Temple MIS

Connect and innovate with an elite information systems program

Fox School of Business

Munir Mandviwalla

MIS alums are digital entrepreneurs

Peter HwangLike many entrepreneurs, Peter Hwang’s idea for what he hopes is the next big thing came to him when he spotted a hole in the market’s offerings: while traveling for work in NYC, he couldn’t find a quick way to find a good meal near his location without scrolling through unhelpful restaurant peer review sites.

People are writing a lot of irrelevant information that doesn’t pertain to the restaurant, like ‘After a long day walking around the city with my boyfriend, we were in the mood for X and we finally found this restaurant…’” says Hwang, who graduated from Temple University with a BBA in Management Information Systems in 2016. “It just came to me, ‘Why aren’t we just reviewing the dish?’ In the end, that’s what we care about.”

From that starting point came Bite, a mobile app that allows users to see how others have reviewed individual restaurant dishes using three criteria — Taste, portion size and final thumb’s up/thumb’s down – and a photo of the dish.  

The app – described at swipebites.com and available in the Apple App store and Google Play (Search using “bite review.”) —  allows users to search by dish if they need to satisfy a specific craving – Pad Thai, pizza or pierogies – or to determine the most highly recommended dish near their location from Center City Philadelphia to NY’s Soho to Southside Chicago.

It’s like a Tinder for food and when you tell people that they get really excited,” Hwang says. “It’s making the process of choosing what to eat more efficient.”

Josh MethHwang is just one recent MIS graduate finding a need and filling it with a new business and, in some cases, new technology.   Josh Meth, BBA MIS ’14, is working as a project manager at Ridge Spur Media, a company that develops digital strategies for businesses, while developing Auris, a new technology that can differentiate between sounds and act accordingly – i.e., if it detects glass breaking in a closed business, it can call 911 in case a burglary is in progress.

I’ve found my passion in being the middle man between new technology and business,” says Meth, whose company website is www.ridgespurmedia.com. “Auris is a technology that can be used to understand the audio events like the sound of anger or a door closing. Speech recognition was just stage one.”

Ryan OliveiraRyan Oliveira, BBA MIS ’13, and Dave Dupell, BBA MIS ’14, have launched AtmosFi – www.atmosfi.com — a service that helps businesses share their offerings with their local community while gaining insights about their customers via WiFi. They’re working with other Temple alum businesses as well, including Brian Linton ‘08’s United by Blue; Izzat Rahman ‘11’s Kayuh Bicycles; Jung Park ‘16’s Cocktail Culture; Scott Pawlowski ‘13’s No Fish; and Neil Patel ‘09’s Denteek Dentist.

We’re converting WiFi traffic into foot traffic,” says Oliveira, who initially thought of the business idea while traveling through Europe and finding himself reliant on business’s free WiFi. “Our strength is our ability to empower businesses to connect directly with customers and other businesses in their community…We’re helping the café, restaurant, gym, salon and bar all work together via cross promotion and collaboration.”

All of the entrepreneurs have used their Fox ties to grow their businesses, seeking guidance from former professors and offering internships to Fox students. They’ve also found that the soft skills they picked up while at Fox are just as important as their course work. 

David DupellAt MIS, we did hands-on prototype work in class and learned to solicit feedback to get it to something that people love and like,” Dupell said. “(But) just understanding how to effectively lead a team and be part of a team are skills you develop in college and they’re very beneficial when you’re developing a company.” 

Ayabakan Shows How Sharing Data Helps Hospitals Eliminate Waste

Sezgin AyabakanThe politicians currently determining the future of the American health care system should stop bickering and talk to Dr. Sezgin Ayabakan, Assistant Professor of MIS at Temple University’s Fox School of Business.

Ayabakan and three colleagues recently completed a study on the impact of health information sharing on preventing duplicate lab and radiology testing, perhaps by joining a Hospital Information Exchange (HIE). Addressing this prevalent problem would not only save money, time and effort but would also improve the patient experience.

These tests can cost thousands of dollars. Suppose someone goes into the emergency room and needs an MRI. The patient might have had an MRI a couple of weeks ago but the doctors don’t have access to those images,” Ayabakan says. “We also wanted to see if there was a business value for hospitals to join an HIE.

