University of Arizona Receives Data Impact Award at Cloudera EVOLVE25 Summit, Washington D.C.

 Following the recent success of an Octopai by Cloudera webinar called “Building Trust and Compliance in SLED Organizations,” Shiva Chidara, UAIR’s Data Engineering Lead, was invited to continue the conversation on a national stage. The webinar explored how Octopai’s data lineage solutions are helping State, Local, and Education organizations streamline data management, enhance compliance, and reduce operational risk. Chidara had a chance to share UAIR’s experience and use cases with the tool in October. 

Cloudera, a data lake software company, extended an invitation to Chidara to speak at their EVOLVE25 Summit | Bringing AI to Your Data – Anywhere, held in Washington, D.C. on October 22, 2025. At the Summit, Chidara revisited his webinar presentation highlighting the real-world success of integrating data lineage and data discovery solutions into data engineering and governance processes at the University of Arizona. Chidara also received a Data Impact Award on behalf of UAIR’s work at the University of Arizona. 

About EVOLVE25 

The EVOLVE25 Summit in Washington D.C. brought together data leaders and practitioners in the main hall of the Ronald Reagan Building & International Trade Center to explore the theme “Bringing AI to Your Data – Anywhere.” The event featured speakers from leading organizations including Cloudera, Dell, Amazon Web Services, ThunderCat, NVIDIA, GovExec, the State of Maryland, and the University of Arizona, creating a dynamic mix of public and private sector perspectives. On the main stage, Chidara participated in a moderated discussion about UAIR and the University of Arizona’s use case. 

Cloudera Data Impact Award 

The Summit conferred Data Impact Awards to exemplary use cases, and the University of Arizona was nominated and honored in the Data Governance Excellence -Organizational Impact category for its work leveraging the tool’s automated data lineage and discovery services. Chidara had the opportunity to meet with the company’s executive leadership team, including Cloudera CEO, Charles Sansburry, and other senior leaders. The Cloudera team personally thanked Chidara for his rapid turnaround in joining the event and for sharing the U of A’s use case on short notice—an acknowledgment of the strength of the story he brought to the stage. 

The U of A Use Case 

Octopai has been instrumental in the University of Arizona’s data engineering processes for the past four years, and UAIR has undergone extensive training to be able to leverage the tool efficiently. When Cloudera acquired Octopai, they sought real-world success stories that demonstrated the platform’s impact—and the UAIR Data Engineering team’s implementation stood out as a model of efficiency and measurable business value. 

UAIR’s Data Engineering team has leveraged Octopai’s Data Discovery module to search for strings directly within SQL scripts and ETL transformations has significantly streamlined how the team tracks data flow and lineage across complex systems. This functionality has transformed how data is managed at the university, performing impact analysis and data troubleshooting faster and more precise. 

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Chidara also shared insights from a recent proof of concept with IBM, where his team successfully delivered detailed reports on an error in the new SaaS application that showcased how integrated metadata intelligence can accelerate new system implementations. UAIR has been working toward consolidating to improve the ease of usage of the data lineage tools. 

UAIR’s success story aligned with Cloudera’s vision of intelligent, automated data management, making his participation at the Summit both inspiring and instructive for peers across the industry. 

A Milestone Moment 

Chidara’s participation at the EVOLVE25 Summit underscores the University of Arizona’s leadership in data engineering and governance innovation, as well as the value of UAIR’s use of Octopai by Cloudera systems. The recognition through the Data Impact Award and Cloudera’s invitation to share this case study on a national stage mark both a milestone for the university and a testament to the broader collaboration potential in advancing data management best practices.