Message from the Area Coordinator
The Information Systems Area at UT Dallas is holding steady, both in terms of rankings and enrollments. It is still early in the process, so our master’s programs could matriculate as many students in fall 2019 as we did a year ago, and our undergraduate program could grow, too.
We also have initiated a cohort program in business analytics; the first students enrolled this spring. TFE Times ranked the MS in Business Analytics program 12th among similar programs in the United States, while U.S. News & World Report ranked our information systems graduate programs (MS in Information Technology and Management and MS in Business Analytics) 17th.
On the research front, we remain in first place, based on publications in Information Systems Research and MIS Quarterly combined (UTD Top 100 Business School Research Rankings™) for the 2016-2019 period. We are in the process of winding down our searches for clinical and tenure-track faculty. We should have updates on new hires and fall enrollments in the next newsletter.
Finally, please join me in welcoming Abeer Sumeir, who joined us last fall as administrative assistant. Thank you again for your continued support.
Syam Menon
Area Coordinator
Information Systems
Recent Happenings
Business Analytics Teams Bring Home Three Firsts
MS in Business Analytics teams from the Naveen Jindal School of Management capped the spring semester by winning three competitions.
Students Harsh Gupta and Siddharth Oza were on all three first-place teams. For them and JSOM, the first win came at UT Arlington’s annual analytics symposium on March 29. The symposium was hosted by UT Arlington’s Center for Innovation and Digital Transformation, and Pier 1 Imports.
Gupta, Oza and their teammates Rajdeep Arora and Shivank Garg earned $1,000.
Competitors were tasked with providing Pier 1 with actionable information to help the company increase its online sales and better market its products.
Twenty-four Jindal School MS in Business Analytics teams applied to take part in the competition, according to Dr. William (Bill) Hefley, director of the program. Fifteen teams were accepted.
“Three teams were called as finalists, two from UT Dallas and one from Arlington,” Arora said. “We were first runner-up in this competition last year. This year, we wanted to finish first. It was a driving force for us.”
Another JSOM team comprised of Manish Aggarwal, Priyash Maini and Shubham Murari placed third.
Jindal School business analytics students also placed first in the University of North Texas hackathon on April 7. Members of the team were Gupta, Oza, Ashish Sharma and Manish Shukla.
“Our case was to build anything that can help disabled people,” Shukla said. “We built a sign-language interpreter, which is a tool to help deaf people with their daily communication needs using deep learning.”
The third first-place win for a JSOM MS in Business Analytics team came April 30 at the INFORMS Analytics Challenge at the Jindal School. The team of Gupta, Oza, Sharma and Amit Deshmukh earned $750. The challenge assignment was to analyze restaurant inspection data in order to identify various factors that go into determining a restaurant’s health inspection grade.
MS in Business Analytic Program Outcomes — Placements Remain Strong
In the past three years, the MS in Business Analytics program has graduated an increasing number of students. Program outcomes reported by MS in Business Analytics graduates last year showed that more than 91% of them were placed into jobs within 90 days of graduating. These graduates began their new placements with an average salary of $83,000. Average salaries for program graduates over the past three years ranged between $83,000 and $91,000.
For fall 2018, almost 175 MS in Business Analytics students placed in internships across the U.S. and around the globe. In summer 2018, more than 200 MS in Business Analytics students completed internships. Approximately 60% to 65% of these internships were in Texas, with many in the local area; however, a significant number of internships were in cities across the U.S. Our students are highly sought after, and employers are reporting that in national searches, UT Dallas MS in Business Analytics students are coming out on top in their intern recruiting efforts. Average salaries are in excess of $23 per hour, and top pay for our interns exceeds $50 per hour.
Information Systems Area Hosts MIS Academic Leadership Conference
Academic leaders in information systems from around the world gathered for the Management Information Systems Academic Leadership Conference at the Naveen Jindal School of Management in April. Approximately 80 deans, department chairs, faculty members and program managers from 50 universities came together to discuss opportunities and challenges related to delivering a high-quality education in information systems.
Carolyn Carlson, director of Microsoft’s Healthcare Intelligent Cloud Technical Sales division, delivered the keynote address. She talked about how Microsoft is navigating complex technology transformations in the healthcare industry. Having an industry leader make such a presentation underscored one of the conference’s primary themes — that engagement with industry is critical to fulfilling academic missions.
Dr. Mark Thouin, director of the Jindal School’s MS in Information Technology and Management degree program, co-chaired the conference with Dr. Atanu Lahiri, associate professor of information systems, and Gaurav Shekhar, program manager of the MS in ITM program. This year marked the first time the conference was affiliated with the Association for Information Systems, an Atlanta-based not-for-profit professional organization that has members in 100 countries.
