Meet the Chief Information Officer

Didier Contis professional biography

Didier Contis serves as the Chief Information Officer and Vice Provost for Information Technology at the University of Wisconsin–‍Madison, a position he has held since July 2025. In his role, Contis leads the university’s information technology strategy and ensures enterprise IT resources support the university’s mission and goals.

Contis has extensive experience in higher education IT leadership. He previously served as the Executive Director of Academic Technology, Innovation and Research Computing at the Georgia Institute of Technology, where he developed technology strategies that helped the institute achieve its research, teaching and learning goals.

Born and raised in France, Contis moved to the U.S. in 1999 to begin his IT career at Georgia Tech, where he also served as Interim Chief Information Security Officer, led the institute’s response to a university-wide security audit, and served as Interim Associate Vice President for Data Strategy and Analytics. Contis specializes in creating innovative technology solutions that support teaching, learning and research and is an advocate for the safe and responsible use of extended reality (XR) technologies in higher education. His significant accomplishments include launching the first large-scale virtual computer lab that let students access scientific and engineering software from anywhere, anytime, on any device. He also helped create a shared cloud computing system that supports research and instruction across multiple academic units.

Contis is a co-author on several academic publications on cybersecurity, network intrusion detection and educational technology. He taught classes focused on using data to make better decisions and is interested in applying knowledge graphs for data analytics. He was the co-principal investigator for CollabNext, a National Science Foundation-supported project to create an open knowledge graph to connect researchers with potential collaborators. He partnered with the University of Michigan and the New School and co-taught training sessions on XR security, privacy, safety and ethics for higher education professionals.

Specialization areas

• Research computing and cybersecurity
• Academic technology innovation
• Data strategy and analytics
• Extended reality (XR) technologies in education
• Cloud computing and virtualization
• Strategic IT partnerships

Education

• Master of Science in Electrical Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology
• Diplôme d’Ingénieur (Bachelor’s degree), École des Mines de Nantes, France