Empower students for a lifetime of success and impact

Sciences IT has enhanced learning environments by upgrading over 100 computers in teaching labs and SCALE-UP classrooms, supporting interactive learning experiences.  

We worked with COS Academic Affairs to launch a new Student Laptop Loaner Program, providing emergency support to students facing urgent hardware issues. 

In Physics, we helped roll out secure laptops for use during proctored exams, protecting academic integrity.

Our team also supported powerful software tools like SAS, RStudio, COMSOL, and JupyterHub—used by over 600 students last year!

COS IT isn’t just helping students learn—we are also helping them grow their careers. Twenty student workers gained real-world IT experience working with our team this past year!   

Ensure preeminence in research, scholarship, innovation and collaboration

Recognizing the pivotal role of computational resources in modern research, significant investments have been made in the Bioinformatics Research Center’s (BRC) computing cluster. This upgrade will triple storage capacity and enhance processing power, facilitating advanced interdisciplinary research.

We also upgraded six server rooms with increased security, monitoring, and power systems, helping scientists across all departments rely on steady, secure infrastructure for their work.

Supporting Outreach and Public Services

The team provided custom tech solutions focused on durability and accessibility for the Science House, and assisted in the launch of the new Eastern Hub at CMAST! 

At the State Climate Office, we ensured weather tools that are used by the public and agencies like NCDOT remained reliable—even during campus outages.  We migrated massive data systems to better platforms and performed the largest backup restore in our history (14 terabytes!).

Champion a culture of well-being in all we do

Sciences IT staff are also leaders across campus. We had several staff members share their expertise with Staff Senate and Women in Tech.  Most of our staff also hold seats on influential IT groups at the university level, and many of our team members are actively involved in the Staff Senate Computer Loan Program.Our team also earned a Gold-level Wellness Certification and a Bronze-level Sustainability Certification showcasing our care for people and the planet!  Stop by Broughton 1216 to view our certificates.

Improve university effectiveness through transformative technologies, cutting-edge processes and actionable data

In total, the team resolved over 2,400 tech issues, replaced 100+ teaching machines and supported the purchase and replacement of countless staff and faculty computers.  We significantly reduced our spending by realigning services, supported major technology transitions such as Google Drive and Win 10 End of Support, and continued to protect our staff and faculty from cybersecurity threats.

Lead in developing innovative partnerships, entrepreneurial thinking and applied problem-solving

In a unique collaboration, Sciences IT partnered with MEAS faculty and Lenovo to test a new GPU platform for hurricane risk modeling, which accelerated model training by 4x without any further changes and upgrades. The impressive results were featured at NVIDIA’s 2025 global tech conference!

Lead in developing innovative partnerships, entrepreneurial thinking and applied problem-solving

In May 2024, the College hosted LabMan, a national academic IT conference, welcoming over 200 attendees. 

Team members also gave presentations at multiple regional and national events, sharing their expertise on research computing, inclusive leadership, and more.

Recognizing Talent and Welcoming New Faces

Kay Sun was nominated for the prestigious Staff Award for Excellence for her outstanding work at the IT Service Desk.

The team also welcomed Sten Swenson as the new Director of IT and Yathi Chemuturi as a Linux Systems Administrator.

From the classroom to the cloud, the Sciences IT team is making a major impact!  Our work is helping students succeed, supporting cutting-edge research, and keeping the College of Sciences running strong.  Here’s to another year of innovation and support!