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The Smith School's faculty research interests encompass a broad, dynamic mix of functional and netcentric economy issues. The Smith School has numerous research projects ongoing, and Research@Smith is the medium to keep you informed about many of these projects. |
Research@Smith, Winter 2006
IN THIS ISSUE
Featured Stories:
►D&IT
Department
►Faculty
Kudos
►Smith Undergraduate Research Fellows
►Download Winter 2006 Research@Smith (PDF)
D&IT Department
Information systems and networks represent the critical infrastructure on which corporations and the economy depend not only for the execution of operations, but also for the formulation of strategy andcompetitive differentiation. The Smith School’s department of decision information technologies (D&IT) helps organizations meet these challenges through its leading-edge research and educational programs.
D&IT faculty have received international recognition for their research in management science, information systems, statistics and data analysis, and operations and supply chain management. Members of the Management Science Group were ranked sixth in the nation for the practices of operations research (Interfaces, 1997). U.S. News and World Report ranked the Smith School as having the eighth best program in management information systems. The Wall Street Journal ranks Smith's information technology program # 6.
The department’s faculty members continue to garner awards and honors. Bruce Golden, France-Merrick Chair in Management Science, Shreevardhan Lele, Tyser Teaching Fellow of Decision
Sciences, S. Raghavan, assistant professor of management research, and collaborators Zhiwei Fu (former PhD student) and Ed Wasil (American University) were awarded the 2005 INFORMS Computing Society Prize for their research in the area of data mining.
Raghavan, with PhD candidate Ioannis Gamvros and Rick Nidel, MBA ’05, were selected as finalists for the prestigious 2005 Daniel H. Wagner Prize for Excellence in Operations Research Practice. Raghavan, Gamvros and Nidel developed a model to help Catholic Relief Services, a not-for-profit agency that funds development efforts and humanitarian efforts throughout the world, allocate more than $70 million in unrestricted funding. Catholic Relief Services is using the model developed by the team for strategic planning and to help keep budgetary spending in line with its philanthropic goals.
Katherine Stewart, assistant professor of information systems, received an NSF CAREER Grant, approximately $500,000 in funding during the period 2004-2008.
For more information about current research in the Smith School’s department of decision and information technologies, please visit http://www.rhsmith.umd.edu/dit/.
Faculty Kudos
Michael Ball, Orkand Professor of Management Science, and Michael Fu, professor of management science, have received a $630,000 grant from NSF under the special initiative on “Dynamic Data Driven Application Systems.” The title of their proposal is “Dynamic Real-Time Order Promising and Fulfillment for Global Make-to-Order Supply Chains.” Ball has been named Area Editor for Transportation in the flagship journal Operations Research.
Chris Bingham,
assistant professor of
management and
organization, won the
Best Paper Award at the
2005 Atlanta Competitive
Advantage Conference for
his paper on "Opening
the Black Box of
Capability Creation: The
Internationalization of
Entrepreneurial Firms."
Bingham's paper on
"Building Theory Using
Simulation" has been
conditionally accepted
for publication in
Academy of Management
Review.
Bruce Golden, France-Merrick Chair in Management Science, will be the first Conoco-Phillips Distinguished Lecture at Oklahoma State University in October 2005. He presented two lectures as Distinguished Speaker at the 31st Lunteren Conference on the Mathematics of Operations Research in Lunteren, The Netherlands in January 2006.
Larry Gordon,
Ernst&Young Alumni
Professor of Managerial
Accounting, has been
appointed as the
International
Representative for
Accounting for the 2008
Research Assessment
Exercise
(RAE) in the U.K. The
RAE is the process which
determines the research
ranking, and in turn
research funding, for
the various departments
(across all disciplines)
at U.K. universities for
several years starting
in 2008.
David Kirsch,
assistant professor of
management and
organization, has
received additional
funding for his "Dot Com
Archives" project. The
Library of Congress has
extended its funding
agreement under the
National Digital
Information
Infrastructure
Preservation Program (NDIIPP)
for an additional two
years, through 2007,
committing an additional
$813,000, bringing total
direct support to
$1,056,000. Counting
additional contributions
from project partners,
the project has received
$2,209,000 in funding.
Dilip Madan, professor of finance, has been appointed editor of Mathematical Finance.
S. Raghavan, assistant
professor of management science, and
G. Anandalingam, Ralph J. Tyser
Professor of Management Science,
co-edited a book entitled
Telecommunications
Planning: Innovations in Pricing,
Network Design and Management, to be
published by Springer.
Ian Williamson, assistant professor of management and organization, has won the 2005 Academy of Management Mentoring Best Practices Award. This award recognizes individuals who have excelled in providing mentoring to Academy of Management members. Williamson has been invited to join the editorial board of Academy of Management Journal.
Smith Undergraduate Research Fellows
Twenty-two students participated in last semester’s launch of Smith Research Fellows, a new program for undergraduates which allows them to partner with faculty members pursuing research projects. Students learn through the research process, participate in data collection and compilation, modeling, presentation and other tasks under faculty supervision while earning a stipend for their efforts.
The Fellows worked on a variety of projects, including:
- writing white papers on the state of
electronic
markets in various industries
- gathering data for a study that
examined the
self-serving bias as it affects
auditors’ beliefs
about tradeoffs between retaining audit
clients
versus improving audit quality
- testing and demonstrating auction
mechanisms
for a variety of applications including
industrial
and government procurement, real-time
ticket
sales for sporting events, allocation of
landing/take-off slots at airports
- gathering data about private security
offerings
by public firms
- collection, coding, organization, and
analysis of
detailed data about patents, and
corresponding
data about the companies that use them
for
research on the changing nature of
intellectual
property
- managing the distribution of the
survey instruments,
collecting of survey instruments and
coding
and inputting of data for a study of the
motor carrier industry's adoption of
information
technology to manage safety performance
- Web-based coding and analysis of data regarding how young startup ventures in the biotech sector evolve
Smith Research Fellows is part of the new Smith Undergraduate Fellows Program. The Fellows program consists of groups of specialized tracks that cut across academic majors, so that all Smith School undergraduates can participate in an intimate small-school environment while enjoying the options and opportunities only a large school can provide.
Fall 2006 will see the launch of several new Fellows tracks, including International Fellows and Entrepreneurship Fellows. International Fellows will be admitted with double majors in business and foreign language study, and will participate in dedicated study abroad trips, international clubs, events and subsidized travel. Entrepreneurship Fellows will a provide a four course track in entrepreneurship, including a funded business plan competition and special activities with the school’s Dingman Center for Entrepreneurship aimed at product, service and business creation. The Smith Undergraduate Fellows program enjoys strong cross-campus support and has received major funding from the University of Maryland administration and from Smith School alumni.
For a complete list of projects and more information about Smith Research Fellows, visit www.rhsmith.umd.edu/undergrad/researchfellows.html
DEAN
Howard FrankDIRECTOR OF RESEARCH
Michael BallEDITOR
Rebecca WinnerCONTRIBUTOR
Kenneth Ng, Smith MBA Candidate '06
We’d like to put Research@Smith
directly into the hands
of those who are interested
in learning about the latest
research conducted by Smith
School faculty. To request
a copy of this publication
contact Rebecca Winner via
e-mail,
editor@rhsmith.umd.edu,
or phone,
(301) 405-9465.