Newcastle Uni appoints its first chief digital officer

The University of Newcastle has reshuffled its senior leadership to create a new chief digital officer role and has welcomed a new chief information officer as it begins executing its digital strategy.

Sanjay Kalra.

The changes will see Sanjay Kalra, who since 2014 has served as the university’s CIO and digital futures leader, move across to the newly-created CDO position.

Newcastle Uni has also recruited Anthony Molinia, who was previously principal of strategic development and design at management consultancy SDND, to take over some of Kalra's former duties as the new CIO.

Molinia’s past roles have included head of business delivery at AMP Financial Services, senior program manager at BNP Paribas Securities Services, and senior vice president for information technology at Credit Suisse.

Under the new corporate structure, Kalra will lead the digital future team, which will oversee the implementation of the digital technologies outlined in the university’s NeW Futures 2016-2025 [pdf] and Digital 2020 [pdf] strategies.

The digital 2020 plan aims for a “digitally enriched educational experience” and “anytime, anywhere access to UON resources” for students, “HPC, storage, big data analytics on demand” with “lesser administrative burden” for researchers, and the automation of “low value manual processes”.

Molinia will be given responsibility for overseeing the operational activities of the unviersity's IT services department.

The appointments come after Newcastle Uni poached CSC Australia’s former CIO Ben Patey for the role of solution delivery and operations associate director in July.