Ayabakan and co-authors Indrani Bardhan, Zhiqiang (Eric) Zheng and Kirk Kirksey drew their primary data from 68 hospitals in North Texas that that were part of the Dallas Fort Worth Hospital Council. They analyzed 39,600 Congestive Heart Failure (CHF) outpatient patient visits between 2005 – 2012.  They found that the number of duplicate radiology tests significantly decreased when hospitals shared data. Also of note was that duplication of radiology tests were reduced 32.8% more than the duplication of labratory tests. They attribute this finding to the differences in data standards implemented in sharing various types of test results.

The complete study will be published in the December 2017 issue of MIS Quarterly. Ayabakan and his research team were the first to look at the issue of duplicate testing and an earlier version of the paper won the best conference paper runner-up award at the 2014 International Conference on Information Systems (ICIS) in Auckland, New Zealand. Ayabakan estimates the cost of duplicate radiology tests was about $300 per CHF patient, about $1.12 million in total, and that’s a low estimate as the researchers only looked at patients with CHF.

It was a very conservative approach, he says “We tried to control everything we could in our analysis.”

This study is especially relevant now as health care service costs in the U.S. are twice that of similar services in countries that are members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, which includes most of the countries of Western Europe and Scandinavia, Japan, Israel, Australia and the U.K. A significant portion of the excessive waste can be pinned on duplicate testing. Ayabakan realizes in the past some hospitals have balked at joining an HIE. Some cite the cost. Others worry about losing patients to other health care providers. There’s also the challenge of establishing universally accepted data standards so all HIE participants use the same coding system. Such a switch could increase a member hospital’s initial investment.

Still, Ayabakan believes these changes are worth the effort. Health care spending currently takes up about 18.6 percent of the GDP. That percentage is expected to grow to 20 percent by 2025.

Promoting HIEs and common interoperability data standards across the spectrum can reduce the extent of duplicate testing and the associated cost to the U.S. healthcare system, he says. This is just one example. The estimates tell us that the total net savings from HIE could reach up to $77.8 billion annually.

New MIS faculty bring expertise in healthcare, social media, analytics and machine learning

Sezgin Ayabakan (Ph.D., University of Texas, Dallas), JaeHwuen Jung (Ph.D., University of Minnesota), and Konstantin Bauman (Ph.D., Moscow State University) join the MIS department as Assistant Professors in fall 2017.

Sezgin AyabakanDr. Ayabakan, who was previously an Assistant Professor at University of Baltimore and faculty fellow at the Schaefer Center for Public Policy, is researching healthcare by applying analytics to analyze very large data sets from hospitals. He will apply his analytics background and practical experience working with big data to teach the MIS department’s award winning GenEd Data Science course. 

JaeHwuen JungDr. Jung, who recently completed his dissertation, is examining the role of incentive structures in online and mobile forums using field experiments. Dr. Jung will apply his industry experience in the telecomm industry as well as research on social gaming and networks to teach Analytics to majors and minors across the Fox School.

Dr. Bauman, who was previously a research scientist at New York University, is a machine learning expert focusing on researching recommendation systems. Dr. Bauman will apply his extensive technical expertise including industry experience as a software engineer to teach programming. 

Dr. David Schuff is the new MIS Department Chair

David SchuffThe Fox School of Business is excited to welcome Dr. David Schuff as the new chair of the Department of Management Information Systems (MIS). Since joining the faculty in 2000, Schuff has played a major role in elevating the reputation of the department through his exceptional teaching, research, and leadership.

David’s service to Fox and the MIS department has been invaluable since his arrival nearly two decades ago, said Dr. M. Moshe Porat, Dean of the Fox School. His creation of the Temple Analytics Challenge, for example, demonstrates the value he places on interdisciplinary research and experiential learning activities. I am confident the department will continue flourishing under David’s leadership.

Schuff’s research interests include the application of information visualization to decision support systems, tools for self-service business intelligence, and the impact of user generated content on organizations and society. He has published over 40 journal articles, many in top research publications, such as Management Information Systems Quarterly, Decision Sciences, Decision Support Systems, and Information & Management.

