James R. ‘Jim’ Bottum is Clemson University’s Vice Provost for Computing and Information Technology and Chief Information Officer (CIO). He came to Clemson in July 2006 after working a combined 20 years at Purdue University, where he served as their first CIO, and the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, where he administered research activities at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications.

He leads Clemson Computing and Information Technology (CCIT) in building a state-of-the-art cyberinfrastructure for education, research and service. His vision for IT at Clemson is to partner with the technology and educational communities to create a world-class IT organization supporting an advanced cyberinfrastructure and a multi-disciplinary set of programs to enable faculty, staff and students to achieve the university’s goals. He maintains that enabling learning and discovery is more than just offering compute cycles; it requires creating a collaborative environment where IT specialists work in partnership with faculty, staff and students. Bottum and CCIT are engaging the Clemson community to build a unified vision and strategic plan for information technology that will help Clemson reach its goal of being a Top 20 public university.

Bottum serves on a number of national committees including the National Science Foundation’s Advisory Committee on Cyberinfrastructure and the GPRA Advisory Committee. Bottum was selected as one of Computerworld Magazine’s 100 Premier IT Leaders for 2007 and was elected in March 2008 to the Internet 2 Board of Trustees.