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Award-Ranking

Great Teacher Award for David Schuff

DavidSchuffGTATrophyProfessor David Schuff, chair of the MIS department received Temple’s most prestigious teaching award, the Temple University Great Teacher Award at a special university convocation on March 28, 2019. 

According to the university official documentation:

“Established in 1988 by the Board of Trustees, the Temple University Great Teacher Awards recognize faculty members annually for their continuous excellence in teaching. Each award carries a stipend and each awardee receives a commemorative sculpture and framed certificate. In addition, each recipient’s name is engraved on the Great Teachers Wall in the Founder’s Garden. ” 

Temple AIS students win big in national competition

AIS SCLC 2018Five Temple University undergraduate teams were winners in contests judged during the Association for Information System’s Student Chapter Leadership Conference in Dallas in April.

The contests pitted Temple against schools in the U.S. and abroad, including the universities of Alabama, Georgia, Michigan and Colorado; Saudi Arabia’s Prince Sultan University and the University of Gdansk in Poland.  Temple is hosting the 2019 conference.

Faculty advisor Jeremy Shafer said he knew the students were “world class” but he was  overwhelmed by their performances, “We ended up sending the six teams that made it through first round to the finals, a big achievement.”  

Shafer won, too, recognized with the AIS Advisor of the year award, a new honor.

“I was really stunned, humbled,” Shafer said.

Find details about the winning projects below. 

The Computational Society Case Study Challenge

First Place — Cara Evans, Rebecca Jackson, Zoe Weiner  

Evans ’19, Jackson ’19 and Weiner ’18 explored how new technologies — specifically smart phones, radio-frequency identification (RFID) and “smart mirrors” – can help physical stores out sell Internet options. They found many retailers invested in one technology at a time but concluded offering multiple technologies simultaneously would be better.

“To survive, the physical stores have to offer something online can’t,” Jackson said. “Together (these technologies) create great customer experiences.”

Third Place — Andrea Behler, Erin Ebling, Michelle Pangestu

Behler ’19, Ebling ’20 and Pangestu ’20 explored how technology could affect well-being.

The team concluded that new programs using virtual reality and artificial intelligence could allow athletes to train without fear of injuries and could monitor vital signs to construct tailor-made work-outs. They found that video games like Pokemon Go! encouraged people to be more active.   

“You have gamers who become more athletic and athletes who turn into gamers,” Behler said. “Each are realizing true health benefits.”

NBCUniversal Analytics Challenge

First Place — Chi Pham, Ngoc (Nathan) Pham, Run Zhu

Chi Pham ’19, Ngoc Pham ’19 and Zhu ’18 focused on QVC’s existing warehouses to determine why customers complained about deliveries. Data showed that a majority were unhappy waiting more than one week for goods. They found 97 percent of products shipped from four Northeastern warehouses to customers nationwide.

“We focused on the story,” Ngoc Pham said. “The judges liked that the flow was easy to follow and there were specific recommendations that could be applied within one to three months.”

Second Place — Quyen Le, Tung Nguyen, Cong Ngo

Le ‘20, Nguyen ’20 and Ngo ’20 approached the QVC data with the question: Does delivery speed matter?

They calculated delivery times for loyal shoppers who purchased things more than once and one-time shoppers in eight different product categories. They concluded that customer retention would increase by 27 percent if the company improved delivery times. QVC could do that by changing its warehouse system.

“Our strategies optimized distribution of work to ship the right products to the right people at the right time,” Le said.

Emerging Technology Development Challenges

Third Place — Albert Semin, Christopher Sidorchuck, Graham Geiger, Mason Elliott 

Blockchain technology is new and oft-challenging to comprehend. That’s one reason Semin ‘19, Sidorchuck ‘19, Geiger ‘20 and Elliott ‘20 decided to accept the challenge.