In addition to teaching in the MIS department, Schuff has taught in the BBA, MBA, and Executive MBA programs at the Fox School’s campuses in Colombia and Japan; and he was the founding academic director of the Executive Doctorate of Business Administration program. His course topics include data analytics and information systems strategy, and he has won numerous awards, including the Musser Award for Excellence in Teaching, the Lindback Award for Distinguished Teaching, and the MIS department’s teaching award. (He won the latter 13 times—more times than any other faculty member.)

Dr. Schuff’s accomplishments as a founding faculty member—and especially his commitment to teaching excellence—make him extremely well qualified to take on this role, said Dr. Munir Mandviwalla, who preceded Schuff as MIS department chair. I am confident he will take the department to even higher levels. It has been a privilege serving the department since its founding in 2000. I look forward to concentrating on leading the Institute for Business and Information Technology (IBIT) to further enhance industry engagement.

Schuff’s impressive history with the Fox School gives him a unique ability to lead the MIS department into the future.

I am proud to serve as chair of the MIS department, said Schuff. Together we’ve built an amazing foundation of highly ranked undergraduate and graduate programs with a vibrant faculty of excellent teachers and top-tier researchers. It will be exciting to see where the future takes us as we create new academic programs, explore new areas of boundary-spanning research, and continue to grow as a leading department.

ITACS alumnus Abdul Koné on finding his niche and launching a career

Abdul Koné loves his job.  

As an IT Audit Manager for Santander Consumer in Dallas, Texas, Koné’s day-to-day goes beyond sculpting and planning audits for the company and into nearly every aspect IT. 

“I wouldn’t say I’m an expert in one area, but I’ve gotten such a good understanding of every area,” he says. “Also, I’ve found that managing people, empowering them, watching them grow in their field is something I love to do.”  

Growing up in West Africa’s Ivory Coast, Koné’s dream career wasn’t in management or technology, but aviation — he’d always wanted to be a U.S. Air Force fighter pilot. “I came to realize that wasn’t going to be so easy,” he says with a laugh. Instead, he went on to earn a bachelor’s degree in computer science at the Canadian University of the Arts, Sciences and Management in Abidjan. Before coming to the U.S., he did some homework on the IT industry and its career possibilities, and was intrigued by the job prospects in IT auditing. Temple’s Fox School of Business was the only school of the handful he visited that offered anything like the IT Auditing and Cyber Security program. In 2012, he enrolled; by 2013 — before he had even graduated — he had his professional certification and three job offers.      

“I can say that ITACS really helped me understand the business,” he says. “One of the really good parts of the program was that all of my instructors came straight from the industry, so they knew how to take all of these concepts and put them into real-life context, with practical examples. It was incredibly helpful.”  

In fact, he says, it was the practical, business-focused structure of the ITACS program — from the real-life experience the capstone project provided to the resume support at the Fox School’s Center for Student Professional Development — that helped shape his career. Well, he adds, that and the quality of the people involved in the program.   

“The professors were so knowledgeable, and so patient,” he says. “I had a great mentor, Michael Griffith, who taught me so much of what I know. He believed in me, which meant the world to me.”   

It was Griffith, Koné says, who encouraged him to apply for the job that he ended up taking right out of ITACS — a coveted position with Morgan Stanley as an information technology auditor. A year later, when his wife’s job took them to Dallas, Koné landed at Santander, where’s he’s steadily climbed the ranks since 2014. Not only has the job given him the chance to put to use the skills he sharpened at Temple, but the career pathways in the industry are growing all the time in today’s world, he says. (In fact, he recently hired a former ITACS classmate as a senior officer at Santander.) “It’s definitely a field that’s full of opportunity,” he says.

Yusuf G. Mandviwalla endowment

Yusuf G. MandviwallaThe new Yusuf G. Mandviwalla endowed scholarship fund will provide financial support to undergraduate students majoring in MIS who have both financial need and high academic performance. The $50,000 endowment, which includes a match from the Fox School, was created by Munir and Nazneen Mandviwalla in memory of Munir’s father Yusuf G. Mandviwalla.

According to Dr. Mandviwalla “my father was a successful entrepreneur who believed in providing educational opportunity regardless of background or means, and supported many young people during his lifetime in Pakistan.”

