Jerry Sheehan

Who is Jerry Sheehan?

Jerry Sheehan serves as the Chief of Staff for the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2), a UC San Diego/UC Irvine partnership. In his this capacity, Mr. Sheehan has responsibility for strategic initiatives and research analytics for Calit2 which is composed of over 650 faculty, 100 technical staff, and a research and development portfolio of over $700 million. As Chief of Staff Jerry is Institute Director Larry Smarr’s principal deputy in interfaces with the Calit2 internal Governing Board and external Advisory Board.

During his career Jerry has focused on the intersection of public policy and information technology with a particular interest in applying academic innovation to "real world" problems. In this capacity, Sheehan has created cyberinfrastructure to support educators, developed statewide technology plans for integrating information technology into government and education, successfully campaigned for the creation of high performance networks, and built tools to help analyze the academic research enterprise. He has been a featured speaker at professional conferences and was recently a keynote speaker at the Summit09 Partnerships in Cyberinfrastructure Development Conference in Banff, Canada.

In addition to his executive management responsibilities, Mr. Sheehan is also an active member of the research community. Jerry serves as Senior Personnel on the National Science Foundation's GreenLight Project, a major research instrument effort focused on improving computer energy efficiency. He also leads efforts to develop a Consortium for a Zero Carbon Internet under the auspices of the Canada-California Strategic Innovation Partnership. Sheehan serves as a member of the California Emerging Technology Fund Panel of Experts and as staff has supported the work of Governor Schwarzenegger’s California Broadband Task Force and President Clinton's Information Technology Advisory Committee on Open Source Software for High Performance Computing.

As a private consultant, he has analyzed frameworks for state-based science and technology innovation, created research analytics to better understand federal funding opportunities, and helped forecast future disruptive information technology trends.

Sheehan received a Masters of Science degree in Political Science from Eastern Illinois University in 1991 and is a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the Institute of Electronics and Electrical Engineers (IEEE), and Educause.