Dear colleagues,
I am pleased to inform you that Dimuthu Tilakaratne has been named the inaugural chief data and analytics officer for the University of Illinois System. Dimuthu joined our office on August 7 and has hit the ground running. The appointment is pending approval by the University of Illinois Board of Trustees.
Dimuthu is a value-centric leader with over 15 years of experience delivering data and analytics capabilities for universities. Before joining us, he contributed to the Mosaic ERP replacement project and developed data analytics solutions for student, research administration, and alumni systems at the University of Arizona.
Since transitioning to the U of I System in 2014, Dimuthu has served as the assistant vice president of decision support in Administrative Information Technology Services (AITS). In this role, he led the team responsible for systemwide data analytics solutions, including the Enterprise Data Warehouse (EDW), Enterprise Reporting Solution (EDDIE), Tableau Server, and Data Virtualization with Denodo.
In 2024, Dimuthu partnered with the nonprofit Higher Education Data World organization to host its annual conference in Illinois. More than 250 higher ed data professionals attended and shared their expertise, including many from our universities. Dimuthu enjoys bringing groups of stakeholders together to build high-performing teams, along with nurturing a shared vision that achieves our goals.
In his new role, Dimuthu will be responsible for leading the implementation of the system’s data strategy across the three universities and the system offices. He will establish and maintain a federated data governance model and will be a key advocate for data management and analytics, supporting the implementation recommended by the systemwide Data Strategy Task Force. A key focus will be to enhance data literacy and encourage a data-informed culture throughout the system by fostering cross-functional relationships, facilitating independent data access, and continuing to build confidence and trust in the quality, integrity, and privacy of our data.
Please join me in congratulating Dimuthu and wishing him well in his new position.
Sincerely,
Nicholas P. Jones
Executive Vice President and Vice President for Academic Affairs