By Yvonne Tevis. Colleen Gordon doesn’t sew—but early in the pandemic she co-founded a mask-making project that produced 6,000 home-sewn masks—masks that would go to neighbors, patients, the homeless, and anyone who needed one. An IT project manager for UC Davis Health, Gordon and her UC colleagues were sent home in March 2020. “It was a very surreal moment,” she said. She remembers feeling helpless, and wanting to do something

By Shani Murray. As Scientific American reiterated this month, we are in the midst of a climate emergency. 2020 saw record-breaking wildfires and hurricanes and ended in a tie with 2016 as the hottest year on record. Aware of the massive scope of challenges that lie ahead in fighting climate change, UCI announced in January a new initiative called Solutions that Scale. Recognizing that “solutions to planetary problems must reach planetary proportions,” the initiative aims to “converge scientists and academics,

Save the date—Sept. 14, 9:30 – 10:15. President Drake is joining the next UC IT town hall to speak to the UC IT community. Registration details will be provided soon. Stay tuned.

Kian Colestock was promoted to UC Irvine chief information officer on May 1, 2021, having served as interim CIO since April 2019. He was UCI associate CIO since 2014, and prior to that was UC San Diego director of enterprise business systems and acting executive director in central campus IT. Below Colestock talks about the joys and challenges of being in IT at UC. What attracted you to UC? Working

By Josh McDonald. The UCLA School of Education and Information Studies has launched Momentum: Accelerating Equity in Computing and Technology, an important research initiative to diversify computing and technology, with an intensive focus on the recruitment of women and people of color into computing education and technology career pathways. “The persistent lack of diversity in computing and technology requires that we achieve greater momentum in seeking evidence-based solutions,” said Linda Sax, a professor

UC Tech is back! Register now for the three-day virtual conference, August 9 – 11, hosted by UCLA. This year’s theme is “Envisioning the Future of IT.” Thanks to the support of generous sponsors, the registration cost has been WAIVED for all attendees. Please thank the sponsors by being sure to visit them in their virtual booths during the Sponsor Hall hours. This year’s event kicks off with a prize

By Shelly Leachman. Aiming to fortify and grow the STEM talent pipeline at Hispanic-serving institutions, UC Santa Barbara has embarked on a collaborative grant project funded by the National Science Foundation. The NSF INCLUDES Planning Grant was awarded to the Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities (HACU), which will team with experts from both UC Santa Barbara and the University of Arizona, also an HSI, in an effort to bolster

Learn about privacy laws and how to best protect yourself at the Privacy 101 Online Webinar, presented by the UC San Diego Campus Privacy Office, on July 22, from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. Register now! This event is open to the public and all who are interested. The Privacy 101 Workshop will focus on privacy issues and best methods to protect personal data. Other topics to be discussed include recently-enacted

By Sheri Ledbetter. Kian Colestock, associate vice chancellor and chief information officer in UCI’s Office of Information Technology, recalls the weekend in which he learned that his unit would be supporting the technological transition of a major research university to an all-remote environment. “We told hundreds of staff in OIT on Friday, March 13, that we would do a practice run of being fully remote on Monday, the 16th,” Colestock says.

Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, many archeological digs were put on hold, as collaborating researchers from various international universities could not travel to conduct fieldwork as a team. In California, the technological possibilities of the Pacific Research Platform not only enabled researchers at the University of California San Diego and their partners at the University of Haifa (UH) in Israel to go ahead with their expedition but also drastically accelerated data analysis times. UCSD researchers had planned