The team put together a network that, while mostly theoretical, “could absolutely work 100 percent,” said Sidorchuck said. It created a transparent supply chain that allowed decisions to be made in real time, keeping all participants in a project accountable while also maintaining privacy needs.

“Some people say (blockchain technology) is going to be as big as the Internet or close,” said Sidorchuck, “I don’t know about that, but it’s going to be pretty important in the next 10 or 20 years. “

Capstone students demonstrate technology’s transformative impact

Spring 2018 Capstone WinnersFrom streamlining the dining experience to changing the way families care for ailing loved ones, the Spring MIS Capstone Showcase demonstrated the transformative impact of technology. On April 24th, 2018, nine teams of seniors from three classes, as selected by their professors, presented their final projects. These projects were the culmination of a semester (and four years) of hard work, which involved everything from creating a business plan to designing a functional prototype.

The winning team, which was selected by a panel of industry experts and Temple faculty, designed an application geared toward urbanites looking for an enjoyable night out. The app uses real-time data to give insight into the crowd and experience at a given location, while also acting as a marketing tool for bar owners. Mentored by Sondra Barbour, Member of the Board of Directors at 3M, Bridgette Brodnyan, Sean Dougherty, Kevin Lynch, and Marlea Tremper received a $500 prize. 

The full roster of projects presented at the April 2018 event included:

SmartCare
This project integrates smart pill bottles with a proprietary health management application that allows patients to manage their personal health and reduce the physical, mental and emotional burden on caretakers.  
Team: Ian Usher, Kayla Herbst, Eric Rose, Claudine Youssef, Yu Zhou
Mentor: Jeff Hamilton

Course Catcher
An application that allows students to better plan, track, and maintain their course schedules every semester.
Team: Jane Kraus, Michael Biffen, Justin Teyssier, John Kumpf
Mentor: Cindy Leavitt

The Move
An app geared toward urbanites and bar owners that allows users to search through bars based off of pertinent criteria and see real-time engagement data.
Team: Bridgette Brodnyan, Sean Dougherty, Kevin Lynch, Marlea Tremper
Mentor: Sondra Barbour

License Key Sentry
A software enabling organizations to improve the software license management process by distributing, tracking, and retrieving software licenses and notifying managers of improper usage
Team: Kellen O’Connor, Andrew Kondelin, Jack Perrotta, Michael Doyle
Mentor: Dinesh Desai

Blend
An application providing recipes and meal schedules for patients who are reliant on a blended diet.
Team: Cole Derhammer. Anthony Wong, Christopher Kutzler, Amy Njuguna
Mentor: Andrea Anania

myHealth
A patient-facing, patient-maintained mobile digital wallet for personal health records and a proprietary SFTP plugin that healthcare providers can use to access those records.
Team: Ari Abramson, Arlo Antle, Noah Gottlieb, Tymofiy Rabchuk
Mentor: Viktoria Friedman

Dibs
An application that allows users to make reservations at their favorite restaurants, select a seating preference, and order their meal ahead of their arrival.
Team: Ajah Puryear , Jose Gil , Noah Fulkroad  Parth Patel , and Malik Donald
Mentor: Bruce Fadem

Parallel
An application that allows users to rent out their empty driveways to others who need a parking spot.
Team: Gabrielle Finley, Matt Funk, Nicole Bilder, Anthony D’Amico, Alan Divver
Mentor: Michael Luckenbill

Book Broker
A system for college students to buy and sell textbooks at their university.
Team: Angie Wang, Tim McNiff, Jurgen Aliag, Frank Tkachenko
Mentor: Ilya Rogov

MIS alum, Gord Burtch receives two international awards

Gordon BurtchGordon Burtch (Ph.D., 2013), Assistant Professor of Information and Decision Sciences and Lawrence Fellow, University of Minnesota, Carlson School of Management received the 2017 Association for Information Systems – AIS Early Career Award. Gord is one of five recipients worldwide. He also received the 2017 Information Systems Society Sandra A. Slaughter Early Career Award of The Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS). Gord is a Temple MIS alum who was advised by Dr. Sunil Wattal. 

