas

He has been co-teaching a Vertically Integrated Project class focused on using data as an asset and is interested in applying knowledge graphs for data analytics. He was also a co-principal investigator for the National Science Foundation’s Proto-Open Knowledge Network project CollabNext: A Person-Focused Metafabric for Open Knowledge Networks.

Contis earned his master’s degree in electrical engineering from Georgia Tech and a Diplôme d’Ingénieur (bachelor’s degree) from the École des Mines de Nantes in France.

The CIO provides vision and senior leadership to establish and execute a university-wide approach that aligns IT resources with UW–Madison’s strategic goals. The CIO manages the Division of Information Technology (DoIT), the university’s central IT service provider with nearly 600 employees. They are responsible for working with the university’s central and distributed IT professionals, governance groups, faculty, researchers, employees and students to develop and implement strategic IT plans and manage key university IT resources and services.