“I am pleased to create this scholarship in his memory to give back to the MIS community,” said Mandviwalla, who is the outgoing chair of the Department of Management Information Systems, which he founded in 2000.

In addition, an anonymous donor has made a generous gift to establish an endowed scholarship which, when fully funded, and matched by the Dean’s special matching gift program, will endow another MIS specific scholarship fund of $60,000.

From Bridge Repair to Elderly Patient Care, MIS seniors debut innovative solutions in capstone projects

MIS Capstone Winners 2017After years of hard work and study, MIS seniors always have a lot to show off at the Fox School of Business Management Information Systems Capstone Project Showcase. The most recent Showcase, held at the end of April, was no exception: The 17 teams of seniors that gathered to present their final projects unveiled everything from a medical app designed to help doctors track elderly patients’ health regimens to a personalized news aggregation service to an improved search function on Temple’s course database.

The MIS Showcase is a unique opportunity for students to combine all of what they have learned in class with their own entrepreneurial skills, says Fox IT Advisory Board Chairman Bruce Fadem, who oversees the Mentoring program for IBIT. “This year’s teams showcased a wide range of exciting ideas and demonstrated the value of their education with professional business plans and excellent presentations.”

The winning team, selected by a panel of judges, designed an app that tackles the problem of evaluating the maintenance needs of bridges. “On average,” the team notes, “it takes an expert three to six weeks to properly assess a bridge’s structural needs and report these findings to the local government.” Their solution, the app they call Floating Bridges, combines 3D mapping drones, bridge-assessment algorithms and augmented reality to provide local governments with a more efficient, less expensive way to survey and prioritize problem bridges “on a yearly or even monthly basis.”

The team, which included Alexandra Iacovetti, Nicholas Rivera, Bridget Silk and Benjamin Sulaiman, won $500 for coming in first place — though the entire Capstone process has been rewarding in itself, Silk says. “We really benefited from bouncing ideas off each other,” she adds. “It was an awesome experience to end the year with.”

The Capstone projects are often cited by students as one of the highlights of the MIS experience. The opportunity to put so many skills and practices to the test (not to mention the chance to flex their creative muscles) in a competitive setting is both fun and helpful in terms of prepping for life outside of the Fox School.

“The project created an opportunity to fully develop and pitch a real, live platform that addresses a problem,” says Kate Morrison, whose team, District One Sports, created a one-stop digital resource for high school sports stats. “Going through this process end to end created more passion, teamwork and ownership than any other group project I’ve worked on, and it was a beneficial transition from the teaching/learning environment into the professional workplace.”

The full roster of projects presented at the April event included:

Solutions to Medical Non-Adherence
A digital solution for health-care providers, pharmacies and patients to insure that patients are taking their medication consistently and following correct procedures after leaving the hospital.
Team: Michael Ingram, Heather Makwinski, Joshua Michalik, Samantha Talarico
Mentor: Dale Danilewitz

Documed: Improving Patient Engagement
Real-time access for doctors to patients’ medical records to help improve diagnosis and treatment.
Team: Johnathan Holland, Jeremy A. John, Alan Kim, George Raymond
Mentor: Matt Winter

WorkFit
An application designed to motivate people to make exercise a priority, using social tools, games, geolocation and goal suggestions.
Team: John Kerin, Matthew Leaver, Sara Monahan, Thompson Nguyen
Mentor: Ben Hasan

CaParkLee
An application that measures the core body temperatures and heart rates of elderly patients, aiming to help doctors track their patients’ regimens.
Team: Leor Capunitan, Thomas Lee, Chris Park
Mentor: Jeff Hamilton

Social Academic Studying Solution
A web-based solution for connecting students who have similar courses and curriculums, aimed at enabling collaborative studying, as well as helping students manage deadlines and study hours.
Team: Evan Chiao, Kin Lee, Connor Gawlik, Mike Dennis
Mentor: Satbir Bedi

District One Sports: Simplifying High School Sports Statistics
A one-stop digital resource for reporting and viewing high school sports scores and statistics.
Team: Rob Higgins, Kate Morrison, Rhea Prabhu, Ben Shaffer
Mentor: Sondra Barbour

