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Top-performing Temple University MIS Students got to see the inner workings of two global companies in November. Pharmaceutical distributor AmerisourceBergen in Conshohocken, Pennsylvania, and educational publisher Scholastic Inc. in New York City, were the inaugural hosts of the Institute for Business and Information Technology’s (IBIT) Company Visits initiative.

These visits bring together business leaders and students at the sites of IBIT members. For a few hours, students tour offices, learn about projects a company is working on, and talk with employees about their careers.

It was amazing to sit at the same table with high-level executives and hear them speak about their experience. Overall, the site visit allowed me to expand my knowledge about the [healthcare] industry as well as my network said MIS student Anastasia Postolati.

Learning how Scholastic Inc. uses technology in publishing showed how diverse a MIS grad’s career options truly are, said Madison Collins.

The November hosts worked closely with IBIT to design their visits, which are also recruiting opportunities. Only students with excellent academic and professional development experience are invited to participate in Company Visits.

It was an absolute delight and inspiring to host the students. They filled me with hope and optimism for the future as prospective leaders of our communities, our businesses and our domestic economy,” said Dale Danilewitz, AmerisourceBergen CIO. Danilewitz, who sits on IBIT’s IT Advisory Board, also said that the students were inquisitive and informative and displayed an air of confidence and sincere appreciation for the opportunity to meet our company leaders while engaging in productive and thought-provoking conversation. They are welcome back any time.

The 6th Annual NBCUniversal Temple University Analytics Challenge attracted more than 135 entries across six colleges, with the first-place finishers coming from Fox School of Business, Klein College of Media and Communications and the Tyler School of Art.

MIS students Jake Green and Rohit Bobby partnered with Klein’s Sergio Aguilar to win the analysis category. Tyler School of Art student Xi (Cynthia) Cheng was the graphics category winner. The first-place finishers took home $2,500. There were also cash prizes for the second and third place winners and two honorable mentions in each category.

“All of the teams put a lot of work into their challenges,” said MIS Assistant Professor Laurel Miller, who organized the event and serves as Director of the Institute for Business and Information Technology. Miller was also a mentor to the three-member analysis team winners and said she was impressed “by how meticulously they looked at each and every angle.”

Teams could choose from three data sets to answer the following questions: The first, from competition sponsor NBCUniversal, asked how media companies align with esports; the second, from global biopharmaceutical company Alexion, sought to learn who the winners and losers were in healthcare funding and payments; the third, from pharmaceutical distributor AmerisourceBergen, questioned why pharmacies buy drugs from non-primary vendors.

This was the first year a sports-related challenge was offered and many teams were drawn to that. Both first place winners took on the NBCUniversal challenge. Graphics winner Cheng used images from Pac-Man and simple synthesizer sounds to look at the overlap between esports viewers and traditional sports fans in her four-minute video. The analysis trio reworked the question, team member Green said, to ask, “What can media companies and specifically, networks such as those powered by NBC sports group do to adapt to the esports audience and remain a leading delivery and engagement platform for sport entertainment?”

“This project taught me so many lessons that will be of value in my future professional endeavors,” Green said. “It taught us to give more with less. It taught us to condense mountains of data and weeks’ worth of information gathering into a four-minute pitch. We had the privilege of coming together as a team in pursuit of a common goal, despite our differences in educational background.”

Aidan Doyle, Alexion’s Director of Data and Analytic Platforms and a first-time competition judge, said he was impressed by the students and the challenges they tackled.

“When I went to college, you signed up for a class, walked into an amphitheater, the professor wrote on a board, you wrote it down and at the end you’d take a test,” said Doyle. “What I see in the system in the US 30 years later, especially at Temple, is a collaborative effort that brings the best ideas together between all faculty while engaging students and industry… To me, it summed up why Temple and other institutions are the place to be.”

Learn more about the Temple University Analytics Challenge.

See all of the winning entries here. 

A cyber competition administered by Temple University’s Institute for Business and Information Technology (IBIT) to fill the ever-growing need for cyber analysts has a winner. A team from Syracuse University earned a $20,000 prize as the winner of the third annual National Cyber Analyst Challenge and Conference.

Created to enhance the skills of the future workforce and inspire students to pursue careers in cyber security, the National Cyber Analyst Challenge and Conference focuses on developing strategic skills involving analysis and threat identification. Partnerships with NBCUniversal, Vanguard, Leidos, and Pfizer powered this year’s competition.

A panel of industry experts scored the team from Syracuse University highest in technical proficiency and communication. The multi-phased competition started with each team analyzing a cyber case. In the second phase, the teams received training from industry experts. The competition culminated in a real-time practical challenge held April 12-13 at Temple University in Philadelphia.

“Cyber is driving the next big shift in the evolution of IT,” said Michael Bradshaw, Executive Vice President and Chief Information Officer of NBCUniversal, who was one of the keynote speakers. “Much as client-server and use of the Internet and web applications shaped the landscape, securing the IT environments for our companies and ourselves personally will drive changes we’re only just starting to understand.”

“This competition draws students from across the country, serving as a tremendous pipeline of emerging talent in an increasingly important technical field,” said Chris Kearns, competition co-founder and Head of Hosting Services at Vanguard. “The finalists showcased conceptual thinking, analytics, deep technical skills, and inspiring teamwork, as they tackled real-life scenarios.”

A team from Pennsylvania State University finished runner-up to Syracuse, receiving a $5,000 prize. The National Cyber Analyst Challenge’s other finalists (in alphabetical order) were: Brigham Young University, Carnegie Mellon University, Howard University, Iowa State University, University of Alabama at Huntsville, University of Maryland University College, University of New Haven, and Villanova University.

The associated conference engaged faculty and industry experts from Pfizer, NBCUniversal, Vanguard, Amazon, University of Delaware, University of Alabama, Carnegie Mellon, Temple University and others. Presenters discussed cyber research and curriculum challenges and opportunities.

Kim Basile, Senior Vice President and Chief Information Security Officer at Leidos, who was also a keynote speaker, believes the National Cyber Analyst Challenge and Conference has “zeroed in on one of the most important challenges in cybersecurity—analyzing the oceans of data we create each day to identify threats and find better approaches to security.”

“The competition provides companies like Leidos the opportunity to meet students from across the country,” she added, “and hopefully strengthen the workforce of the future as this competition grows and teams challenge each other, compete, and win.”

The participants agree: 96% found the competition valuable, while 90% found that the conference provided valuable insights and knowledge.

“The National Cyber Analyst Challenge and Conference is one of a kind,” said Dr. Munir Mandviwalla, Executive Director of Temple’s IBIT, who worked with Laurel Miller, Director, to organize the event. “No other competition is bridging industry experts and academics from management information systems, computer science, and engineering to address the cyber needs of the nation.”

Contact:
Christopher A. Vito
Temple University
215-204-4115, cvito@temple.edu