UC Tech Awards Program - 2024

UC Tech Awards Announcement 2024

1. Larry L. Sautter Award for Innovation in Information Technology: 

  • Silver Award: California National Primate Research Center (CNPRC), Hydra Development Team – UC Davis: The Hydra project was conceived to develop a platform for the CNPRC’s legacy modernization efforts to enable development teams to build, test, and deploy modern applications quickly, cost-effectively, and with disaster recovery in mind. Hydra’s Application stack was designed to be flexible enough to integrate with any data source while maintaining common industry standards to ensure interoperability. To date, 9 systems, 16 applications, 73 data entry forms, and 115 reports have been deployed on the platform.
  • Golden Award (Tie):
    • Oral Health Recommender System (OHRS) Team – UCLA: Oral Health Recommender System (OHRS) is a multi-university effort, developed in cooperation with Procter & Gamble. Participating universities include UCLA, Harvard University, University of Michigan, Arizona State University and Florida State University. Brushing data is stored in the Cloud (AWS) and analyzed by a custom-built Reinforcement Learning Engine to encourage better dental hygiene and reward desired brushing behaviors for underserved populations. 
    • Ilios Curriculum Management System Team – UCSF: The Ilios Curriculum Management System addresses the needs of the health professions educational community by providing a user-friendly, accessible, flexible, and robust web application to collect, manage, analyze, and deliver curricular information. Built by and for the health professions, Ilios supports the sharing of curriculum outcomes and materials among programs, departments, schools, and institutions, while maintaining the flexibility to accommodate the unique practices of each respectively, within a diverse health professions community. Since 2021 there have been 131 releases of the Ilios application, demonstrating the team’s commitment to maintaining a usable, accessible, and secure platform that meets the needs of students, staff and faculty at UCSF, as well as dozens of health science institutions around the world. 

2. Design Awards

  • Silver Award: Usability Training and Insights Team – UCLA: In response to a shortage of user experience (UX) professionals, a training program was created to extend human-centered methodologies to UX-adjacent staff, leading to significant improvements in UCLA’s learning management system. The program incorporated student insights by integrating a case study into UCLA Extension’s UX capstone course, providing students with practical experience and staff with innovative ideas. This initiative not only democratized human-centered design principles but also fostered a culture of collaboration and innovation, benefiting over 40,000 students and faculty. 
  • Golden Award: UC Procurement Portal Team – UC Office of the President: Systemwide Procurement partnered with UCOP IT and Marketing teams, plus the UC campus locations to create one unified web presence for UC Procurement: https://procurement.ucop.edu/ The content from five existing sites was reorganized and optimized in a responsive, branded design, meeting all web accessibility standards, with detailed analytics, and maintaining all functionality of the existing sites. The community now has one home for UC Procurement.

Mojgan A. Amini Operational Excellence Award

  • Silver Award (Tie):
    • Leiyah Shan – for Practice Affiliations & Epic Community Connect (PACC) –  UC San Diego Health: The PACC (Practice Affiliations & Epic Community Connect) program at UC San Diego Health has not only transformed healthcare delivery and operational efficiency for community practices and patients but has also exemplified how strategic integration of advanced Electronic Health Record (EHR) technologies can expand access to care, integrate services, and streamline patient care across a growing network of regional affiliates 
    • UC Santa Barbara Canvas Support Team –  UC Santa Barbara: Following the selection of a new learning management system (LMS) for instruction, the UC Santa Barbara Instructional Support team developed and implemented a phased two-year plan to migrate the campus to a new LMS. The first phase of the project was to implement and customize the new environment and facilitate an easy transition path for all instructors. The second phase of the project specifically aimed to leverage features of the new LMS and hire experts in design and pedagogy to enhance the teaching and learning experience.  The outcomes of both phases were measurably successful and were performed by a relatively small team.  This team is the central support for UC Santa Barbara’s LMS.  The team historically supported the older LMS (Moodle) and were required to simultaneously support both platforms for over a year.
  • Golden Award: UC Merced Academic Activity Team –  UC Merced: In 2021, UC Merced embarked on a project to reimagine their Academic Activity solution, a problematic process with huge financial and resource management impact for the campus. By late 2022, the project team had delivered a user-friendly User Interface that is deeply integrated with Banner (SIS) and Canvas (LMS) to significantly minimize the operational burden of governmental regulations to faculty, staff and students. 

