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MIS Research: Past, Present and Future

(My Biased View)

My Background

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)

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Management Information Systems

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What is MIS? It’s in the name!

Management Information Systems

Not simply computer science, management science, organizational behavioral, economics modeling, etc…

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MIS Past: Departments and Founding Fathers 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

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Top Five UA MIS Programs

MIT: economics, social, IT consulting CMU: economics, MS/OR, social UT Austin: economics, MS/OR Arizona: system, technical Minnesota: behavioral, organizational

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UA-MIS is highly ranked versus competitors and has the broadest scope - Andersen Consulting Report

BS Program: 1100 Majors

Ranking

Sco

pe

High Low

Narrow

Broad

Ranking

Sco

pe

Narrow

Broad

High Low Ranking

Sco

pe

High LowNarrow

Broad

PhD Program: 35 Students

MBA Program: 180 Students

MS Program: 90 Students

Andersen Consulting 1999 Market Analysis

High LowRanking

Sco

pe

Narrow

Broad

Minnesota

MIT

Carnegie Mellon

Texas

NYU

Michigan

ASU

UofA

UofA

MIT

TexasMichigan

Carnegie Mellon

Minnesota

U Penn

ASU

NYU

Michigan

Carnegie Mellon

UofA

Berkeley

ASU

Illinois

UofA

MIT

Carnegie Mellon

Minnesota

Texas

Stanford

NYU

Irvine

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Major (Pure) MIS Journals

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.

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Other Major MIS Related (Technical) Journals 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.

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Major MIS Conference: ICIS 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.

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MIS: Good 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.)

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MIS: Bad and Ugly 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.)

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MIS: Future and Opportunities 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!!!

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MIS Future: Recommendations 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)?

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University of Arizona Management Information

Systems

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

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Historical Overview 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

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MIS Recognition US News & World Report: ranked among 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

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Faculty 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

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UA-MIS Board of Advisors 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

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Partnership Outcomes 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

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Major UA/MIS Research Centers 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

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UA/MIS Research Focuses: 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)

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AI Lab Background 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

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AI Lab Research Methodologies 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)

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AI Lab Projects: Web Intelligence and Mining 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

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AI Lab Projects: Biomedical Informatics 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

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Medical Informatics:

The computational, algorithmic, database and information-centric approach to the study of medical and health careproblems.

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AI Lab Projects: Intelligence and Security Informatics 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

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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.

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Research Opportunities 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

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ICIS 2009 program participation and involvement opportunities!!!

Faculty visit and collaboration opportunities!!!

Recruiting new Ph.D. and MS Students!!!

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For more information

Eller College: http://eller.arizona.edu

AI Lab: http://ai.arizona.edu

Hsinchun Chen: hchen@eller.arizona.edu