Airline Entertainment
A digital platform providing airline passengers with in-air and terminal entertainment and gaming options.
Team: Stephanie Cheng, Tyler Gaber, Kevin Santoni, Dario Trabucco
Mentor: Sunil Misra

Vulpine Analytics
An analytics tool to help provide employees with information and insights about the connection between their wellness and their productivity, helping them balance health habits with performance at work.
Team: Derek Gibbs, Eric Koeck, Erika Nixon, David Yastremsky
Mentor: Paul Amorello

VisRecs
A visual-recognition application that harnesses unstructured data hidden within images, videos. and gifs uploaded onto social media and/or the Internet, and helps structure it into meaningful ideas.
Team: Dominick Falco, Alex Korjeski, Alex Meyer, Louisa Carleton
Mentor: Niraj Patel

SpotaGuide
A platform that connects travelers with personalized, low-cost tour itineraries.
Team: Phil Tocci, Kevin Vong, Anthony Vu, Brian Wallace
Mentor: Bruce Fadem

Floating Bridges
An application that combines 3D mapping drones, bridge-assessment algorithms and augmented reality to give experts a cost-effective way to assess a bridge’s structural needs.
Team: Alexandra Iacovetti, Nicholas Rivera, Bridget Silk, Benjamin Sulaiman
Mentor: Joe Spagnoletti

Newsence
A system for aggregating multiple news sources and customizing them in a fashion that fits into each user’s lifestyle and preferences.
Team: William Agentowicz, Brandan Mackowsky, Eugene Tartaglione, Adama Traore
Mentor: Sukumar Narayanan

Gamer Connect
An application that allows gamers across all platforms (Xbox, Playstation and PC) to find one another and form teams based upon their respective skill levels.
Team: Andrew Fiss, Tyler Urquhart, Elijah Jamison, Kyle Domsohn
Mentor: Shariq Khan

DDesignate
A ride-sharing application in the vein of Uber/Lyft that helps users avoid driving while intoxicated, while providing a way for the user to get his or her car home safely.
Team: Rob Lesnik, Kyle Matusik, Jonathan Plugaru, Casid Sohou
Mentor: Andrew Porter

Esperanza Database Consolidation
A database-consolidation tool for merging and centralizing data from the non-profit Esperanza to allow for better and more streamlined marketing and communication efforts.
Team: Danielle Buerger, Kevin Hamilton, Leeya Ressom
Mentor: Jon Scott

BookLit
An application aimed at third-grade students within the School District of Philadelphia, focused on improving reading skills via online competition, incentives and reading comprehension quizzes. Teachers are able to track students’ improvements.
Team: Andi Agolli, Jeffrey Craskey, Mohit Patel, Urvesh Patel
Mentor: Andrea Anania

Course Search
A search function that allows Temple students to look for any class in the Temple database based on keywords/categories that pertain to class topics or subtopics.
Team: Quy Le, Kevin Diem, Darpan Patel, Michael Black
Mentor: Chris Cera

MIS students win big at the National AIS Student Leadership Conference and Competition

AIS Competition 2017

Two MIS student teams won big at the Eighth Annual Association for Information Systems (AIS), Student Chapter Leadership Conference and Competition, Brigham Young University, Provo, UT, April 13-15, 2017.

1st Place – AmerisourceBergen Analytics Challenge (Analysis Track)

2nd Place – Security Case Study

The above two competitions included two phases. In the first phase, student teams submitted entries virtually. The finalists were chosen from the virtual entries and invited to present their work for another round of judging at the above conference. Other finalists included University of Georgia, Roger Williams University, University of Cincinnati, University of Michigan, Florida International University, Brigham Young University, and others.

Alumnus, industry leader to steer ITACS graduate program

The Master of Science in IT AuditingKapish Vanvaria and Cyber-Security (MS-ITACS) program at Temple University’s Fox School of Business provides students with the latest practices in the field with the help of an advisory council composed of industry leaders.

The Fox School strengthened that mission with its recent appointment of Kapish Vanvaria, management consultant with Ernst & Young LLP, as the program’s advisory council chair. A Temple alumnus who studied Accounting and Management Information Systems at the Fox School, Vanvaria first established a commitment to the program when he became a member of the ITACS advisory council two years ago. In accepting the chair position, Vanvaria’s role will include leading the program’s strategic growth and curriculum development, and ensuring a strong student placement within the technology and cyber industry.

