June 3, 8:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m.

Tech Forum will be held at the Courtyard by Marriott (across from Kinnick Stadium)

Register for Tech Forum

The Tech Forum Planning Committee is excited to present a hybrid event via Teams and at the Courtyard by Marriott Iowa City – the Heights Rooftop.  If you register to attend through Teams, you will receive an email with the webinar link.

Register by May 22

Conference schedule

  • Breakfast and Check-in

    8:00 a.m.

    A light breakfast and coffee will be available after check-in

  • Welcome and opening comments

    8:30 a.m.

    2026's Tech Forum emcee–Dave Long

  • CIO talk

    8:35

  • Lightning talks

    9:20 a.m.

    5 rounds of lightning talks

  • Break

    10:10 a.m.

    Take a ten minute break before the next session begins

  • Featured talks

    10:20 a.m.

    Implementation of an exercise oncology clinic

    TRACERS

  • Keynote

    11:00 a.m.

    President Barbara Wilson

  • IT Leadership Awards presentation

    11:20

  • Lunch

    11:45 a.m.

    Pick up a boxed lunch and stay to eat with colleagues or take your box lunch on the go. 

Presentation details

CIO presentation

Brad Rohrer, associate vice president and University of Iowa chief information officer 

Josh Wilda, associate vice president for information systems, chief information digital officer, Iowa Health Care 

Lightning talks

Tri-NetX data self service tool

The TriNetX self service data and analytics tool is a web-based research platform used primarily in healthcare and clinical research to explore and analyze patient data. 

Presenters: Heath Davis, associate director for biomedical informatics; senior IT director, Carver College of Medicine; co-director, Iowa Health Data Resource and Asher Hoberg, lead clinical research data services, ICTS Biomedical Informatics

Game changer cabling: a new era beyond the 100‑meter limit

GameChanger cabling extends network reach up to twice the usual distance while still providing reliable speed and power. It installs like standard cabling but removes the need for additional devices, helping reduce cost and simplify network design. 

Presenter: George Stumpf, director of physical infrastructure, Information Technology Services 

AI researchers pay the PIPER: Post Interaction Pattern Extraction and Review

Analyzing student chat data presents many challenges such as inconsistent grammar, informal spelling (i.e., textspeak), and shifting contexts. These challenges are further compounded at scale. OTLT Research and Analytics and the Department of Chemistry analyzed tens of thousands of student-AI tutor transcripts to uncover how students use AI in authentic problem-solving contexts. This talk focuses on the data processing pipeline behind that work (PIPER). This hybrid approach combined the strengths of human coding/categorization and machine learning models. The team leveraged Iowa’s high-performance computing resources to fine tune a BERT-based model capable of classifying hundreds of thousands of student chat messages in an AI tutor context. In this talk, we’ll discuss the challenges in analyzing large chat/text datasets and how we addressed them.

Presenter: Salim George, senior analytics specialist, research and analytics, Office of Teaching, Learning, and Technology

Removing barriers to learning: the Note Depot story

Note Depot is a centralized platform in ICON designed to simplify access to class notes for students and instructors. It leverages AI to create notes for lectures that are recorded on UI Capture and facilitates a student note-taker in cases where there is no recording. Note Depot has streamlined processes for faculty and students in order to help students get the resources they need to be successful in their course. 

Presenters: Ross Miller, lead application developer, ITS Administrative Information Systems, and Michael Espey, senior IT support consultant, Office of Teaching, Learning, and Technology 

Beyond the call button: modernizing clinical communications with Epic VoIP

A recently completed Epic VoIP implementation expanded Clinical Communication Services by enabling external calling and retiring a legacy clinical voice platform. The session will cover how Epic Secure Chat and Epic VoIP were integrated with existing voice and nurse call systems, the impact on clinical workflows and patient communication, and the cross‑team collaboration required to deliver the service at scale. 

Presenter: Andy Evans, assistant director for integrated communication solutions, Health Care Information Systems