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.

Facebook CIO Atish Banerjea (’91) honored by AIS

Atish BanerjeaThe Association for Information Systems honored Atish Banerjea, Chief Information Officer, Facebook, and Fox School ’91 alum, with the inaugural Association for Information Systems Leadership Excellence Award on December 12, 2016 at the 37th Annual International Conference on Information Systems (ICIS). Banerjea also delivered the keynote address at the conference while accepting the award.

Banerjea was recognized for his distinguished leadership and innovation in the use and development of information systems. Renowned for his extensive experience in adapting to succeed in the rapidly-changing technology landscape, his new role puts him in charge of Facebook’s global IT functions.

“Atish is at the forefront of the ongoing digital revolution that is transforming both business and higher education,” said AIS President, Jason Thatcher. “He is a fantastic role model for IS students and his success in digital transformation resonates with the research focus of much of the IS academic community.”

Banerjea has previously served as Executive Vice President and CIO for NBCUniversal where he leveraged digital technologies to drive change, constructing a networked infrastructure that positioned IT as a partner capable of substantively contributing to the company’s strategic aims.

Banerjea also served as the Chief Technology Officer and Senior Vice President of Dex One Corporation, where he led a major redesign of that company’s IT functions, helping to transform Dex One from a print-centric business to a digital media marketing company. Prior to that, Mr. Banerjea served as Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer for Pearson, where he was responsible for the global planning and management of IT.  He currently serves on the boards of directors for Hibu, Inc, a digital marketing firm, and Nelson Education, Canada’s leading educational publisher, and is also a member of the Fox IT advisory board at Temple University.

Temple AIS receives 2014-2015 Distinguished Student Chapter award

Philadelphia, PA October 25, 2015 – The Association for Information Systems (AIS) is pleased to recognize Temple University’s student chapter with the Distinguished Chapter Award, one of the association’s annual awards honoring the accomplishments of the best AIS student chapters worldwide. The awards are presented during a ceremony at the International Conference of Information Systems (ICIS), in Ft. Worth, Texas, on Dec. 14, 2015.

The Distinguished Chapter Award recognizes chapters that have excelled in most of the areas of emphasis: professional development, membership, careers in IS, community service, fundraising, and communications.

“AIS takes immense pride in recognizing the distinguished scholars who make up our community, and ultimately, contribute to the success of the field,” said AIS Vice President of Student Chapters James Parrish. “As such, I wanted to take this opportunity to congratulate Temple University’s student chapter as well as the student leaders involved.”

AIS Student Chapters began in 2008 with a two-fold mission to support information systems students in attaining their career goals and help universities provide greater visibility to grow the major on campus.  The annual awards recognize the ‘best of the best’ from the nearly 70 chapters worldwide.

Learn more about Temple AIS at http://templeais.org/

Association for Information Systems

The Association for Information Systems, founded in 1994, is a professional organization with the purpose to serve as the premier global organization for academics, students and professionals specializing in Information Systems. For more information about AIS or to become a member, please visit www.aisnet.org.

Temple’s AIS Student Chapter wins 1st again – for 4th consecutive year!

AIS 2015 ConferenceTemple’s AIS Student Chapter won big again at the Sixth Annual AIS Student Leadership Conference and Competition receiving first and second place. These victories mark four straight years of Temple’s clinching a first-place at the AIS conference – further affirming a remarkable year for the chapter, which was recently named Distinguished Chapter by the Association for Information Systems (AIS).

Held over April 9-11, 2015, in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, and hosted by the University of Alabama, the AIS conference hosted about 300 participants from schools around the globe, whose student teams had the opportunity to enter into various competition tracks. Fox MIS students competed in the IS that serves society track.

