PROGRESS MAGAZINE - Eller College of Management - University ...

RESEARCHREPORTDepartment UpdateMISEller MIScontinues tolead in teachingand research.Thirty-three years after it was founded,the Department of ManagementInformation Systems (MIS) at the EllerCollege continues to operate at theforefront of information systemsresearch and teaching. The departmenthas ranked in the U.S. News and WorldReport top-five since that surveycategory was introduced 19 years ago.Now, as former department headMohan Tanniru takes a position asdean of the business school at OaklandUniversity in Rochester, Mich., the MISdepartment is launching a search for anew head who will help the departmentcontinue to evolve at the pace ofglobal business.“Mohan led the department well andachieved major accomplishments duringhis tenure as head, including revampingthe MIS master’s program, developing awell-respected board of advisors thathelped bring in significant funding, andhosting a successful 30th anniversaryevent,” says J. Leon Zhao, interim head ofthe MIS Department.“We have a real challenge ahead of us,”says Eller College dean Paul Portney. “Butthe strength of the research and teachingin Eller MIS is extraordinary, and we’reconfident that we will identify a newleader who is prepared to take thedepartment even higher.”Leading IT research.Eller’s MIS department is well knownfor its pioneering research. A substantialportion of its funding is generated by theground-breaking research of the Centerfor the Management of Information (CMI)directed by Jay Nunamaker, the ArtificialIntelligence Lab (AI Lab) directed byHsinchun Chen, the Advanced DatabaseResearch Group directed by Sudha Ram,and the Intelligent Systems and DecisionsLab directed by Daniel Zeng.“This year alone, the MIS departmenthas roughly $5 million in research grantscoming in,” says Zhao.In August, the AI Lab received $1.8 millionthrough several multi-year grantsfrom the National Science Foundation(NSF) in support of McClelland ProfessorHsinchun Chen's Dark Web project, whichdevelops techniques for collecting andanalyzing terrorism data online. Also inAugust, Professor Judee Burgoon, CMIDirector of Human CommunicationResearch, and Regents Professor JayJ. Leon Zhao, interimdepartment head.Nunamaker received $250,000 from theNSF to form the Center for IdentificationTechnology Research, which will explorebiometrics and deception detection.Biometrics deals with uniquely identifyingpeople based on biological or behavioralmarkers; the CMI deception detectionresearch centers around developing computer-aidedtechniques for distinguishingtruth from lie. Burgoon will head the newCenter. In all, CMI has received several newresearch grants totaling over $2 million.Zhao is also the recipient of an NSFgrant of $800,000 over three years for collaborativeresearch with Keith Provan ofEller’s Department of Management andOrganizations, the UA Department ofSystems and Industrial Engineering, and theKuali Foundation of Indiana University. “Thegoal is to develop a new platform to managecomplex and dynamic software requirementsand contribute to the developmentof better enterprise applications,” saysZhao. In September, Zhao received$190,000 in funding from SAP to developan automated procedure for transformingprograms into business-process-drivencomponents through service-orientedarchitectures. To better manage these tworesearch grants and facilitate future grants,Zhao has formed a new research lab calledEnterprise Process Innovation andComputing (EPIC) Lab.The Eller Department of MISL-R, back row: Moshe Dror, J. Leon Zhao, Mark Vroblefski, David E. Pingry, Hsinchun Chen.Middle row: William T. Neumann, Pamela Slaten, Patti Ota, Roberto J. Mejias, Sue Brown, Zhu Zhang.Front row: Suzanne P. Weisband, Alexandra Durcikova, Daniel Zeng, Sudha Ram, Jay F. Nunamaker.6 ELLER PROGRESS THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONAWWW.ELLER.ARIZONA.EDUFALL / WINTER 2007 7