IBIT News

George Llado and Matt Pammer join the Fox IT advisory board

George Llado, Vice President, Merck & Co., Inc. and Matt Pammer, Vice President, AstraZeneca join the Fox IT advisory board.

George Llado is Vice President, MMD IT with Merck & Co., Inc. In this role, he provides leadership for the planning and development of information technology solutions for the Merck Manufacturing Division. Most recently, George served as Vice President, Corporate IT, focusing on the integration and end-state vision for Merck’s critical Financial, Human Resource, Legal, Communications and Global Services platforms. Prior to that, George represented Global Services as Integration Lead for the IT/Shared Business Services Team. In this capacity, George was responsible for driving the overall success of the functional merger management program for Merck and Schering-Plough in throughout 2009.

In previous roles, George served as Executive Director, GHH IT delivering integrated Sales Force Automation platforms for Merck’s Commercial Division. As Executive Director for Worldwide Infrastructure Operations, George migrated all of Merck’s core computing assets to the Company’s new global data center in Charlotte, NC. As Director, Automation and IT – Americas, George led the efforts to establish the next generation automation platform for Merck’s Manufacturing Division. His experience while on assignment in MMD Puerto Rico Operations uniquely positioned him for the role.

George has more than 26 years of leadership and experience in the IT field. He’s passionate about using technology and innovation to drive business outcomes. Also a firm believer in developing people, George supports his staffs’ career growth by challenging, empowering, and motivating employees to seek opportunities which expand their IT experience as well as their understanding of the business. Having spent several years in Merck’s business areas himself, George values the development of a broad range of experiences. His emphasis on understanding and partnering with the business has been instrumental in successfully meeting the Company’s strategic initiatives during his 23 years at Merck. George joined Merck in 1989 after receiving a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science from New York Institute of Technology. Prior to Merck, George worked for Citibank, N.A. in New York City.

Matt Pammer is Vice President, Information Systems, AstraZeneca, and is responsible for creating and executing the IS vision, strategy, and operating plan in support of the business strategy for North America and Latin American. His priorities include: Investing in People, Delivering Business Value, and Fixing Basic Services. Matt started his career at Accenture in the Advanced Systems Group where he consulted across several industries including banking, insurance, healthcare, and pharmaceuticals.

Since joining AstraZeneca Pharmaceuticals in 1993, Matt has been responsible for all aspects of Marketing and Sales IS capabilities including sales force automation, sales training, data warehousing, reporting and analytics, master data management, call center, e-marketing, business planning, forecasting, and contracts management. Matt introduced several significant capabilities to AstraZeneca including Consumer Database Marketing, Interactive Detailing, Closed Loop Promotion, and Customer Relationship Management. He also established an Architecture capability at AstraZeneca and led the team for two years.

Matt has a Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science from Albright College, and an MBA with a concentration in eBusiness from Temple University.

Temple “Big Data” Symposium – May 21, 2012, 12-6pm, Shusterman Hall

On Monday May 21, 2012, the Institute for Business & Information Technology (IBIT) hosted a University-wide symposium on “Big Data” in cooperation with the Office of Research. The purpose of this symposium was to bring together Temple researchers across disciplines to explore inter-disciplinary synergies and collaborations on big data research. Big data refer to extremely large datasets that do not conform to traditional principles of data collection, storage, management, sharing, processing, and statistical analysis, and they impose challenges on data storing, computer processing, existing statistical data analysis approaches, and existing ways to interpret, visualize, and derive knowledge from huge quantities of data. Over 70 faculty and PhD students attended the symposium that included several presentations and panel discussions from faculty in statistics, computer science, MIS, marketing, and the school of medicine.

