CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Peter M. Siegel of Iowa State University has been chosen to be the new chief information officer for the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, UI Provost Richard Herman announced today.
Siegel is the director for academic information technologies at ISU in Ames, where he oversees a full-time professional staff at the ISU Center for Academic Information Technologies, along with a geographical information systems group and a high-performance computing research group.
“Peter Siegel brings a wealth of knowledge and experience to Illinois,” Herman said. “In addition, he greatly impressed those who met with him during the interview process. He has a proven record of accomplishment as well as a vision for the future of information technology in the academic arena. We look forward to working with him in the years ahead.”
Siegel is UIUC’s first permanent Chief Information Officer. The position was created in 1998 to ensure a coordinated vision for information technologies for the campus.Hassan Aref, a UI physics professor and the head of the department of theoretical and applied mechanics, has served as interim CIO.
“The campus is most grateful that Hassan agreed to step in on short notice and provide vital leadership for this key area on campus,” Herman said. “We are fortunate to have been able to call on someone with his depth of expertise.”
Siegel has led and participated in numerous committees, including the ISU Task Force on the Future of Information Sciences. Prior to joining ISU in 1998, Siegel was director of networking and computing systems for Cornell Information Technologies, where he was responsible for direct support of the campus networks central computing systems for administrative, research and library needs, and executive director of the Cornell Theory Center.
Siegel’s academic background is in linguistics and he has been an invited lecturer and presenter at numerous conferences nationwide and is a member of several select professional organizations. He will assume his duties as CIO in August.
