Carlos Evia Puerto

Carlos Evia Puerto (Carlos Evia) serves as Associate Dean of Strategic Initiatives and Chief Technology Officer in the College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences, where he also holds a position as professor in the School of Communication. He works at the intersection of content, technology, and human communication —exploring how structured authoring, automation, and artificial intelligence are reshaping the way organizations create, manage, and deliver information. His scholarship and teaching address content operations at scale, the design of intelligent content systems, and the evolving role of human communicators in AI-driven environments. His four books —Outsourcing Technical Communication (co-edited with Barry Thatcher), Creating Intelligent Content with Lightweight DITA, Content Operations from Start to Scale, and Technical Communication and the Discipline of Content (co-authored with Rebekka Andersen)— chart the field's movement from document-centric practices toward automated, audience-aware content pipelines.

As Associate Dean of Strategic Initiatives and Chief Technology Officer, Carlos leads the college's Tech for Humanity (TfH) initiative, a cross-disciplinary effort that prepares students and faculty to engage critically and creatively with emerging technologies. TfH integrates technology fluency into every CLAHS major, building a community of practice among faculty and connecting the college's humanistic expertise to real-world challenges in AI, automation, and digital communication. Through TfH, Carlos supports the development of curriculum and establishes CLAHS as a hub for thinking rigorously about what it means for humans to work alongside, and ahead of, intelligent systems. 

In his role as CLAHS CTO, Carlos translates the TfH vision into practice by supervising a team of IT specialists responsible for evaluating and deploying the college's technology infrastructure and ensuring its digital systems serve both educational and research missions. He represents CLAHS in university-level technology governance, collaborating with the VT IT Council and the Division of Information Technology to align college priorities with Virginia Tech's broader technology strategy. Together, these roles position him as the college's primary voice on what it means for a liberal arts institution to engage seriously and strategically with technology.

Carlos Evia Puerto's ongoing research examines the "content turn" in technical communication — the shift toward treating content as a strategic organizational asset managed through structured systems and automated workflows. His work on DITA (Darwin Information Typing Architecture) and Lightweight DITA has influenced both academic programs and industry practice in content management and documentation. He is currently developing theoretical frameworks that address how AI systems interpret and transform human-authored content, and what distinct competencies human communicators must cultivate to remain essential in that landscape.

Why two last names?