MIS Research: Past, Present and Future (My Biased View)

1. MIS Research: Past, Present and Future(My Biased View) MIS

2. MyBackground • NCTU  SUNY Buffalo  NYU  U Arizona (MIS #4) • MS, MIS, Design Science, AI, Search Engine, Digital Library, Medical Informatics, Intelligence & Security Informatics, Business Intelligence • AI Lab, 25+ researchers; $25M funding ($1.5M/year), 180 top SCI papers (20+ papers/year); DL (#1), MIS (#8); Scientific Advisor: NLC, NLM, Academia Sinica; Chair, ICADL, IEEE ISI • AE in ten top SCI journals, IEEE and AAAS Fellow • DL/SE; GeneScene & BioPortal; COPLINK & Dark Web (NYT, USA Today, Associated Press, etc.); Knowledge Computing Corporation ($100M)

3. MIS Management Information Systems

4. What is MIS? MIS • It’s in the name! • Management • Information • Systems • Not simply computer science, management science, organizational behavioral, economics modeling, etc…

5. MIS Past: Departments and Founding Fathers MIS • University of Minnesota, founded in 1975 • University of Arizona, founded in 1977 • Dr. Gordon Davis, U of Minnesota  Behavioral and Organizational Research • Dr. Jay Nunamaker, U. of Arizona  Systems and Technical Research • Dr. Andy Whinston, U. of Texas at Austin, Purdue U.  Economics and Modeling Research

6. Top Five UA MIS Programs MIS • MIT: economics, social, IT consulting • CMU: economics, MS/OR, social • UT Austin: economics, MS/OR • Arizona: system, technical • Minnesota: behavioral, organizational

7. Andersen Consulting 1999 Market Analysis UA-MIS is highly ranked versus competitors and has the broadest scope - Andersen Consulting Report MIS MBA Program: 180 Students BS Program: 1100 Majors UofA Broad Broad NYU UofA Michigan Michigan Texas ASU Texas MIT MIT ASU Minnesota Scope Scope Minnesota Carnegie Mellon Carnegie Mellon U Penn Narrow Narrow Ranking High Low Ranking High Low PhD Program: 35 Students MS Program: 90 Students NYU UofA UofA Broad Broad NYU Michigan MIT Texas ASU Minnesota Scope Scope Illinois Carnegie Mellon Berkeley Stanford Irvine Carnegie Mellon Narrow Narrow High Ranking Low High Low Ranking

8. Major (Pure) MIS Journals MIS • MISQ: Behavioral/Organizational • Information Systems Research: Behavioral,/Organizational, Economics, some Systems • Management Science: MS, Modeling, some Systems • J of MIS: Behavioral/Organizational, Economics, some Systems • Decision Support Systems: mostly Systems • Others: Decision Sciences, Information Systems, etc.

9. Other Major MIS Related (Technical) Journals MIS • ACM: CACM (IT), ACM Trans. On Information Systems (IR) • IEEE: Computer (IT), TKDE (database), SMC (cybernetics), TITB (biomedicine), Technology Management, Intelligent Systems (AI) • ASIS: JASIST • Other technical journals: IJHCS, IPM, JBI, etc. • Others: Many in Economics, Management, Management Science, Accounting, Finance, Marketing, etc.

10. Major MIS Conference: ICIS MIS • Managed by AIS • 1000-1400 participants from US, Europe, and Asia • High quality papers, job search • 20 tracks, major submissions in behavioral, organizational, economics tracks • ICIS 2008, Paris • ICIS 2009, Phoenix, Arizona; Conference Chairs: Nunamaker and Currie; Program Chairs: Chen and Slaughter • New tracks: Web 2.0, Web Mining, Service Computing, Biomedical, etc.

11. MIS: Good MIS • IT the fabric of all organizations • MIS has evolved from EDP (book keeping) to the backbone of all business operations • MIS has matured as a discipline in breadth and depth • MIS has become a department in most major business schools • Major journals and conference well regarded • Ph.D. students academic placement stable; BS/MS students IT company placement good • US faculty salary higher than peer groups (CS, Economics, Management, etc.)

