Cornell names new chief global information officer

Photo: Weill Cornell Medicine Art and Photography

Cornell has created a new role, vice president and chief global information officer, and Dr. Curtis L. Cole – currently assistant vice provost for information services and chief information officer at Weill Cornell Medicine – will be the first person to hold the position.

“The creation of this cabinet-level position, and Dr. Cole’s promotion to the role, is critical to the university’s response to this challenge,” Pollack said. “Dr. Cole is uniquely qualified to oversee the breadth of Cornell’s IT enterprise, positioning us to be a leader in the adoption and use of advanced information technology across our campuses.”

Starting January 1, Cole will be responsible for use of information technology across the academic medical center’s teaching, research, clinics, student life and administration, and reorganizing IT groups to better respond to educational and medical changes, Susan Kelley of the Cornell Chronicle reports.

Cole will be tasked with creating strategies and policies for digital transformation across the university – the main campus in Ithaca, Cornell Tech and Weill Cornell Medicine in New York City and Qatar, and other locations.

“The creation of this cabinet-level position, and Dr. Cole’s promotion to the role, is critical to the university’s response to this challenge,” said Cornell University President Martha E. Pollack in a statement. “Dr. Cole is uniquely qualified to oversee the breadth of Cornell’s IT enterprise, positioning us to be a leader in the adoption and use of advanced information technology across our campuses.”

In his past work as CIO for Weill Cornell Medicine, Cole focused on IT infrastructure, software and web development and enterprise applications. He’s also an associate professor of clinical medicine and population health sciences. And, as an internist, he supervises medical students at Weill Cornell Community Clinic and serves as a Clinical Innovator in Residence at Cornell Tech.

In this new position, Cole will seek more effective and efficient cross-campus coordination of technology resources and systems – developing new standards and metrics for oversight of IT while enabling flexibility for local campuses to develop and support their own unique programs.

“Having been a student here and a faculty member here, having spent my whole career here, the biggest unfulfilled opportunities for the university stem from the distance between campuses,” said Cole. “We have expertise, data and processes on each campus that need to be shared.”

He added: “One of the biggest challenges in IT management is identifying opportunities to aggregate systems through network effects or scaling – and identifying areas that are better off without aggregation.”

Vipin Kamath, deputy chief information officer at Weill Cornell Medicine, will succeed Cole as CIO at Weill Cornell Medicine and will report to him.

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