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IBIT News

Dale Danilewitz AmerisourceBergen’s CIO is appointed Executive In Residence

Dale Danilewitz 2016AmerisourceBergen Executive Vice President and Chief Information Officer Dale Danilewitz has been appointed IBIT’s newest Executive in Residence.

The IBIT Executive in Residence program facilitates interaction between industry leaders and the faculty and students of Temple University’s Fox School of Business. In his role as IBIT Executive in Residence, Danilewitz will visit the Fox School Monday, April 4, and engage with faculty and students on topics and projects of mutual interest, while also promoting the activities of IBIT, the Fox School’s Management Information Systems department, and the Fox School of Business.

Additionally, AmerisourceBergen recently became a member of IBIT, and Danilewitz has joined the Fox IT Advisory Board.

“Joining the Fox School’s IBIT community as an Executive in Residence is an exciting opportunity to invest in the next generation of IT talent,” Danilewitz said. “I’m inspired by the passionate faculty and students at Temple and the Fox School, and I look forward to contributing to a dynamic academic experience.”

Danilewitz is Executive VP and CIO of AmerisourceBergen, one of the world’s largest pharmaceutical services companies. Based in Chesterbrook, Pa., AmerisourceBergen serves global markets with a focus on the pharmaceutical supply chain. Danilewitz has more than 25 years of experience in senior information technology positions, and his background spans manufacturing, hospitality, supply chain, and healthcare. He previously worked for Whirlpool and American Airlines/SABRE Group.

He holds a Master of Science degree in Electrical Engineering and Advanced Technology from Imperial College London, and Bachelor of Science degrees in Computer Science from Rhodes University and the University of the Witwatersrand.

“Dale is an inspiring role model for our students,” said Laurel Miller, Director. “He has been incredibly successful in his career, and continues to give back and make the effort to connect with students. Our students can learn from Dale on how to succeed with great values, composure, and concern for others.”

Digital Leadership: The future for CIOs

CIO Symposium 2016

The digital transformation of business is asking new urgent questions about technology leadership in firms. 

The Institute for Business and Information Technology is pleased to announce an exclusive symposium to debate the future with a distinguished panel of experts.

Learn more at: http://ibit.temple.edu/ciofuture

IBIT addresses U.S. cyber talent crisis through partnership with Lockheed Martin

NCAC 2015Temple University’s Institute for Business and Information Technology (IBIT) joined forces with Lockheed Martin in Washington D.C. in November 2015 to host the first annual National Cyber Analyst Challenge.

The competition, which welcomed 44 students and nine faculty advisors from nine universities, was designed to enhance students’ skills in combatting cyber-attacks and address a cyber talent crisis in the United States. The three-month, multi-phase competition aimed to inspire today’s technologically literate students to pursue careers in cyber security.

The result: It worked. Nearly 60 percent of the competition’s student-finalists completed online profiles with Lockheed Martin.

One of the students remarked “Also, hearing everyone tell us how valuable we are was a nice ego boost going into this field!”

The participants also rated the competition highly on the metric of ‘learned a lot’ (score of 1.33 on a scale of 1 to 5) and ‘value’ (score of 1.15).

“Cyber security analysts represent a critical skill need for most organizations,” said Chris Kearns, Lockheed Martin’s Vice President of Enterprise IT Solutions. “These students showed great promise through their hands-on teamwork to solve real world challenges and progress through the competition.”

According to SimplyHired.com, in mid-2015, there were 26,980 open cyber-security related positions. The need in these positions is less for operators and more for analysts. As threats multiply and diversify, intelligence analysis and identification is becoming critical, rather than secondary to the ability to configure or code secure servers. Yet, the job seekers in the talent pipeline find it difficult to integrate operational skills with strategic threat and cyber analysis. The goal of the National Cyber Analyst Challenge was to provide students with the opportunity to integrate specific operational skills with strategic threat analysis.

In the first phase of the competition, students pored over 75 gigabytes of data to find the cause of the simulated hack. Then the teams submitted 10-slide summary reports to explain their respective solutions for preventing future cyber-attacks. In the second phase, in which only nine teams competed, the students received training from industry experts. The competition culminated in a real-time practical challenge held at Lockheed Martin’s Global Vision Center in Crystal City, Va., in November.

A panel of industry experts, scoring finalists on technical proficiency, judgment, and communication, awarded the winning team $25,000 in prize money. Runners-up received awards of $7,500-$15,000 to support student, faculty, and curriculum development.

