Director of Illinois Computes, NCSA

Chuck Thompson rejoined the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in June 2024 as the Director of Illinois Computes, a five year program with the vision of providing baseline research computing resources across all disciplines, to all researchers.

Immediately prior to returning to Illinois, Chuck was at Yale University where he served as the Associate CIO, FAS and SEAS (Faculty of Arts and Sciences and School of Engineering and Applied Science). In this role he provided strategic guidance and operational support, worked to ensure that all research, education, and administrative IT needs of these units were met, and represented their needs in central IT planning and technology prioritization.

In between Yale and his prior stint at Illinois, Chuck was the Vice President and Chief Information Officer for The Claremont College Services (TCCS). In that role, he was responsible for providing information technology services in support of the seven member institutions of The Claremont Colleges as well as for supporting the information technology needs of TCCS.

Prior to Claremont and Yale, Chuck spent almost 30 years at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign as student and staff. His last role during that time was as Assistant Dean and Chief Information Officer for the College of Engineering where he oversaw the consolidation of all information technology staff in the college into a single shared services organization and was also very involved with campus-wide IT initiatives.

Chuck holds Bachelor of Science and Master of Science degrees in Computer Science from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and is currently working on an MS in Accountancy, also from Illinois. Chuck is active with SCUP, the Society for College and University Planning. He is a past member of the SCUP Board, served as Keynote and Invited Sessions Chair for SCUP 2023 and was the Conference Chair for SCUP 2024.