  • 1st Place: Ken Wunderle and James Dantonio for MyPhilly Access
    A city-wide network of kiosks that would provide essential information for the homeless population of Phila.  It is a very simple interface to allow people with varying levels of literacy and technical ability to be able to access vital information on housing, food, medical services, emergency housing, job training, and counseling.
  • 2nd Place: Stephen Scanlon, Peter Hwang, Jack Portnoy, and Matt Keenan for Got Your Back
    Designed to create transparency between Law Enforcement and Society.  Incorporates Google Glass to live stream video and data to the dispatcher, while storing the information in a Cloud database.  A real-time “second set of eyes” promotes greater safety and informed decision making for police officers in the field, and will significantly enhance both officer accountability and evidence gathering.

The AIS conference’s goal is to connect students, faculty, and corporate representatives, share best practices on operating and funding the chapter, and foster valuable (and competitive) information-system based activities. This year, as with previous years, Temple was more than up to the challenge.

Congratulations to the Temple champions!

Studying the evolution of digital artifacts with ‘big data’

The National Science Foundation (NSF) has awarded a three-year grant totaling nearly $900,000 to trace human behaviors through big data. This marks the fourth NSF-awarded grant in the last five years that an interdisciplinary team of Temple faculty members has received to study the evolution of digital artifacts using large-scale digital trace data. The collaboration joins researchers from the Fox School’s Management Information Systems Department and College of Science and Technology (CST).

“When humans interact with digital systems, we leave a trace. Every call we make, every website we visit, it’s stamped with time and space information,” said Dr. Youngjin Yoo, the Harry A. Cochran Professor of Management Information Systems at the Fox School, and the research grant’s primary investigator. “What we do is constantly changing, and the trace data can act as DNA. What we focus on through this research is the repeat behaviors in humans that can be captured through digital trace data.

“Using those evolutionary patterns, we believe we can predict future behaviors of individuals and organizations. For example, by detecting the changes of commute patterns of individuals, we can predict overall public-transit systems’ performance in the future. Similarly, we want to be able to predict the changes in individual behaviors based on environmental changes. 

Yoo said he and the grant’s co-principal investigators will study digitally enabled processes in complex digital systems, which “are like a living ecosystem, in that they constantly evolve,” he said. If patterns in the trace data represent what they call “behavioral genes,” Yoo said, alterations to those behavioral routines are “gene mutations.” Eventually, he said, the research team envisions developing software that will better predict the changes to those behavioral genes.

The benefits in doing so, according to Yoo, “are endless.” In a healthcare application, trace data could develop a pattern by which a patient sees a doctor or produce an average cost of care per patient. In an industry sense, such “gene mutations” could impact performance and cost.

“On the surface,” Yoo said, “all smart phones, for example, look the same. But everybody’s phone is different because of apps. It used to be that the product’s designer would make the product, and that was the end of the story. Now, it’s only the beginning. Millions of apps are downloaded. They’re changing constantly.

“Our argument is that, particularly in digital space, innovation never remains the same. It constantly changes and takes different forms.”

The research team includes: Yoo; Dr. Sunil Wattal, Associate Professor of Management Information Systems at the Fox School; Dr. Zoran Obradovic, Laura H. Carnell Professor of Data Analytics at CST; and Dr. Rob Kulathinal, Assistant Professor of Biology at the College of Science and Technology.

The NSF-awarded research grant runs through Jan. 31, 2018.

– Christopher A. VitoAdd New

Dr. Youngjin Yoo is the first Harry A. Cochran Professor of MIS at Fox

Yoo_Professorship

Getting a named professorship is like making it to a pro ball team, says Dr. Youngjin Yoo, Professor of Management Information Systems and Director, Center for Design and Innovation, Fox School of Business and Management, Temple University.  On Friday, November 14, he was named the “Harry A. Cochran Professor of Management Information Systems” at the Fox School’s Research and Teaching Award ceremony.

Harry A. Cochran is “the dean who laid the foundation upon which the Fox School of Business thrives,” said Fox School Dean, M. Moshe Porat, “being recognized as the inaugural holder of a professorship in his name is a significant honor.”

