Dear Colleagues,

In his nearly four years at the University of Utah, Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs Dan Reed has put his extensive experience in higher education, national research policy and computing to great use as he helped our campus weather the life-changing impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. I want to thank Dr. Reed for his dedicated service and wish him well as he returns to his research roots and takes a well-deserved administrative break.

Dr. Reed was appointed provost by former President Ruth Watkins in the spring of 2018 after working in academia and the tech industry for more than three decades. A longtime professor of computer science and head of the highly ranked computer science department at the University of Illinois, Dr. Reed also served as the director of the National Center for Supercomputing, creating the national computing infrastructure vision that still shapes computational science research. In 2004, he founded and led the Renaissance Computing Institute, a multidisciplinary collaboration that spanned three North Carolina universities—the University of North Carolina, Duke and North Carolina State. From 2007 to 2012, he worked as a director and corporate vice president at Microsoft. At the end of his time at Microsoft, Dr. Reed returned to higher education and a post as the University of Iowa’s vice president for Research and Economic Development.

Including Interim President Michael Good, I am the third president Dr. Reed has advised during his tenure at the U. I want to thank him for his wise and patient guidance of our academic operations, particularly the complex early months of the coronavirus pandemic, when our campus shifted to all-online operations. His experience and expertise were invaluable in shaping this university’s quick response in the spring of 2020, and then our measured preparations for the return to in-person learning and operations in fall 2021.

Along the way, Dr. Reed has served on the U.S. President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, the President’s Information Technology Advisory Committee, the National Science Board, the U.S. Council on Competitiveness, the Argonne National Laboratory Scientific Advisory Committee and the National Center for Optical-Infrared Astronomy Management Oversight Council, among other national science boards. In 2019, he traveled to Antarctica along with University Ombuds Maureen Condic and other members of the National Science Board.

Please join me in wishing Dr. Reed all the best as he returns to the research, policy work and writing that have made him a computing superstar.

Associate Provost Martell Teasley will fill the role of interim SVPAA beginning Jan. 3, 2022. I will work with Dr. Teasley and our leadership team to develop a transition plan and begin a nationwide search for a new senior vice president and provost.

Taylor Randall

President