I’m passionate about education. It’s one of the few things in life that has no expiration or devaluation, and therefore is one of the best self-investments,” said Vanvaria. “With a strong agenda and vision, we can make ITACS a global program that will elevate the Fox School’s brand and allow others to see Temple as a talent factory for technology and cyber security resources for many of the leading organizations of the world.”

ITACS program director David Lanter, an Assistant Professor of Management Information Systems at the Fox School, sought an advisory council chair with significant industry background who would be able to draw from his or her personal networks and utilize corporate resources. Lanter found that in Vanvaria.

“Kapish has been an enthusiastic and valued contributor to the start of the ITACS program (in 2011) and a key player in the current successes,” said Lanter. “We are optimistic he will do as much and even more to help guide the future evolution and success of the program.”

In addition to ensuring that Fox School students have a seat at the table in the development of the program, Vanvaria said he hopes to reach out to different organizations for insight on what they are looking for in future employees.

I want to go to these companies and governmental organizations and ask, ‘Does our curriculum match what you’re looking for, and if not, what can we do?’” he said. “We already do that within the advisory council because we have good representation of startup through Fortune 50 companies, but I know we can do more. I’m looking forward to that.”

In light of all the excitement around his appointment, Vanvaria said he wants to make one thing clear: the success of the council boils down to collaboration. “In becoming the chair, this is not going to change our advisory council from the standpoint of it truly being a team sport,” he said. “The program’s success is dependent on all of us joining together to consistently elevate the brand. Two years from now, I want to look back and say, ‘We made a difference.’

Alumnus exceling in digital marketing industry

Lauren MorenoLauren Moreno’s undergraduate education spanned fine arts, journalism, and art history. In search of a graduate program that would enhance her sales and marketing career, Moreno chose Temple University’s Fox School of Business.

In February, Moreno earned a Master of Science degree in Digital Innovation in Marketing (DIM), as part of the online program’s first graduating class. “I wanted a graduate program that offered the business school background that I didn’t get from my undergraduate degree, while complimenting my work experience,” said the 31-year-old Moreno. “I decided the DIM program was what I was really passionate about and thought that should be where I’d put my energy.”

Moreno co-founded Team 624 Communications, a digital branding, social media, and content marketing firm for which she serves as creative director. The Digital Innovation in Marketing program, which can be completed in 16 months, enables students like Moreno to flourish in a collaborative environment that fosters an understanding of the digital marketing industry.

It’s always changing,” said Moreno. “As professionals, we need to keep learning and challenge the practices we’re using. If you’re not paying attention to where your engagement is coming from and what type of content is working, it won’t take long before marketing efforts are diminished.”

With the help of an advisory council comprised of digital innovators who are currently in the industry, students in the DIM program are offered a curriculum that coincides with what is part of the professional landscape.

The overall mission of our program is to create the next generation of digital marketers,” said Amy Lavin, director of the Digital Innovation in Marketing program. “In today’s digital economy, it’s not enough to just be a marketer. It’s not enough to just be technical on the marketing side. We give the students in our program the ability to understand both sides.”

The MS in Digital Innovation in Marketing is offered jointly by the Fox School’s Management Information Systems (MIS) and Marketing and Supply Chain Management departments. In January, the MIS department’s graduate programs earned a No. 16 ranking in the country from U.S. News & World Report — a feat that Lavin said validated what the program has to offer.

You can complete any kind of Google search right now, and you know this market is hot,” said Lavin. “In this program, we’ll give students the skills they need in order to be successful. As the marketplace opens up and people realize that they need this skill set, we’re going to continue to grow our MS in Digital Innovation in Marketing.”

Currently, Moreno remains focused on utilizing the tools she has taken from the program to grow Team 624, alongside her business partner, Kaitlin Cleary. “We want to meet our next goals by identifying potential revenue streams,” Moreno said. “We’re looking at offering trainings, workshops, online courses, and like we learned in the program, really using technology to our advantage to reach more people.”

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