Thouin said the conference offered an intimate setting in which attendees could interact one on one, exchange ideas and have meaningful conversations.
“In that regard, I think the conference was very successful,” he said. “We had a variety of different panels, ideas, thoughts exchanged — and really, the overall engagement from our IS academic community was outstanding, thought-provoking and beneficial for everyone involved.”
Read the full story here.
ITS Leadership Council Hosts PwC Case Competition
The ITS Leadership Council organized and hosted the first ITS Undergraduate Case Competition last fall. Sponsored and judged by PwC, the UT Dallas PwC Challenge was an opportunity for students to enhance their leadership skills while applying their ITS and business skills in solutions for a real-world business problem.
Fall ITS graduate Alma Semock, a leadership council executive team member, spearheaded creation of the competition, assisted by Emily Hendricks, a talent acquisition senior associate at PwC.
“I was very impressed to have so many students willing to commit their time and energy to developing their learning in a new environment,” Hendricks said. “Throughout the competition, our staff continually came to me praising the professionalism and true understanding the students had of the case.”
In all, nine teams with 54 students entered the competition after the Nov. 7 kickoff. Given a case study and tasked with analyzing data to make a recommendation, the teams were assigned a mentor at PwC and given two and a half weeks to prepare their findings and a presentation.
On Nov. 30, all teams presented to six PwC judges. The top two teams presented in the final round. A winner was announced, and prizes awarded were gift cards and PwC swag. First-place team members got a $200 American Express gift card and a $25 Starbucks gift card. All teams were included in a celebration featuring food and beverages provided by PwC.
“This experience has helped me learn more about how to tackle real issues that companies face, a crucial aspect of being a part of the business world,” said Nawal Ahmed, a BS in ITS student and member of the winning team.
“The PwC Challenge was an amazing and enriching experience,” said team member Noelle Rivera, also a BS in ITS student. “I was able to develop my collaboration, presentation and technical skills through the challenge. I was also able to network with PwC employees and gain critical feedback from them.”
Faculty Focus
MS in Business Analytics Program Director Earns Lifetime Service Award
Dr. William (Bill) Hefley, a clinical professor of information systems and director of the MS in Business Analytics program received a lifetime service award from the Association for Computing Machinery’s Special Interest Group on Computer-Human Interaction (SIGCHI) at a conference in May in Glasgow, Scotland.
The award is given to individuals who have contributed to the growth and success of the group and includes an honorarium of $5,000.
Before coming to the Jindal School, Hefley taught at Carnegie Mellon University, where he was a founding member of the Human-Computer Interaction Institute and helped develop a master’s degree program in human-computer interaction. He also has participated in curriculum efforts in SIGCHI and the Project Management Institute.
He and two associates founded the Intelligent User Interface conference series in 1993. Active in SIGCHI conferences, he has led panels and served on conference committees. He also has served on the SIGCHI Executive Committee.
Hefley has been editor-in-chief of the SIGCHI Bulletin, adjunct chair for User Interface Magazine, vice chair for publications and founding editor of Interactions magazine.
Professor Writes Book on Capitalism in India
Dr. Sumit K. Majumdar, professor of information systems, has written Lost Glory: India’s Capitalism Story (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018). Challenging present-day ideas about India’s economy, he provides detailed political and historical analyses of industrialization in India and surveys the country’s current industrial landscape with an eye to assessing its future.
POMS Recognition
Dr. Amit Mehra, associate professor of information systems, was recognized by the Production and Operations Management Society (POMS) for outstanding work performed as a senior editor at the POMS 29th Annual Conference, May 4-7, 2018.
Media Mention
LSE Business Review, published by the London School of Economics, showcased the research of Dr. Atanu Lahiri in the blog post Piracy Could Be a Blessing in Disguise for Content Supply Chains on Sept. 14, 2018. Lahiri and his co-authors, Drs. Antino Kim and Debabrata Dey, wrote the post based on their paper, “The ‘Invisible Hand’ of Piracy: An Economic Analysis of the Information-Goods Supply Chain,” which was published in the December 2018 issue of MIS Quarterly.
Student Spotlight
2019 IS PhD Spring Graduates
Chenzhang Bao will join Oklahoma State University as an assistant professor in the Management Science and Information Systems Department starting in fall 2019. Bao graduated in May.
Mingwen Yang will join the Michael G. Foster School of Business at the University of Washington as an assistant professor in the Information Systems and Operations Management Department in July 2019. Yang graduated in May. Yang joined the program in August 2013.
