Blog

Announcement - Bill Allison Appointed Chief Technology Officer

November 24, 2015
Larry Conrad
We are pleased to announce that William Allison has been appointed Chief Technology Officer (CTO) for the University of California at Berkeley, effective today, November 24, 2015. Reporting to Deputy CIO Lyle Nevels with a dotted line to CIO Larry Conrad for campus-wide initiatives, Bill is responsible for the leadership of Berkeley's IT architecture and consideration of emerging technologies in support of research, teaching, and administration. Bill will facilitate the governance and oversight of IT architecture activities University-wide, guiding the development and implementation of a shared vision and architectural standards that support and enable the University’s strategic goals.
https://technology.berkeley.edu/news/bill-allison-appointed-chief-technology-off…

The Berkeley Cloud Strategy

February 2, 2019
Bill Allison
I wanted to share a brief overview of UC Berkeley's Cloud Strategy so that anyone can get a sense of it in a few minutes. The most important takeaway is that it directs our focus always to be "University First". As a campus, we must invest in technology that meets the needs of the campus mission for our faculty, students, and administration -- rather than focusing on technology first or "Cloud First".

Updates and Progress on Cloud Computing at Berkeley

April 5, 2019
Bill Allison
The most salient recent developments have been in focusing our work to align with the Chancellor's strategy -- in the case of cloud computing, especially towards support for scaling up Jupyterhub to meet the needs of the Division of Data Sciences. Anthony Suen has been instrumental in forging a partnership with IST, and the greater OneIT community -- for example, this Kubernetes training he and Eric Fraser organized. (The photo below is the cohort that completed the training).

Jupyterhub at Berkeley

May 10, 2019
Bill Allison
We live in a world awash in data. As individuals and as a society we need to learn how to better understand, analyze, and use it. To that end, Berkeley recently started an exciting initiative to teach every undergraduate the fundamentals of data science. As the first chapter of the open source book for Data 8 (one of the courses) puts it:

Berkeley's Transparency Report Turns Five

January 28, 2020
Bill Allison
January 28th brings another Data Protection Day. Five years ago today we launched UC Berkeley's "bConnected Transparency Report" to give our students, faculty, and staff a clear idea about how the University handles their personal information in services like Google, Box, and Sharepoint. Several of us involved in launching the original report collaborated on an article, posted today on the University's main technology website, Looking Back: Celebrating Five Years of Data Privacy and Transparency at UC Berkeley, that reflects back on the launch and where we are today.

Don't Miss the Adobe Creative Jam at UC Berkeley

February 11, 2020
Bill Allison
We want to get the word out on a truly unique experience just for UC Berkeley students, brought to you in partnership with the Academic Innovation Studio, the Creative Lab, and the Student Technology Fund! This is an inclusive event, and all experience levels are welcome, from experts to people who’ve never worked with Adobe tools before. We want you there! Here's the description and sign-up link from Adobe:

Amazing lineup for the February 25th UC Berkeley Cloud Computing Meetup

February 20, 2020
Bill Allison
The UC Berkeley Cloud Community of Practice will be hosting the 11th UC Berkeley Cloud Computing Meetup at the Berkeley SkyDeck Penthouse on Tuesday, February 25 with doors opening at 4:30 pm. We have some excellent guests and topics and hope to see you there. Everyone is welcome - this is a really inclusive group! You don't have to be an expert, or already know about cloud technologies; we get together so people can learn from each other. The Berkeley SkyDeck is at 2150 Shattuck, on the top floor (press "PH" in the elevator.) There will be soft drinks, salad, and pizza from Sliver.

Call for Proposals: Berkeley Changemaker Technology Innovation & Connected Campus Grants

March 2, 2020
Bill Allison
We are now accepting proposals for Berkeley's first-ever CTO Technology Innovation program. The CTO is looking to support proposals that will enhance the University's operations, bolster its research endeavors or help transform instruction and the classroom experience. The innovation project you propose should involve some combination of people, process, technology and information and support one or more of UC Berkeley's three key campus strategies:

Meet the Berkeley Changemaker Technology Innovation Grants Review Committee

June 15, 2020
Bill Allison
Submissions have closed, and the review committee is evaluating this year's applicants to the Berkeley Changemaker Technology Innovation Grant program. The grant program supports proof of value experiments that enhance the University's operations, bolster its research endeavors, and help transform instruction and the classroom experience. As advisor Jean Cheng puts it, "At a time when the campus is looking for solutions to new and urgent problems, the CTO grant program is an exciting opportunity to make strategic contributions to projects that are likely to have a significant impact. We were thrilled to see compelling proposals from diverse groups and corners of campus."

Launching the Berkeley AI Community of Practice and the Berkeley AI Meetup

October 9, 2023
Bill Allison
Artificial intelligence is just beginning to come of age. The latest wave of new AI capabilities has transformed what's possible in meaningful ways, reminiscent of the rise of the internet or the inception of public cloud and mobile computing. These technological advances along with an acceleration of new capabilities will deeply impact core functions of teaching, learning, research and administration at all universities. Advances are occurring across many domains of AI-- and the community of practice encompasses this wider interpretation-- from machine learning, natural language processing, robotics, including generative AI and also inquiry into AI ethics, explainable AI and knowledge representation.