When Dr. took over. Curtis Carver, Ph.D., as CIO at the University of Alabama -Birmingham in 2015, he addressed a “museum of computer science,” as he calls it – opportunities of every operating system, storage device, and application on the market in past 30 years.
Carver’s first priority then was to clean up the outdated mess and rationalize the entire technology infrastructure into a single comprehensive platform that would empower thousands of university scientists to innovate and make extraordinary research discoveries.
“We started a movement toward a rationalized model, and that was a hybrid cloud,” Carver told CIO.com. “When your researchers are doing personalized medicine, or genomics research, the datasets are so large that it doesn’t matter how fast your network is. The speed of light becomes the limiting factor. “
Seven years later, Carver now manages a hybrid cloud infrastructure based primarily on Microsoft Azure and Kubernetes, Tableau and Microsoft Power BI for analytics, Microsoft’s Azure AI framework, and multiple Nvidia graphics processors, all connected on a high-performance computer cluster in a nearby private data center via a 100 Gigabit connection.
His modernization approach seems to be having an impact.
Last fall, UAB, which Carver says is the state’s medical research center, made a genomics discovery that allows pig kidneys to be transferred to humans – a potentially life -saving achievement. which caught the attention of CNN and major media outlets around the world.
The UAB medical team transplanted two pig kidneys to a brain -dead recipient and is currently planning a clinical trial to transfer the pig kidneys to living people – an effort that will require tests. approval from the government. If successful, the procedure could have a profound impact on deaths from kidney failure, which kills hundreds of thousands of lives each year.
Carver claims no credit for any of that. But UAB’s continued digital innovation and the subsequent scientific victory is undoubtedly a factor in enabling research into its genomics and developing the kind of fundraising that leads to more successes. Example: The university has begun a $ 75 million project to build two buildings that will serve as the UAB Genomics Research Hub.
Changes to support innovative scientists
In addition to overhauling the entire IT infrastructure, Carver is pivoting UAB’s IT workforce to put more resources into enabling innovative scientists. So far, less than half of its IT staff is deployed to “keep the lights on” such as addressing helpdesk issues while a larger percentage responds to next-generation genomics and medical technology needs. that its scientist.
This type of muscle is important to scientists, who sometimes struggle with limitations in all areas of IT-storage, e-mail, and processing power. Carver aims to offer unlimited IT services to UAB researchers and he is close by.
“Our latest purchases are focused on high-performance computing processors built specifically for neural networks and artificial intelligence, which we pretty much use in genomics medicine,” the CIO said. “For our genomics, those processors are well adapted for that.”
The approximately $ 850 million in sponsored research that UAB carries out each year also helps raise what IT can provide.
“The whole idea is we’re moving from a time of scarcity to a time of prosperity,” Carver said. “And you can manage IT and budget in a way that empowers people to focus on pancreatic cancer.… The idea is to create a palette of tools that people can actually use instead of nickel and dimming it.”
And analyst Dr. Nimita Limaye, research vice president of life sciences R&D strategy and technology at IDC, said such IT efforts at institutions like UAB are important because of competition from the private sector.
“Big pharma is investing in technology as before and is aggressively making partnerships with AI vendors,” he said. “Universities and academic medical centers need to strengthen their positions as innovation ecosystems for the life sciences industry, and therefore, it is critical that their CIOs must adopt innovative technologies to stay ahead of the curve. . “
Next: AI decisions and lake data
To that end, UAB’s next step is to address major decisions in expanding its AI and data analytics platforms, Carver said, without overseeing long-term planning alone. UAB has two committees, Data Governance and Digital Strategy, whose work will help guide decisions about which next -generation AI platform and data lake should be used, for example.
As part of its data management plan, UAB seeks to develop “deep expertise” in key data systems, including a data dictionary, digital validators, and a digital marketplace. Carver said UAB is “leaning” on using ServiceNow but is also considering Salesforce for its digital marketplace.
“Instead of going through a contract vehicle to solve a common problem, [we want to build] a digital marketplace and deploy it. You can solve [purchasing] for the entire university rather than a small unit, ”Carver said. “It fosters innovation, but we do it in a way that we create a competitive advantage and a common strategy and use the full scale of the economy that we can bring as a multibillion-dollar university.”
UAB is a large customer of Microsoft but also has master service agreements with Amazon and Google, Carver said. The university’s education management system, for example, runs on Amazon Web Services, and the other services are hosted on the Google Cloud Platform.
UAB currently operates an on-premise Tableau server used by many administrative departments and some researchers. Some campus departments also use Microsoft Power BI, a UAB spokesperson said.
UAB plans to implement a centralized Power BI server in the future and develop a centralized reporting catalog that will display reports generated with Tableau, Power BI, and other analytics solutions. It aims to help users find reports and related data faster, he added.
On the artificial intelligence front, UAB uses Microsoft’s natural language processing technology and Azure AI frameworks. For example, Carver’s team has developed “intrusive counseling agents” for students who don’t attend classes, and chatbots that answer common questions from students and staff.
But much more needs to be done in AI, automation, and data analytics, as well as security, one of Carver’s pet projects. UAB’s digital transformation remains a multi-year effort to dominate not only in 2022 and 2023 but in the foreseeable future, he said. But the work of supporting the university’s research efforts is worthwhile.
“People can do amazing things. Computers can do amazing things. But when you combine the two, when you have a person and a computer interacting together to solve a problem together, it’s better, “Carver said.” Not one, or another. But how do we provide systems that work in unison. “
Carver aims to give scientists a very agile platform that gives them access to custom levels of processing, storage, and networking power within 15 minutes. “Let them focus on science. We’ll hold things behind,” Carver said. “So, they’ll win more awards, make scientific discoveries, and change the world.”