Dr. Sasi Pillay serves as the Vice President and Chief Information Officer at Washington State University (WSU). In this role he oversees the computing infrastructure of foundational technologies and research computing, telecommunications, local area and wide area networking, and IT Security. He has led the development of roadmaps for Academic and Research Computing, Administrative and Business Computing, and Foundational Technologies; improved the service delivery of the IT organization by instituting change management, architectural review and project management; and improved IT Security across all WSU campuses, including deploying a Security Operations Center and a Network Operations Center.
As WSU shifted to remote instruction, the issue of digital divide was even more exasperated. To address this, Sasi quickly put together a loaner lap top program for students. To aid in increasing internet access, he also put together a loaner Hotspot program and helped deploy wi-fi access to not only WSU students, but also to students of other institutions as well access for community members via parking lots at no cost.
Sasi has supported NWACC activities by assisting in the Leadership program, sharing ideas through presentations and helped launch and continue to support the NWACC/ORBIS joint task force on Accessibility.
Previously he served as the Associate Vice President and Chief Information Officer of the University of Wisconsin System, comprising 26 campuses. Earlier he served as the Chief Technology Officer for Information Technology (IT) at National Aeronautical and Space Administration (NASA). Sasi is the recipient of NASA’s Exceptional Service Medal and the Outstanding Leadership Medal. He is also the recipient of the Presidential Rank Award recognizing him as a Meritorious Executive in the U.S. federal government.
Sasi received his B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Pennsylvania State University, M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Computer Engineering from Case Western Reserve University. He also has a Master’s degree in Management of Technology from the Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.