Interview by Ben Mundy

Jose, talk about what shaped you and your progression to today.

I started in the fine arts, am accredited to paint, and went to school to be an illustrator. I was doing freelance web design in Miami, Florida, which led to IT, which led to a skincare magazine as their webmaster. This was in the early 2000s and their website was all HTML, so they wanted me to fix it up. Because they asked me to create a login feature, I had to know how to program, so I taught myself. After, I went to work at a web marketing firm in the Miami design district, which involved more “hard core” programming, my trial by fire. Prior I was just writing scripts but I had a genius of a boss, whom I learned a lot from. I eventually took over managing the software development team before I came to the University.

Do you “expect” things to come easily to you? How much of yourself are you willing to give to the learning process?

I have a voracious appetite to learn, have never stopped being curious, and have a drive to understand things. Learning makes me happy. That’s a trait you must have if you’re going to teach yourself this discipline rather than go to school for it. Sometimes I wonder what I could have done if I went to school for computer programming and computer science, but the world has come around. What drives technology today is the philosophy that it should serve human beings. User experience is huge. The arts hone your intuition, and the marriage of the two disciplines, arts and technology, is super important. Computer science is very binary, ones and zeros, and the arts are intuition and emotion. I think that’s been my secret to success.

Can you talk a little about left brain, right brain. People seem to be in camps or have strengths in one direction. When did you discover you could do both?

When I was young, and tested, I measured equally high on both.  Anybody who loves math and science can get a lot of joy and understanding about their discipline through the arts. I really enjoyed science. In third grade, I went to the school library to find science textbooks and read up to all the sixth-grade level. There was nothing else they could teach me that I didn’t already know. Artists who feel intimidated by science and math shouldn’t. These things are evidence from the intuition of the way the world works, and the arts are a discipline of intuition. 

The ultimate goal is, the University is here to make the world a better place. We educate people and graduate them. We research. Anything we do should serve that goal. Sometimes groups get distracted from their mission with budgetary considerations and scarcity of resources. If you can only choose one thing out of five on your plate, you have to stay with what is core to your mission. I’m a proponent of people working together to make things better. Cross-discipline outreach and cross-discipline projects help, but ultimately all the sides of that discipline should be pointing towards making the world better. Somebody can come to you with their own agenda and say “please help,” and you may have to say no, due to resources. So focusing on the ultimate goal is what keeps you motivated.  Yes, we could be working at other places. I worked at a web marketing firm. We were doing things that were driving other industries, yet when I came here, I wanted to make a difference in people’s lives, not just their vacations.

Any instances where you experienced departments working together, cross-discipline?

We recently partnered with the College of Agriculture and Environmental Sciences (CAES) to build Rocky, UC Davis’ first AI assistant. It’s still in beta (https://chat.ucdavis.edu/)  My Web Development team also worked with Dr. Keith Watenpaugh and the Center for Human Rights to develop the award-winning Article 26 Backpack site (https://backpack.ucdavis.edu/) to help support academics in countries with strife. 

Do we always need to keep pace with technology? Is the University worse off for not having fully integrated AI yet?

As a software developer and development manager, there is a penchant for engineers to get enamored with and build with the latest technology. You need to know when you are on the cutting edge versus the bleeding edge. With the bleeding edge, you’ll just take on tech debt and you won’t build the right things. Staying current with technology is very important. Engineers will build things using the latest technology in order to learn and understand, so they can apply those lessons.

As for AI, I’m a firm believer this is transformational technology, like the internet thirty years ago. I don’t think we know the best ways to use it yet, but we’re in the fire right now. We get to find out the best things to do with it. I’m very excited about it and lucky enough to be driving it on behalf of IET (Information and Educational Technology). Neeraj Chauhan, the CTO, has put a lot on my plate to help drive things forward at the University. I think it’s fantastic to be in higher ed with this new technology.

Can you provide other examples of AI technology germinating at UCD?

Lots of teams are working hard in the AI space. The University Writing Program, partnering with a number of other California colleges, just won a $1.5 million dollar grant to develop tools for addressing AI literacy and AI in the classroom. There’s an article in the Letters & Science Mag to check out here.

Aggie AI is the ecosystem for AI tools and services at UC Davis, but it’s more than that. It’s a place to connect with other folks building in this same space. You can read more about it at https://iet.ucdavis.edu/aggie-ai

What were your early life cultural experiences that shaped you in a positive way and helped you grow? 

I was born in Cuba, a communist country, which my father escaped. He lived in the United States for years trying to get my mother and me over.  Because he successfully did, we were able to grow up in freedom my whole life. His work ethic was amazing. He set the belief that you can do whatever you want in this country. Privilege and burden, you still have to work for it. Sometimes the deck is stacked for you, sometimes against you. Coming from a country where you literally cannot do this was an immense contrast. Some communist nations dictate what career you are going to have, like it or not.  There is no freedom to start a business on the side to do engineering. From that point of view, my father was my cultural influence.

My dad worked in television broadcasting, working two full-time jobs six days a week to earn enough money to give us a better life. And everyday he was thankful he could make that choice.  He eventually retired as the Senior VP of Engineering and Advanced Technology for Univision Communications. He supported me even though he didn’t understand a thing about art, and he did it in the best way possible, trusting me to have a vision and follow my dream while not letting me lose sight of the fact that we all have to eat at the end of the day.  Speaking of his work ethic, his retirement plan included getting another job “just to entertain” himself and is still working to this day.

Moving to a new country and coming of age can have its challenges. Care to share any challenges you overcame?

Challenge one was learning English! Luckily, the education system was there to support me with ESL classes.  I learned a lot of English from Sesame Street and I appreciated that Hispanic people were guests on that show. Knowing English prepared me to do everything else I needed to do.

You played a substantial role in the launch of Aggie Service. How did that come about?

The project came out of the Shared Services Organization, with support from the IET Project Management Office. The SSO worked with an integration partner to build Aggie Service. As they were designing the system, they needed institutional data and someone from Central IT to get that data.  Since I knew Salesforce, they brought me in to work on the integrations (Peoplesoft, Banner, IAM, etc).  Since moving into leadership I still keep an eye on things but I know that things are in good hands with Sam Irungu (Senior Developer) and Ira Tarshis (Supervisor of IET Enterprise Platforms) working hard to support.