The honor is not, Yoo says, just a validation of his research but of the ideas he pursues.  The unique viewpoint– that digital technology is now ubiquitous, in every part of our lives, and that it requires a mix of creativity, innovation and even a little philosophical examination to manage and effectively use technology and the tools it creates- is one that has evolved over years of study, research and life.

“When Youngjin first came to Fox, we not only saw in him a good researcher, but also what I like to call an academic entrepreneur,” Porat said. “He’s not simply someone with an idea who follows the conventional way of thinking. He always finds a different angle, using a creative, innovative and contrarian way of thinking. He has distinguished himself in his research, in the grants he has received and in the creativity that he has brought to the Management Information Systems department and the Fox School of Business.”

Why is Yoo so creative, innovative and contrarian?  The answer dates back to Yoo’s experiences as a student in South Korea. “How,” Yoo asked then, and still ponders now, “can I think about ways to improve human lives with the tools and resources we have?” As a teenager Yoo was determined to become a government civil servant, one of the obvious paths (along with doctor, lawyer or engineer) open to smart kids growing up with limited resources. Until he entered Seoul National University and found himself studying management and business administration; the econ department didn’t want him.  At university, Yoo read a passage which he says changed his life: If academic disciplines start from pure science to applied one, then management is the ultimate destination of applied science as it explores ways to improve human lives by mobilizing all the resources that the creator has given to people.

It was also at University that his determination, and maybe his ability to be contrary, were forged. Early on he made one trivial arithmetic mistake on an exam in his operations research class and earned a low final grade, despite his protestations to the professor that it was a small mistake. Yoo spent two years studying the material and signed up for advanced operations research, determined to prove the professor wrong in his assessment of Yoo’s ability. The first day of class, he answered a question correctly and, when asked, explained his answer so well that the professor told Yoo he, too, should teach.  The professor then wrote a recommendation for Yoo to study in the U.S. Yoo earned his Ph.D. in Management at the R. H. Smith School of Business, The University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland in 1997.

The rest of the story is a multi-faceted journey of research and publishing in the areas of digital innovation, design, organizational genetics, and the societal use of technology.  He is currently a senior editor for the “MIS Quarterly” and other journals. He’s worked with industries ranging from Samsung Electronics to American Greetings and, recently, was featured (with 12 other technologists) in Philadelphia Magazine’s, “The Smartest People in Philadelphia.” And, of course, he’s taught.  His university experience is global, ranging from Sweden and China to the more local world at The Weatherhead School of Management, Case Western Reserve University.

At Temple, Yoo has worked both inside and outside the classroom; he’s the Founding Director of Center for Design+Innovation at Temple. 

Design is, Yoo says, “the driver of innovation, particularly in the digital domain.  Digital technology is a force that destabilizes things…blurs the boundary of product and industry, and design is how we re-imagine things.” 

So, like musical notes or written language, digital technology will never “remain in a box” and must be created and re-created. “Design is inseparable” from digital technology, Yoo says. The necessary creativity can be found in surprising places.

Recently, Yoo’s taken his work to the streets of Philadelphia and brought Philly teenagers onto campus via Temple’s Urban Apps and Maps Studios program (funded by The Knight Foundation and EDA.) The project teaches teens design, coding, and story telling so they can create apps that help solve problems encountered by residents of urban communities—like turning vacant lots into viable urban community farms. The students are “awesome” Yoo says.  “They do things we don’t think about…a goldmine of creativity.”

Yoo says that working with high school students isn’t the only surprise he’s encountered over the past few years.  The fact that he’s become a named professor, his own success, still seems to startle him. He’s “honored, flattered…it’s great news.” But he’s not ready to rest on his laurels or bask in his new title. Yoo’s moving forward by looking back—at 200 years of technology, and how it was managed and has been a driver of economic change.  

That econ department in Korea?  They don’t know what they missed.

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