“I was lucky to be part of a very productive research group at UT Dallas,” Yang said. “The IS PhD program is very well structured, including the course work, research seminars, conference support, and more. I am grateful for all the mentoring and valuable advice from our professors.
“During my tenure, I co-authored a paper, ‘Are You Paying Too Much for Financial Advice? Measuring the Value of Information in a Copy Trading Platform,’ with Drs. Vijay Mookerjee and Zhiqiang (Eric) Zheng that earned the best paper runner-up award from the 2018 INFORMS eBusiness Section,” she said.
Program News
New MS in Business Analytics Cohort Program Is in Growth Mode
The MS in Business Analytics Cohort program began in spring 2019 and now has 20 students enrolled. Like the Jindal School’s highly ranked Master of Science in Business Analytics program, the cohort program is a 36 semester-credit-hour STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) degree program in JSOM.
The cohort program engages students who are focusing on either accounting analytics or data science. The Accounting Analytics Track in the cohort program is designed for students from various educational backgrounds, primarily accounting. No prior work experience is required. Students in the program take all courses together as a cohort. It is lock-step program with no flexibility for choosing electives.
Cohort students are eligible to take advantage of a double-degree option to obtain both MS in Business Analytics and MS in Accounting degrees in 24 months. Once they have begun the MS in Accounting Cohort program, students can then apply for admission into the MS in Business Analytics Cohort program. This would typically occur during the fall semester of their first year in the MS in Accounting Cohort program. Students pursuing a double MS program can finish both degrees (MS in Accounting and MS in Business Analytics) with a minimum of 55 semester credit hours instead of 72. Graduates who earn both degrees will have completed a track specialization in accounting analytics.
Beginning in fall 2019, the Data Science Track in the MS in Business Analytics Cohort program will admit its first students. They will pursue the MS in Business Analytics degree with a focus on data science. Data science skills have been in high demand in recent years. Glassdoor named Data Scientist the best job in America in 2019 for the fourth year in a row.
The MS in Business Analytics Flex and Cohort programs within the Jindal School are uniquely positioned to address the skill demands of industry for these highly sought-after data science jobs.
Alliance with Tech Community Benefits MS in ITM Program
The MS in Information and Technology Management program was the belle of the Technology Ball hosted by Digital Conduit on Nov. 10. As the gala’s philanthropic beneficiary, the ITM program brought home fundraising proceeds and scholarships from the black-tie gathering of the local technology community.
The ball at the Dallas Market Center capped a season of networking events in that community and culminated in the ITM program receiving $14,000 in scholarships awarded to 10 MS in ITM students. The students had entered a contest created by the ITM program and Digital Conduit, which plans and organizes events targeted to the technology community. Deloitte, the tax and professional services company, sponsored the inaugural Illuminated Mind STEM Scholarship.
The MS in ITM program and the Technology Ball teamed up again on April 4 to present a career fair that featured 15 employers and attracted more than 350 students. BravoTech, Citi, Deloitte, NTT Data, Qentelli and Schneider Electric were some of the employers that came to talk to potential recruits. The employers expressed amazement at the talent that the school has and were impressed by the students’ variety of skill sets.
MS in ITM Internship Panel 101
The MS in Information Technology and Management program hosted an MS in ITM Internship Panel moderated by program director Dr. Mark Thouin (above, center) on Jan 31. Students on the panel were serving an internship in the spring semester. Standing next to program manager Gaurav Shekhar, MS’16 (far left), the panel included (from the left) Neha Chandnani, who interned at Santander Consumer USA; Tanvi Gupta, who interned at Essilor; Akshay Godge, who interned at Sprint; Siddharth Bhatnagar, who interned at Ericsson; and Shyam Iyer, who interned at PayPal. The discussion highlighted the strategies that the students found successful for securing internships. They also discussed best practices as well as pitfalls that can hamper prospects. More than 100 students attended the event.
Student News
AIS Student Chapter Earns Award
The University of Texas at Dallas student chapter of the Association for Information Systems was recognized with an Outstanding Membership Award at the 2019 AIS Student Chapter Leadership Conference in April in Philadelphia. The award recognizes the chapter, based in the Jindal School, for excellence in member recruitment and membership services.
The UT Dallas AIS chapter “was incredibly active during the 2017-2018 school year through membership retention and increasing professional development through multiple guest speaker events,” a release announcing the award said. “Each guest speaker provided the members with new knowledge about earning internships, professional networking and technological advancements.”
The Association for Information Systems, founded in 1994, is a professional organization that serves academics, students and professionals specializing in information systems.
