As vice chancellor for research computing, James Barr von Oehsen oversees research fueled by Pitt computing resources to strategize and deliver complex research projects across the university. In addition, von Oehsen serves as director of the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center (PSC), a national research resource between Pitt and Carnegie Mellon University.  

He holds dual appointments in research faculty in the department of electrical and computer engineering in the Swanson School of Engineering and the department of biomedical informatics in the School of Medicine.  

As an established leader in the cyberinfrastructure research field, von Oehsen joins Pitt from Rutgers University, where he served as associate vice president for the Office of Advanced Research Computing. There, he provided strategic leadership that propelled Rutgers research and scholarly achievements through next-generation computing, networking, and data science. He also developed and executed a comprehensive cyberinfrastructure strategy, centralizing research computing for the institution to broaden the scale and scope of research enabled by computing resources. 

Von Oehsen is also a founding member of the Ecosystem for Research Networking (ERN), a consortium of universities, regional network providers, and industry partners with a vision to simplify, support, catalyze, and foster multi-campus collaborations and partnerships between academic institutions of all types and sizes that advance the frontiers of research, pedagogy, and innovation.