Advisory Board

Associate Vice Chancellor-Information Technology, UCLA

Dr. James "Jim" Davis is the Associate Vice Chancellor--Information Technology of the UCLA. In this position, Jim has broad responsibility for university-wide technology planning and for coordinating implementation. He coordinates the IT technology planning, policy setting, prioritization and decision-making processes and is responsible for the strategic deployment of the academic and administrative operations services and resources in support of the university mission and its central and distributed technology requirements.

Prior to Jim's appointment, he served as Chief Information Officer for Ohio State University, Associate Provost for Information Technology, and Director of University Technology Services. He had management responsibility for the Office of Technology Enhanced Learning and Research, including distance education, university-wide technology planning, university IT policy, technology visioning, university faculty, staff and student technology advisory committees and all central computing, technology support and telecommunication service operations for both academic and administrative applications.

Jim is currently on the Board of Directors for Corporation for Education Network Initiatives in California (CENIC). He has worked extensively with the Ohio Supercomputer Center, the Ohio Academic and Research Network (OARnet), the Committee on Institutional Cooperation (Big10) and CICnet (when it existed) in developing high performance computing, network, research and educational initiatives.

Jim is also a Professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering at UCLA. Jim's research is in the area of data analysis, decision support, and intelligent systems in process operations and design. With over 20 years experience in technology-based engineering research and application, he has been involved with research, development and deployment of information technology solutions in a wide variety of applications.

Jim has published and consulted extensively in the areas of knowledge-based systems and neural networks and has conducted numerous short courses and professional training workshops both nationally and internationally. He has worked or consulted on decision support applications in many process and manufacturing companies and Jim comes to UCLA with several years' industrial experience at Amoco Chemicals Corporation and Argonne National Laboratory. He earned his M.S. and Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from Northwestern University.