Business Analytics Student Organizations Reflect Dynamic Development
Student organizations remain a vibrant part of the student experience in the Jindal School and at UT Dallas. This is especially true in the Business Analytics program. New student organizations have started for accounting analytics, marketing analytics, sports analytics and travelytics — travel and hospitality analytics. A new group is being proposed for analytics on in-memory database (AIMDB), and a student chapter of the Dallas Salesforce User Group has started.
These new clubs join such existing student organizations as the Big Data Club (see below), Data Science Club, Envision (data visualization), our award-winning student chapter of INFORMS and our first student organization, the Intelligence and Analytics Society (IAS).
The Data Science Club and IAS hosted competitions this spring. The Data Science Club competition, co-sponsored by Lennox International, attracted teams from UT Arlington as well as UT Dallas. The IAS competition, the Intelligence Analytics Challenge 4.0, was an analytics and visualization contest that focused teamwork on data from the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. The competition required teams to create a storyline to depict how the countries develop toward these goals and to suggest recommendations on how countries can efficiently achieve these goals in the coming years.
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Big Data Club Offers Professional Development
Focused on giving students a basic platform to start the journey of becoming a big data engineer, the Big Data Club focuses on technologies like Spark and Hadoop. Dr. William (Bill) Hefley, director of the MS in Business Analytics program, and Dr. Sourav Chatterjee, clinical assistant professor of information systems, provide guidance and are assisted by industry experts.
The club holds several events each semester, including a meet and greet with industry experts, a hands-on workshop and help with Cloudera CCA 175 Certification. Professionals from AT&T, Verizon and Walmart Labs are frequent visiting lecturers.
The club requires a lifetime membership fee of $15 and provides a 50% discount on Cloudera CCA 175 Certification. But non-members are welcome to join events for a minimal fee of $5 per event.
ITM Student Leadership Council — The Game-Changers
The MS in Information Technology and Management program has a strong student leadership council that serves as the interface between students and the program. Through many events, including Résumé Pods, advising sessions, Kickstarters (boot camps), Coffee Chats and more, council members have been instrumental in providing MS in ITM students meaningful learning and networking experiences. Council subcommittees respond to prospective students’ queries, manage the program’s social media channels, organize events and mentor. The council also directs a team of program mentors who are assigned to help current and prospective students.
MS in ITM Spring Mixer
The MS in ITM Student Leadership Council organized a Spring 2019 Mixer that attracted more than 100 students, faculty and staff members from the MS in ITM program and the Jindal School. The social evening included games and food in a very informal setting to help everyone meet others in the program. Dr. Varghese Jacob (fourth from left in photo at right), vice dean of the Jindal School, attended. Dr. Mark Thouin, MS in ITM program director, gave a snapshot of the latest program news.
Alumni Corner
PhD Alumni Publications
Aseri, Manmohan, M. Dawande, G. Janakiraman and V. Mookerjee, “Ad-Blockers: A Blessing or a Curse?” posted online Jan. 2, 2019. DOI: 10.2139/ssrn.3299057.
Bardhan, Indranil, S. Ayabakan and Z. (Eric) Zheng, “Did the Hospital Readmission Reduction Program Achieve Triple Aim Goals? Evidence From Healthcare Data Analytics,” proceedings of the 22nd Pacific Asia Conference on Information Systems (PACIS), Yokohama, Japan, June 2018.
Bagchi, Aniruddha, T. Bandyopadhyay, “Role of Intelligence Inputs in Defending Against Cyber Warfare and Cyberterrorism,” Decision Analysis, Vol. 15, Issue 3, September 2018: 133-194.
Dey, Debabrata, A. Ghoshal and A. Lahiri, “Security Circumvention: To Educate or To Enforce?” proceedings of the 51st Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, Waikoloa Village, Hawaii, January 2018.
Jabr, Wael, K. Zhao and S. Srivastava, “What Are They Saying? A Methodology for Extracting Information from Online Reviews,” proceedings of the International Conference on Information Systems (ICIS 2018), San Francisco, Dec. 13-16, 2018.
Jabr, Wael and M.S. Rahman (2018), “Can ‘Top Reviews’ Save the Online Review System? Evidence from Empirical Analyses and a Quasi-Natural Field Experiment on Amazon,” posted online June 29, 2018. DOI: 10.2139/ssrn.3200803.
Wang, Le, M. Jiahui and Li, B. (2018), “An Empirical Investigation of Sales Cheating Effect in E-Commerce,” proceedings of the International Conference on Information Systems (ICIS 2018), San Francisco, Dec. 13-16, 2018.
Koh, Byungwan, I-H. Hann and S. Raghunathan, “Digitization of Music: Consumer Adoption Amidst Piracy, Unbundling, and Rebundling,” MIS Quarterly, Vol. 43 Issue 1, March 2019: 25-45.