“It was gratifying to work with Lockheed Martin to create such a student- and faculty-centric opportunity,” said Dr. Munir Mandviwalla, IBIT’s Executive Director and the Chair of Management Information Systems at Temple’s Fox School of Business. “We hope to increase the national cyber talent pool across the nation’s top programs in Management Information Systems, Computer Science, and Engineering.”

Third annual Analytics Challenge triples in size with 719 students participating

For Cassandra Reffner, winning the Temple Analytics Challenge for a second straight year was about honing her visual storytelling skills one data set at a time. A senior graphic design student from the Tyler School of Art, Reffner took home the $2,500 grand prize at the third annual Temple Analytics Challenge, held Nov. 16 at the Fox School of Business.

Organized by the Institute for Business and Information Technology (IBIT), the competition awards prizes totaling $10,000, from corporate members of IBIT and the Office of the Senior Vice Provost for Undergraduate Studies at Temple University. The Temple Analytics Challenge focuses on making sense of big data through visualization — a key component of data analytics cited by experts as a promising path to job opportunities.

Participation increased by 300 percent over the previous year, with 395 entries. Participating teams included 719 students from eight of Temple’s 17 schools and colleges, as well as students from the State University of New York and Cornell University. The finalists came from programs in the Tyler School of Art, the College of Liberal Arts, the College of Engineering, the School of Media and Communications, the College of Public Health, and the Fox School of Business.

“The Temple Analytics Challenge emphasizes the Fox School’s commitment to teaching and research in the various fields connected to big data,” said Dr. M. Moshe Porat, Dean of the Fox School of Business and the School of Tourism and Hospitality Management. “But big data and data visualization are academic components in which students across Temple University regularly engage. This truly was a university-wide competition.”

Corporate partners provided competitors with large sets of data that they must analyze and visualize in a way that is both innovative and accessible. This year’s partners included Merck Pharmaceuticals, QVC, and The Pennsylvania Ballet.

Reffner, who won the Temple Analytics Challenge in 2014, chose to work with the data from The Pennsylvania Ballet, saying she could see the visuals presented within the data set. In the Pennsylvania Ballet challenge, students had to conceptualize the best way for the company to attract new audience members.

“With our limited resources, we just don’t have the time or the staff to do this kind of imagining,” said David Gray, executive director of The Pennsylvania Ballet. “Having so many smart and creative people trying to help us address challenges is a godsend.”

To expand on the project’s proposal, Reffner scrolled through various mentions the company received on social media — from Tweets and hashtags to status updates — to see what about the company got people talking. She said was intrigued by the company’s position as a “19th-century product for a 21st-century audience,” and drafted a plan that took this value and social media’s talk-back feature to improve customer interaction. She suggested a redesign of The Pennsylvania Ballet’s website to respond on all devices, including desktops, smartphones, and tablets, so customers could interact with the ballet by any means necessary.

Reffner and 19 other finalists went before a panel of judges comprised of industry leaders, including representatives from Lockheed Martin, Campbell’s Soup Company, Deloitte Consulting and AmerisourceBergen. The judges were impressed with the overall dedication the students brought to the challenge.

“This competition is not focused toward any specific major,” Reffner said. “It’s people from all over the place that entered the competition. That’s why I love the Temple Analytics Challenge.”

Beyond The Pennsylvania Ballet challenge, student participants had the choice of two others. The Merck challenge tasked students with synthesizing data to show how a vaccine will best benefit world health. QVC provided data relating to product placement in various markets and asked students to show how this data could predict where it should next focus its attention.

“Data alone is just information. It’s usage to inspire change or action and turning it into competitive intelligence is where the value lies, and the Temple Analytics Challenge did just that,” said Maurice Whetstone, QVC’s Director of Enterprise Data Management.

Jordan Bonner, Actuarial Science student at the Fox School of Business won second place along with Samantha Rogers, Psychology student in the College of Liberal Arts. The winners are featured in the 2015 Temple Analytics Challenge Gallery.

“Analytics in business, and especially in healthcare, is an amazing lever toward gaining unique insight to improve business performance,” said Bill Stolte, the Executive Director of Merck’s IT Business Performance Analytics. “It is an honor to be actively engaged in the Temple Analytics Challenge, and it is remarkable to watch Temple University students rapidly self-organize and use data and visualizations in innovative ways to solve complex problems.”

Professors James Moustafellos, David Schuff, and Laurel Miller in the Management Information Systems department of the Fox School of Business organized the Challenge for IBIT.