UC Tech News is excited to share the stories of the people and projects behind the winners of the 2026 UC Tech Awards.
Name: Erik Wieland
Award Category: Sustained Impact
Location: UCSF
Erik Wieland’s 29-year career at UCSF reflects sustained leadership in technology, mentorship, and collaboration, advancing institutional capability while building a culture of inclusion and service.
Summary
Over the course of 29 years at UCSF, Erik Wieland has built a career defined not just by technical expertise, but by a deep and consistent commitment to people, collaboration, and institutional progress. As a Customer Success Architect, he operates at the intersection of technology and human experience, ensuring that systems are not only implemented, but understood, adopted, and valuable to the people who rely on them.
What distinguishes Erik’s portfolio is not only the breadth of systems he has supported, but the way he approaches the work. He consistently focuses on building solutions that are sustainable, usable, and aligned with real needs.
Through all of this, Erik’s work aligns closely with the UC mission. He advances research, education, and patient care by strengthening the technology that supports them. At the same time, he contributes to a culture of respect, collaboration, and inclusion that enables the university community to thrive.
Erik’s impact can be seen in both measurable outcomes and lasting cultural change. Beyond metrics, Erik’s success is reflected in the trust he has built over time. He is widely regarded as a mentor, a collaborator, and a steady presence in moments of change. His influence extends through the people he has supported, the teams he has strengthened, and the practices he has helped establish.
What lessons have you learned from challenges in your career that you bring to the projects you work on or teams you work with?
We’re all here to support the mission, so remember Hanlon’s Razor: don’t attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by ignorance. Don’t make assumptions about other people. Be kind, and expect kindness. Bring people along with you on your journey. Be open to supporting and collaborating with others on their work. We support people, not things. Embed people in your processes, and your results will improve dramatically. Investigate your strengths. They will help you figure out the best place to start and point you in the right direction. UC runs on rules and relationships. Learn the rules, and leverage your relationships to make them work for you.
What motivates your continued work at UCSF and the broader UC?
Each of us supports UC’s mission, and we’re all proud of the work we do. Connecting with other passionate people and helping them achieve their goals is exciting and vital. Academia has no shortage of problems to solve, many of which we created ourselves. This is a problem-solver’s paradise!
What have you learned from your years of experience that you can share with other UC teams?
I use aspects of product methodology every chance I can. Product starts and ends with customer goals, which are embedded throughout the process. From listening to and empathizing with customers, we generate user stories. We align these stories with technical capabilities to deliver products that provide the capabilities our customers need, not just those they know to ask for. This is the difference between delivering something and delivering the right thing.
What’s next in your career or what things are you learning to stay on top of the field?
As a solutions architect, I’m always learning from technical teams and mapping that to a big picture. Combining a technology direction with customer requirements helps me create and maintain product and service roadmaps. The other thing I spend a lot of time on is making processes simpler and more sustainable. This can mean asking fewer questions of our customers and reusing their answers, using what we already know about people and systems to automate everything possible, and integrating systems and AI to build a complete picture and make better decisions. The technologies, risks, and people change, but the way I approach things stays the same.
Contact
Erik Wieland, Customer Success and Solutions Architect, UCSF
