MARCH 1, 2021 — UTSA has announced John “Jeff” Prevost as the new interim executive director of the Open Cloud Institute. Prevost, who cofounded the OCI and has been an assistant director and chief research officer of the institute since its launch, brings with him a wealth of knowledge from his more than 20 years of experience leading engineering and software development teams.
In addition to his roles with the OCI, Prevost has been a professor since 2016 in the College of Engineering, where he holds the Cloud Technology Endowed Professorship, and is the vice president for secure cloud architecture for the Cybersecurity Manufacturing Innovation Institute and a member of the Autonomous Control Engineering Laboratories, the Cloud Lab for Engineering Application Research, and the Center for Security and Privacy Enhanced Cloud Computing at UTSA.
Prevost has also served as a technical leader in the computer hardware and software industry prior to his academic appointments, including as director of product development, director of information systems and chief technical officer for various technical firms in the San Antonio area.
His research is concentrated in the fields of analysis and control of complex-distributed systems—key areas include virtual resource placement optimization, auto-deploy and configure domain specific cloud resources and architecture, and the use of quantum information algorithms for analysis and security.
Bernard Arulanandam, UTSA’s vice president for research, economic development and knowledge enterprise, to which the OCI currently reports, said, “Under Dr. Prevost’s direction, the OCI will work alongside our institutes and centers to carry forward UTSA’s vision to be a premier public research university, providing access to educational excellence and preparing citizen leaders for the global environment.”
Created in 2015, the OCI is part of an initiative to develop degree programs in cloud computing and big data and foster collaboration with industry, positioning UTSA and San Antonio as world leaders in open cloud technology. The OCI’s vision is to become a leading research institute in support of education and research in cloud computing with local and global impact.
In 2021 the OCI plans to focus on bringing the latest developments of cloud and edge computing to the university through sponsored seminars, workshops, internships and fellowships, and collaboration activities with other key institutes and centers across campus. Most notably, the OCI aims to increase levels of faculty and student engagement and participation and support for large grant collaborations and sponsored research publications.
Prevost will lead the OCI as it transitions from Main Campus to the new School of Data Science at the university’s Downtown Campus, which is scheduled for completion in 2022. The new school is a key component of UTSA’s plan to expand its presence and programs in downtown San Antonio to meet the city’s growing workforce needs and add to its growing reputation as the largest information security hub outside of Washington, D.C.
“We at the 80/20 Foundation could not be more excited about this announcement,” said Lorenzo Gomez, co-founder and chairman of Geekdom and board member of the 80/20 Foundation, partners of the Open Cloud Institute. “Not only has Jeff been an early adopter of open cloud technology, he was the very first collaborator we approached to help bring the idea of the OCI to life. Jeff has been involved with the OCI since its inception and we are excited to have him more involved at a leadership level.”
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