12. MIS: Bad and Ugly MIS • MIS is not a major part of IT revolution; computer science is (GDSS/TAM vs. PC/Unix/Internet) • MIS has not gained respect in scientific academic world (little federal funding or contribution) • MIS has not gained respect in businesses or business schools (little contribution or relevance to business; TAM vs. CAPM; IS dept removed from major b-schools) • MIS discipline is narrow and in-breeding (MISQ and ISR too behavior and economics centric; few MIS faculty are known outside of MIS) • MIS curriculum is soft and out of date (few companies need behavioral or economics BS/MS graduates; too much theory too little substance; need to get back to core of M.I.S.)

13. MIS: Future and Opportunities MIS • MIS curriculum needs to be relevant to management (business subject courses, organizations), information (DBMS, data mining, knowledge management, Web contents), systems (supply-chain, ERP, Internet, Web 2.0 apps) • MIS scholars need to go beyond MIS and compete in the broader academic world (CS, Economics, Management, etc.) • MIS research needs to be relevant and useful to businesses • MIS vs. CS  Stick to our strengths: management, information, and systems!!!

14. MIS Future: Recommendations MIS • Curriculum: Some business and behavioral courses; Need many hands-on database, web computing, business systems (CRM, ERP) courses; Need hand-on development projects and interns • Research: What are the emerging topics (Web 2.0, forums/blogs, etc.)? NSF proposals and funding (innovative and fundable); Identify unique approach (systems vs. algorithms) • Impact: Work with other subject experts (business, biomedicine, security, etc.); Identify and solve new problems; Is it news-worthy (NYT, USA Today, Newsweek)?

15. MIS University of Arizona Management Information Systems

16. Vision for UA-MIS MIS To establish leadership in information technology education, research and outreach that accentuate innovation, hands-on experience and strategic values of information management, intelligence and technology.

17. Historical Overview MIS • BS, MS and Ph.D. programs were first offered in 1974. • The department was established in 1977. 30th year celebration in 2004 • 15 faculty members, 45 Ph.D., 60 MS, 80 MBA, 600 BS students • Unique values of our program • Successful innovations and technology transfer • Hands-on learning about synergies among development, application and management • Applied and relevant

18. MIS Recognition MIS • US News & World Report: rankedamong top 5 programs for more than 15 consecutive years • External Peer Review (1998): “a jewel” • Decision Line rankings (1998, 1999): • Dept. research productivity: #1 by far • Dr. Nunamaker: #2 • Comm. of AIS (2005): • Institution publication productivity: #4 • Dr. Nunamaker #6; Dr. Chen #8

19. Faculty MIS • 15 faculty members • Total Research Funding: $80+ million • Pioneers and leaders in • Collaboration technology and science • Knowledge management and artificial intelligence • Large scale data management and mining • Economics and technology management issues • Featured in Fortune, Business Week, Forbes, Sciences and New York Times articles

20. UA-MIS Board of Advisors MIS • Provide guidance and support • Established in summer 1998 • Inkind, scholarship, infrastructure and fund donations exceeding $10 million • Members include: AOL, Ameristar Casinos, Andersen Consulting, Arthur Andersen, Cap Gemini, Cargill, Commerce One, Compaq, EMC2, Farmers Insurance, HP, Harvard Group, Honeywell, IBM, IFS, Intel, Oracle, PWC, Raytheon, RCM Technologies, SoftQuad, Ultralife Batteries

21. Partnership Outcomes MIS • Mark and Susan Hoffman E-Commerce Lab • Harvard Group and Honeywell Scholarships • E-business Executive education program • Specialized co-op program • Student and faculty projects

22. Major UA/MIS Research Centers MIS • Center for the Management of Information (CMI): Collaborative computing and deception detection research • Artificial Intelligence Lab: Knowledge management and web computing research • Hoffman E-Commerce Lab: E-Commerce and Internet computing research, education, outreach • Advanced Database Research Group: Data modeling and management research

