Dear Members of the HMS and HSDM Community:

Dean George Q. Daley and I are pleased to announce that Spencer Pruitt has been named chief information officer for Harvard Medical School. His appointment is effective immediately and follows a nationwide search that attracted nearly 300 applicants.

Spencer joined the HMS IT team as chief technology officer in February 2023 and has served as interim CIO since May 1, following the announcement of Deborah Corwin Scott’s retirement. The transformative improvements Spencer has shepherded across every facet of the HMS IT enterprise far outpace his tenure here. He has modernized our research data storage infrastructure, deployed cutting-edge technologies to support the School’s mission, and fostered new partnerships within HMS and across the University to ensure research technology alignment and innovation.

His strategic leadership and collaborative approach have been evident since the outset, as have his commitments to empowering teams, driving innovation, and fostering organizational growth. His expertise in research computing, IT service management, and infrastructure modernization has made him a trusted leader in higher education technology organizations.

Prior to HMS, Spencer worked in positions of increasing leadership and responsibility at Northeastern University, where most recently he was associate vice president of academic and research technologies, and Worcester Polytechnic Institute, where he served as interim director of academic and research computing. At Northeastern, he oversaw major infrastructure upgrades; managed global academic technologies, including migration to the Canvas learning management system; and led critical research computing initiatives, including development of a secure data enclave. At WPI, Spencer spearheaded the upgrade of high-performance computing clusters to enhance research capabilities and expand user engagement, and he guided research proposals for National Science Foundation funding and developed compliance strategies for data management and security.

Spencer earned his PhD in physical chemistry from Iowa State University, where his early research focused on high-performance computing and advanced electronic structure methods, with a particular emphasis on scalable fragmentation methods and ab initio molecular dynamics. Following his doctoral studies, he worked at Argonne National Laboratory and served as co-PI on projects to advance the understanding of molecular systems. Spencer has said that the opportunity to work at a national lab supporting leadership class supercomputers steered his career trajectory toward high-performance computing and leveraging technology in support of science.

Please join me in congratulating Spencer on his new role. I also want to thank our internal advisory search committee, chaired by Chief Financial Officer Julie Joncas, and our Human Resources team — particularly Director of Talent Acquisition Ahmed Mohammed and Technical Recruiter Derek King — for their service, thoughtful engagement, and commitment to such a careful and thorough CIO search.

Sincerely,

Lisa M. Muto
Executive Dean for Administration
Harvard Medical School