The purpose of this internal Temple symposium is to identify capabilities on how to deal with big data across campus, identify synergies across researchers, Centers, departments, and schools, and hopefully spawn inter-disciplinary collaborative research on big data that will pursue external funding. Notably, the U.S. government has recently unveiled a $200M effort titled “Big Data Research and Development Initiative” that aims to support new R&D initiatives associated with big data. Moreover, the symposium will explore inter-disciplinary collaborations for potentially developing graduate programs in data analytics.

12:00pm	Lunch
12:45pm	Opening Remarks
1:00pm	Session 1: Practical Applications and Best Practices with Big Data Youngjin Yoo, Robert Kulathinal, Sunil Wattal: “Designing 21st Century Organizations” Munir Mandviwalla, David Schuff, Sunil Wattal: “The Campaign Media Ecosystem” Yili Hong, Paul A. Pavlou: “Big Data in Online Markets for Outsourcing of IT Services”
2:00pm	Session 2: Statistical Solutions for Big Data Sanat Sarkar and Nicolle Clements: “High-dimensional Multiple Testing” Neeraj Bharadwaj and Yuexiao Dong: “In Search of What Counts in Big Datasets”
2:45pm	Coffee Break
3:15pm	Session 3: Technical Solutions for Big Data Jie Wu and Chiu C. Tan: “CIS Big Data Research” Alexander Yates: “Data Mining and Information Retrieval with Web Data”
4:00pm	Panel: “Emerging Opportunities and Challenges of Big Data” Pallavi Chitturi (Center of Statistical Analysis, Statistics Department) Jennifer Gordon (Department of Neuroscience, School of Medicine) Keith Latham and Carmen Sapienza (Fels Institute for Cancer Research)
5:00pm	Networking Reception

For more information, contact: Paul A. Pavlou

12th annual IT Awards honor Gardner of NASA, Prasad of Ford and Snyder of KPMG

Temple University’s Fox School of Business is honoring three top technology leaders at its 12th annual Fox Information Technology Awards on Tuesday, April 24. The event is organized by the nationally ranked Department of Management Information Systems (MIS) and the Institute for Business and Information Technology (IBIT).

AIS and IBIT to partner on creating an annual IT job index

The Association for Information Systems (AIS) is collaborating with the Institute for Business and Information Technology (IBIT) at Temple University’s Fox School of Business on an annual job index for the field of information systems. This report, which will include pay scales and career prospect information, is intended to become the first reliable indicator of the growth of the discipline and profession.

“This partnership and initiative is an important part of the overall IS branding campaign being undertaken for the association,” said AIS President Dov Te’eni. “Those of us who have been working in the field are privy to its exciting career prospects, and this index will be a useful measurement of the bright future for those entering the field as students, academics or professionals. We are excited to work with Temple University on this endeavor, whose expertise in researching and developing this report will be integral to its success.”

“The IS job market – enrollment, placement, available jobs – is today very hard to assess. We plan to address this problem by producing a systematic annual assessment of the IS labor market,” said Munir Mandviwalla, IBIT executive director and chair of Fox’s Department of Management Information Systems (MIS). Mandviwalla is part of the project team with Fox professors Paul Pavlou and Crystal Harold. “We are pleased to partner with AIS and offer our services to the IS community.”

AIS is a professional organization whose purpose is to serve as the premier global organization for academics, students and professionals specializing in information systems.

inciteXchange 2012 and FOX DESIGNweek 2012

The Center for Design and Innovation hosted inciteXchange 2012: Fabric: seams, threads and bits on February 17, 2012 and Fox DESIGNweek 2012: North Broadband on February 13-16, 2012. DESIGNWeek is an annual student competition to transform ideas into actions. The Challenge brings together students from across the University to collaborate across disciplinary lines to create innovative solutions to address some of today’s most challenging urban issues.

inciteXchange 2012 brings together a roster of international leaders in the fields of design, innovation, management and technology to exchange ideas about their work, their thoughts and observations. A series of rapid-fire short individual presentations, coordinated dialogues and moderated panel discussions combine to encourage participants to talk, share and spontaneously collaborate.