Jim Kenyon, Research Cloud Lead at University of Michigan
Michigan, USA
Champion since 2023
As a research cloud lead for Information Technology Services at the University of Michigan, Jim works to ensure researchers have the right tools and technologies to advance their research. Jim helped build a secure enclave/landing zone on the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Cloud to enable researchers to work in a secure environment to store and analyze restricted research data. The enclave design was successful and is now the model the university uses for secure enclaves for other use cases and research projects. Jim continues to evaluate and test AWS services to determine the optimal efficiency of the enclave and other solutions provided at the university.
Prior to his current role, Jim served as a research higher performance computing lead for the University of Michigan – Michigan Medicine where he helped Michigan medicine researchers use high-performance computing resources to further science. Before re-joining University of Michigan, Jim was the director of data science and IT Services at the Optimization Group where he was responsible for developing and optimizing return on market investment data mining processes including developing models to predict sales based on marketing activity and external variables. He spent over two decades in industry with small and large firms managing network and data center infrastructure. Prior to his move to industry, Jim began his career in UM laboratories, developing motion tracking hardware and software, implementing an early loosely coupled parallel supercomputer for climate science, and as IT Director at the UM School of Public Health.
Jim earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Engineering from the University of Michigan.
Jim lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan with his wife, two of four boys, dog, and cat, and enjoys snow skiing, gardening, boating, and traveling.
Learn more about Jim
- Research High Performance Computing Lead, University of Michigan – Michigan Medicine
- Director of Data Science and IT Services, Optimization Group
- VP, IT Operations and Engineering, ADP
- Director of IT Infrastructure, Gale Group, Thomson Corporation
- Systems Project Coordinator / IT Director, UM School of Public Health
- Systems Research Programmer, UM College of Engineering & Department of Kinesiology
- Bachelor of Science, Computer Engineering, University of Michigan
- Science at scale: How to provide large scale technologies to support novel science
- Technology that enables science: How to provide technology that supports scientific discovery without requiring science teams to become technologists
- Minimally disruptive secure computing environments: How to provide computing environments for restricted data types without becoming so cumbersome as to not be useful
“Speed costs money. How fast do you want to go?”
-D. Christensen
What is the AWS Education Champions Program?
The purpose of the AWS Education Champions program is to recognize, celebrate, and support education leaders driving digital transformation with cloud computing. Through this program AWS helps amplify their stories and voices, as well as supporting their continued innovation with our services. The individuals selected to be part of this community share a mission to transform and advance education, and promote AWS services, solutions, and best practices in education.