After a nationwide search and interview process, Didier Contis has been selected as the new executive director of Academic Technology, Innovation, Research Computing within the Office of Information Technology. Contis will officially assume this role on Sept. 1.
“Didier brings a wealth of IT leadership and experience engaging across academic and research communities to this role,” said Daren Hubbard, vice president for Information Technology and chief information officer. “He has always been a strong partner to OIT and we are happy to welcome him as a permanent and integral part of our team.”
In this newly established role, Contis will provide leadership and direct supervision to the OIT’s Digital Learning, Technical Applications, and Partnership for an Advanced Computing Environment (PACE) teams. Contis will report directly to Hubbard and serve as an integral part of the OIT senior leadership team.
“As both an alumnus and a proud Georgia Tech parent, I look forward to partnering with students, faculty, researchers, and staff to support the Institute in achieving its lifetime of learning, research, and innovation goals,” Contis said. “Georgia Tech has an outstanding IT community committed to being a trusted partner that empowers users. Together with my colleagues in OIT and the distributed IT community, we will expand access to services that meet the diverse and evolving needs of our students, faculty, researchers, and staff. At the same time, we will continue to reduce the digital divide by delivering human-centric, equitable, and inclusive services.”
Contis began his career at Georgia Tech in 1999 as a research engineer for the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering. Before that, he was a network security engineer in the banking industry in France. He was the IT manager for Tech’s School of Civil and Environmental Engineering from 2004 to 2007 before becoming the first director of Technology Services for the College of Engineering. In this role, Contis established several partnerships with OIT and other academic units to develop new campuswide services in support of research and instruction, with a strong focus on empowering users. He has previously served as interim associate vice president for Data Strategy and Analytics and interim chief information security officer at Georgia Tech.
Contis holds a Master of Science in electrical engineering from Georgia Tech and a Diplôme d’Ingénieur (bachelor’s degree) from the Ecole des Mines de Nantes-France.
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