Gerard McCartney, PhD 

Vice President for Information Technology and Chief Information Officer

Gerry McCartney was appointed Purdue's vice president for information technology and chief information officer in July 2007. He had served as the University's top information technology administrator in an interim capacity since July 2006.

As CIO, McCartney is responsible for overseeing Information Technology at Purdue, informally known as ITaP, and reports jointly to Randy Woodson, provost, and Alphonso Diaz, executive vice president for business and finance and treasurer. ITaP is responsible for the planning and coordination of central computing and telecommunications systems on the West Lafayette campus, along with media production and distance-learning services. The organization consists of five business units and has over 450 staff members and an annual budget of more than $63 million.

In May 2009, McCartney was appointed as the first Olga Oesterle England professor of information technology. He also is an associate professor in Purdue's College of Technology. 

Prior to his interim appointment, McCartney served two years as assistant dean for technology at Purdue's Krannert School of Management, where he taught in the Krannert MBA, executive education, and engineering management programs; he continues to act as principal investigator for the SIFT Project.

From 1993 until 2004, McCartney was associate dean and chief information officer at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School. He was director of the Krannert Computing Center from 1990 to 1993 and was manager of user services at the Purdue Computing Center from 1988 to 1990. He has also held managerial positions in the computing centers at both the University of Notre Dame and Maynooth College in Ireland. He holds a patent, was awarded the CIO Enterprise Value Award in 2003, and is a member of the CIO Executive Council. He speaks and comments frequently on the entrepreneurial management of technology and is a contributor to CrankyGeeks.

McCartney earned his doctorate in sociology and anthropology from Purdue in 1995 and diplomas in advanced computer programming and systems analysis from the Graduate School of Engineering at Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland, in 1982 and 1984. He took First Class Honors in both his bachelor's and master's degrees in 1981 and 1984, respectively, from Maynooth College.

Gerry and his wife Dr. Kitti Carriker have two sons, one is a student at West Lafayette High School an the other is a student at Purdue University.