Kwark, Young, J. Pu, K. S. Jung and H. K. Cheng (2018), “Optimal Pricing Models of Independent Merchant and Online Marketplace in the Presence of Own Brand Product Competition,” posted online April 25, 2019. Available at SSRN 3098294.
Liu, Dengpan, Y. Tan and V. Mookerjee, “When Ignorance Can Be Bliss: Organizational Structure and Coordination in Electronic Retailing,” Information Systems Research, Vol. 29, Issue 1, January 2018: 70-83.
Saifee, D. H., I. R. Bardhan, A. Lahiri and Z. (E.) Zheng, “Physician Quality Reporting and Online Patient Perception,” proceedings of the International Conference on Information Systems (ICIS 2018), San Francisco, Dec. 13-16, 2018.
Saifee, D. H., I. R. Bardhan, A. Lahiri and Z. (E.) Zheng, “Healthcare Quality, Technology Use, and Online Patient Perception,” INFORMS Conference on Information Systems and Technology (CIST 2018), Phoenix, Nov. 3-4, 2018.
Faculty Research Corner
Business Value of Information Technology
Sohaee, N., “Neural Network Approach for Mid-Term Traffic and Revenue Prediction,” proceedings of the 13th Women in Machine Learning Workshop (WiML), Montreal, Dec. 3, 2018.
Crowdsourcing
Mo, J., S. Menon and S. Sarkar, “Participation Behavior and Performance in Open Innovation,” proceedings of the International Conference on Information Systems (ICIS 2018), San Francisco, Dec. 13-16, 2018. Nominated for the Best Short Paper Award.
Digital Markets
Sun, Geng, H. Cavusoglu and S. Raghunathan, “Membership-Based Free Shipping Programs: A New Vehicle to Gain Competitive Advantage for Online Retailers?” proceedings of the International Conference on Information Systems (ICIS 2018), San Francisco, Dec. 13-16, 2018. Nominated for the Best Conference Paper Award. Nominated for the Best Short Paper Award.
Tunc, Murat, H. Cavusoglu and S. Raghunathan, “Single-Dimensional Versus Multi-Dimensional Product Ratings in Online Marketplaces,” proceedings of the Platform Strategy Research Symposium, Boston, July 18, 2018.
Kumar, A, A. Mehra and S. Kumar, “Why Do Stores Drive Online Sales? Evidence of Underlying Mechanisms from a Multichannel Retailer,” (June 1, 2018), forthcoming in Information Systems Research. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2500942 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2500942.
Digital Piracy
Kim, A., A. Lahiri and D. Dey, “The ‘Invisible Hand’ of Piracy: An Economic Analysis of the Information-Goods Supply Chain,” MIS Quarterly, Vol. 42, Issue 4, December 2018: 1117–1141.
Healthcare Information Technology
Ayer, T., M. U. S. Ayvaci, Z. Karaca, Z. and J. Vlachy, “The Impact of Health Information Exchanges on Emergency Department Length of Stay,” Production and Operations Management, Vol. 28, Issue 3, March 2019: 740-758.
Kim, Y., M. U. S., Ayvaci, R. Srinivasan and B. Tanriover, “Repairing the Digital Divide Can Increase the Service Divide: The Effects of Patient Portals on Kidney Allocation,” proceedings of 17th Annual Hawaii International Conference on Education, Honolulu, Jan. 5-8, 2019.
Saifee, D. H., I. R. Bardhan, A. Lahiri and Z. (E.) Zheng, “Physician Quality Reporting and Online Patient Perception,” proceedings of the International Conference on Information Systems (ICIS 2018), San Francisco, Dec. 13-16, 2018.
Saifee, D. H., I. R. Bardhan, A. Lahiri and Z. (E.) Zheng, “Healthcare Quality, Technology Use, and Online Patient Perception” INFORMS Conference on Information Systems and Technology (CIST 2018), Phoenix, Nov. 3-4, 2018.
Pricing of Information Goods
Lahiri, A., D. Dey, “Versioning and Information Dissemination: A New Perspective,” Information Systems Research, Vol. 29, Issue 4, December 2018: 965–983.
Sharing Economy
Tunc, M. M., H. Cavusoglu and S. Raghunathan, “Double-Sided Adverse Selection and Bilateral Reviews in Sharing Economy,” proceedings of the Conference on Information Systems and Technology (CIST 2018), Phoenix, Nov. 3-4, 2018, and the Workshop on Information Systems and Economics (WISE 2018), San Francisco, Dec. 17-18, 2018.
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