23. UA/MIS Research Focuses: MIS • Technical/system: artificial intelligence, web computing, GDSS, databases • Management sciences/OR: workflow, supply-chain, project management • Information economics: auctioning, modeling • Social/behavioral/cognitive: social impacts, computer-mediated communication, human-computer interactions (HCI)

24. AI Lab Background MIS • Founded in 1989 • Excellence in Digital Library, Web Intelligence and Mining, Biomedical Informatics, and Security and Intelligence Informatics • Funding, $25M: federal (NSF, NIH, NIJ, DARPA, CIA, DHS, etc.) and industries (SAP, HP, IBM, etc.) • 30+ researchers: 6 full-time researchers/staff, 12 Ph.D. students, 12 MS/BS students (and 10+ affiliated faculty) • Research infrastructure: NT/UNIX/Linux workstations, servers, supercomputers (SGI); Java/C/C++, DBMS (Oracle/MS SQL), web protocols

25. AI Lab Research Methodologies MIS • Databases, knowledge bases, ontologies (Database) • Data mining and statistical analysis (Algorithm) • Text mining and natural language processing (Linguistics) • Web mining, search engines, and recommender systems (Web) • Information systems design and human-computer interactions (HCI) • Visualization and human factors (Visualization) • System evaluation (Evaluation)

26. AI Lab Projects: Web Intelligence and Mining MIS • Digital library, intelligent searching, multi-lingual support, post-retrieval analysis, knowledge map visualization • Scientific portals: NanoPort (for Nano Technology), DGPort (for digital government) • Intelligence portals: (English/Chinese) business intelligence and medical intelligence, Spanish/Arabic • CMC visualization by Glyphs, MDS/SOM visualization for financial management and Internet survey, financial data/text mining, GetSmart e-learning concept map, recommender systems

27. AI Lab Projects: Biomedical Informatics MIS • Biomedical data and text mining, gene pathway analysis, medical ontologies, GeneArray analysis, biosurveillance • HelpfulMed and MedTextus; Arizona Pathway Visualizer; BioPortal for disease informatics • Gene pathway text mining, computational linguistics, GeneArray data mining, clustering, Medical knowledge visualization, pathway modeling and display • Infectious disease and bioagent information sharing, analysis, and visualization, hotspot analysis, spatio-temporal visualization

28. Medical Informatics: The computational, algorithmic, database and information-centric approach to the study of medical and health care problems.

29. AI Lab Projects: Intelligence and Security Informatics MIS • Public safety and intelligence information sharing and analysis, social network analysis, data/text mining • COPLINK, BorderSafe, Dark Web • Criminal and terrorism social network analysis (SNA): centrality, block-modeling, clustering • Criminal and terrorism data/text mining: criminal element association mining and clustering (time, place, objects); deception detection • Terrorism link, content, authorship, sentiment analysis

30. Intelligence and Security Informatics (ISI): • Development of advanced information technologies, systems, algorithms, and databases for national security related applications, through an integrated technological, organizational, and policy-based approach.

31. Research Opportunities MIS • Ph.D. Program: excellent GPA (top 5 in class), strong GRE/GMAT (top 5%), strong research record, strong faculty personal recommendation ($18,000 annual financial support, 5 years)  become professor ($100,000 + 2/9) • MS Program: good GPA and GRE/GMAT (top 10%), good recommendation (good chance for financial support after first semester, $14,000 per year, 2 years)  become IT professional ($60,000) • Need good to excellent English communication skills (speaking and writing) • Joint faculty research, sabbatical exchange, visitor program

32. MIS ICIS 2009 program participation and involvement opportunities!!! Faculty visit and collaboration opportunities!!! Recruiting new Ph.D. and MS Students!!!

33. For more information MIS • Eller College: http://eller.arizona.edu • AI Lab: http://ai.arizona.edu • Hsinchun Chen: hchen@eller.arizona.edu