Damian Doyle, former UMBC Deputy CIO and former MDREN Board Chair, retired in August 2024. Damian has moved on to assume the role of Deputy CIO at the University of Virginia (UVA). Damian accomplished a great deal at UMBC over his 25-year career. He has established himself as a strong leader and visionary and contributed greatly to Educause, Internet 2, and MDREN. He chaired the MDREN Board from 2020 to 2022. He served on the board for many years prior to becoming chair and provided valuable advice and guidance to the MDREN team. In 2022, he stepped and became the Co-Principal Investigator for the NSF CC* grant that provided a 10X upgrade bandwidth capacity to 6 institutions, including research centers and labs 10x, and added a Science DMZ for data transfers from other sites to enable the full potential of these institutions. These upgrades allow researchers at each institution to reliably connect to supercomputers and big data repositories, increase computational capabilities, and increase inter-institution collaboration.

His contributions to his university, the higher education technology community, and the USM have been many. We wish him the best of luck at UVA and look forward to staying in touch with him, as our paths will certainly cross in the future. Jack Suess, UMBC VP-CIO, provided a great tribute to Damian in this UMBC OIT Post.