IT Security Award

  • Silver Award: UC Investments and UC Office of the President Information Technology Services –  UC Office of the President: The UC Investments Office partnered with UC Office of the President Information Technology Services (ITS) teams to address unique cybersecurity needs related to their management of UC’s $170 billion investment portfolio. 
  • Golden Award: Scott Currie, CISO; UC San Diego Health Information Security Team; Protected Health Information (PHI) in Email Cleanup Project –  UC San Diego Health: Phishing (fake/fraudulent communications) is one of the most common, and successful, threats to health care organizations.  Given that email is commonly used for communication and collaboration, often including patient information, a successful phish can result in a breach of protected information. While many tools are in place to reduce the likelihood of a successful phishing attack, a reduction in the amount of protected data in email can substantially reduce the impact when phishing does occur. 

Yvonne Tevis UC Collaboration Award

  • Silver Award: Project Surfliner Team –  UC Santa Barbara and UC San Diego: Project Surfliner, a five-year collaboration between the UC San Diego Library and the UC Santa Barbara Library, exemplifies the essence of the Yvonne Tevis UC Collaboration Award through its transformative impact on digital library platforms, fostering cultural shifts, and embodying the spirit of cross-campus cooperation and innovation within the UC system. 
  • Golden Award: SMART Cumulus Team – UC Davis Health: The SMART Cumulus Project, a Multi-Center Information Technology Collaborative project, with Boston Children’s Hospital as the hub, enables fast-track Public Health reporting with de-identified Electronic Health Records (EHR) data using the HL7 BULK FHIR Access Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) for EHRs.

Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion (DEI) Leadership Awards)

  • Silver Award: Jill Wolter – for leading the UCSF/UCSF Health Web Accessibility Team – UCSF/UCSF Health: Two members of the UCSF Health web team, with integral guidance and oversight from UCSF’s Jill Wolters, built a website accessibility protocol from the ground up to introduce digital accessibility to their flagship patient-facing sites – ucsfhealth.org and ucsfbenioffchildrens.org –  that, combined, receive approximately 2.5 million page views every month. 
  • Golden Award: Shirley Bittlingmeier –  UC Office of the President: Shirley Bittlingmeier has been an integral member of the UC Office of the President IT leadership team for more than a decade. Throughout her distinguished career at UC, she has remained steadfast in her commitment to promoting fairness and inclusion for underrepresented communities. In addition to her substantial responsibilities within her role, she consistently goes above and beyond to champion diversity, equity, and inclusion within both UC Office of the President IT and the broader UC community.

Sustained Impact Award

  • Silver Award: Brian Koehmstedt – UC Berkeley: As primary identity architect, Koehmstedt has led UC Berkeley in implementing wide-impacting changes throughout his career. Most recently, he was instrumental in a successful implementation of UC Office of the President’s Gender Recognition and Lived Name policy. He is also a valued campus partner, particularly in maintaining system security and improving end user experience. 
  • Golden Award: Azra Ayers – UC Riverside: Azra Ayers has demonstrated exceptional leadership and expertise in IT project management through her work on several complex initiatives at UC Riverside. She successfully managed Project Genesis, overseeing the data center relocation and vHost Migration Project, which modernized web hosting and ensured data security. Ayers also played a crucial role in upgrading the UC Riversdie Identity Management System, enhancing its technical operations and security. During the Impact23 initiative, she streamlined financial systems by reducing custom applications, aligning them with new Oracle Cloud Financials. Her adoption of Agile/Scrum methodologies improved team efficiency and product delivery across multiple projects, contributing significantly to ITS’s strategic goals for modernization and operational efficiency.