UCLA Names Chief Data and AI Officer, First in UC System

The University of California, Los Angeles has named a veteran technologist, Chris Mattmann, to serve as the UC system’s first campus chief data and artificial intelligence officer. UCLA is one of just a few universities in the U.S. to have someone in this role.

“AI is rapidly becoming an important part of teaching, learning, research and administrative functions, making a role like this more important than ever,” said Lucy Avetisyan, UCLA’s associate vice chancellor and chief information officer, in a UCLA news release. Avetisyan created the groundbreaking position as part of her leadership team.

“Chris will help bring our campus together around a shared vision for harnessing the emerging power of data and AI and play a crucial role in helping us navigate complex landscapes related to AI privacy, ethics, and security,” she said in the release.

As chief data and AI officer, Mattmann “will collaborate with stakeholders across UCLA to develop and implement a strategic roadmap for data and AI innovations,” the release said. “His leadership will enable the ethical deployment of AI technologies while enhancing UCLA’s capabilities in advanced data and analytics, fostering a culture of innovation and discovery that is aligned with the campus’s mission.”

“I am honored to join UCLA,” Mattmann said in the release. “My key priorities are to establish a robust governance framework related to AI and data and to foster campuswide collaboration around AI tools. This will ensure a commitment to ethical standards, leadership, and collaboration around this exciting capability and help UCLA and the entire UC system create a future where AI benefits all members of our community.”

Mattmann, who had served nearly 24 years at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) before taking his new role in June, “brings to UCLA his expertise in award-winning technology and data innovation,” the announcement said. “He most recently served as chief technology and innovation officer at JPL, where he created the next-generation data processing systems used in NASA’s Orbiting Carbon Observatory and other Earth science missions.”

The release noted that Mattmann was one of the inventors of an Apache Tika framework that can extract data from any file type and simplify it through a common vocabulary. This framework was critical to the investigative reporting behind the Panama Papers, a series of stories by hundreds of journalists worldwide that was awarded the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for explanatory reporting.

Mattmann also contributes to Google’s machine learning platform TensorFlow and is the author of the book Machine Learning With TensorFlow. He has a doctorate in computer science from the University of Southern California and a public policy executive certificate from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.