UC Tech News is excited to launch the UC Tech Leaders Q&A Series in 2026—a series designed to spotlight the voices shaping technology across UC.
What is Your Name?
Ramadan Barasi
What Is Your Title? UC Location?
Info Systems Analyst, HDH Administration, UC San Diego
What Are Your Top IT/Security Priorities in 2026?
Closing the gap between powerful systems and the people who use them. Today, students and staff often have to learn on the vendor’s live production system, which is a real security hazard. My priority is the System Academy: a safe, hands-on environment where hundreds, and eventually thousands, of users can learn the systems properly before they ever touch the real one.
What Emerging Tech Excites You for Higher Ed?
AI-assisted, sandboxed training environments. We can now build realistic, simulated versions of complex systems where someone can practice, make mistakes, and get instant guidance, without any risk to live data.
What Emerging Tech Worries You?
AI and AI-assisted tools in the hands of people who haven’t been trained to use them safely.
How Do You Balance Innovation with Security?
Deliberately, and with enough time to test. I’d rather move through the right number of steps than skip them to move fast.
What Principles/Values Shape Your Leadership?
Some of the security problems aren’t people being careless; they’re people doing their best with tools that they barely know how to use. So I lead by taking the fear out of it: give people a safe place to learn, be patient while they get there, and never make anyone feel small for not knowing something yet.
What Books Are You Currently Reading?
I just finished Ghost in the Wires, and I’m wrapping up The Art of Invisibility, both by Kevin Mitnick.
What’s Your Favorite Thing to Do Outside of Work?
Reconnecting with nature, hiking, camping, and genuinely unplugging to rejuvenate. I also spend downtime learning and growing my technical skills; the curiosity doesn’t really clock out.
Anything Else to Add?
The System Academy started as one fix for one problem, but the vision is bigger: anyone who wants to learn these systems should be able to, safely. Democratizing that knowledge is good for security and good for people.
Thank you for the conversation, Ramadan!
Ramadan Barasi
Info Systems Analyst, HDH Administration
UC San Diego
Tech Leader Spotlights
UC Tech News is excited to launch the UC Tech Leaders Q&A Series in 2026—designed to spotlight the voices shaping technology across UC. The UC tech community values hearing directly from its leaders, and this series aims to be both inspiring and informative.
Are you a tech leader at UC? We’d love to hear from you! To participate, please complete the short Q&A form and please include a photo.
