IBIT News

Mentoring program encourages never-ending learning

IBIT’s mentoring program pairs industry professionals with Temple students, presenting the mentor and the student with an opportunity to learn from one another. The program which started in Spring 2020, has served 155 mentees to-date.

Deepya Paramata, a freshman MIS student (MIS ‘25), values the mentorship since it allows her to lead conversations with someone in the corporate world. Since her initial meeting with mentor Niel Mundell, VP at AmerisourceBergen, an IBIT partner firm, she feels encouraged, accepts the ambiguity of technology, and embraces the never-ending learning process.

Chris Cera, CEO, Arcweb Technologies, IBIT advisory board member, enjoys his mentor role, appreciating the ability to help young people solve personal challenges.

According to Kelly Liu (MIS ‘25) the mentoring program presents her with the opportunity to improve her professional development with the guidance of an industry professional. Now, Liu finds herself seizing more opportunities that allow her to discover her interests and as a means to learn more about herself and her passion. For Liu, passion translates into motivation which is the key to moving forward.

Rich Rivara, CEO of Wave6, is enthusiastic about his continued involvement in the program. His passion for giving back to students and learning about their own passions excites his imagination. He believes the mentorship program bridges education and experience. Rivara seeks to ensure that mentees share his excitement by bringing the students into meetings to provide a realistic view of a day-in-the-life of working in the corporate world.

Connections between the mentors and mentees do not end with the program. Mentors often keep in touch with past mentees and continue to provide advice and nourish their passions.

Sondra Barbour, IBIT advisory board member and chair of the mentoring program notes: I think it is important to note that not only are the students gaining knowledge from their mentor, but the mentor is gaining knowledge from the mentee. Engaging with the students has provided an avenue for me to keep in touch with the quality of the students as well as what the students are thinking and feeling about the department and curriculum. It’s been a valuable program.

The select program involved 14 participants in Spring 2023 including Jacob Andrien, Yann Awede, Tyler Bolling, Vincent Bracey Jr., Jaidyn Brown, Jackson Carpenter, Reya Islam, Ayesha Khalid, Gabriel Lins, Deepya Paramata, Neel Patel, Shivam Patel, Jamie Rubin, and Blake Bray.

Mentors include Andrew Anania, retired EVP and CIO, Cigna, Sondra Barbour, Board of Directors for AGCO and Perspecta, Chris Cera, CEO, Arcweb Technologies, Dinesh Desai, Chairman, DARR Global Holdings, Inc., Larry Dignan, Editor in Chief, Constellation Research, Bruce Fadem, Retired VP and CIO, Wyeth, Vince Ford, SVP, Curtis Institute of Music, Jeff Hamilton, SVP, Pfizer Digital, Chris Kearns, VP, Kyndryl, Niel Mundell, VP, AmerisourceBergen, Sukumar Narayanan, President, DecisivEdge, Rich Rivara, CEO, Wave6, Craig Conway, FIS, Michael Luckenbill, Technology Manager, Capgemini, Dave Woodson, Director, KPMG, and Kevin Dang, Capabilities and Insights Analyst, McKinsey & Company.

To learn more, visit: https://ibit.temple.edu/ibit-mentoring-program/

Digitally transforming the tracking of pharmaceutical products at AmerisourceBergen

Every day, healthcare solutions leader AmerisourceBergen (a Fortune 10 company) ships pharmaceutical products and treatments to customers such as pharmacies and hospitals. Each shipment leaves from one of the company’s state-of-the-art distribution centers in totes. The totes are durable and designed to be reused — but there was currently no process in place to track what happened to the empty totes after initial use.

AmerisourceBergen leaders asked Temple University’s Institute for Business and Information Technology (IBIT) to investigate the problem. A project team of Temple professors and students took up the challenge at IBIT’s endowed Digital Innovation Foundry (DIF). DIF is a hub for assessing, integrating, and prototyping digital technologies. For six months in 2022, the Temple team reviewed the literature, researched the problem, and prototyped alternate solutions considering both traditional and out-of-box ideas.

Among the millions of shipments daily, the team at Temple thought there could be an opportunity to consider an enhanced tracking methodology. The AB team, led by Pablo Mora and Dharmesh Patel, were open to ideas for improving tracking — but they asked the DIF team to keep in mind cost considerations, reliability, usability, integration with existing systems. In addition, the solution should take into account any change management and the impact it may have on processes for team members.

At DIF, students Russell Abernethy, a computer science major in the Department of Computer and Information Sciences, and Eric Wolfe, a junior in the Mechanical Engineering Department, assessed software, wireless technology, and networking. They were guided by two faculty members, Jeremy Shafer, Assistant Professor in Management Information Systems, and Yan Wang, Assistant Professor in Computer and Information Sciences.

Abernethy and Wang researched location sensitive IOT (Internet of Things) devices. Shafer and Wolfe researched platforms to interface with the IOT devices, integrate the IOT generated data, and provide a tracking dashboard. Their proposed digital solution prototype is an innovative mix of Bluetooth IOT tags, and single board tiny low-cost computers integrated into an open-source platform. The team assessed the feasibility of their prototype by turning their world into a simulated supply chain. Abernethy rode his bike around campus with the sensors. Shafer used the family van to drive them around in a cardboard box.

Their final presentation and solution earned praise for its visual and analytics capabilities from AmerisourceBergen during an October presentation at their headquarters in Conshohocken, Pennsylvania, which also included AmerisourceBergen team members Dharmesh Patel, Pablo Mora, Venkat Nadimuthu, and Tanmay Bandyopadhyay. Patel, Mora, and Nadimuthu had regularly met with the Temple team to provide a sounding board and feedback since the start of the project.

“Their research and the solution were great,” said Bandyopadhyay. “They thought through the design end to end.” He says his colleagues are keen to explore how to take the idea further. The Temple students are just as optimistic. Wolfe says AmerisourceBergen’s “positive response was very encouraging.” And Abernethy notes that collaboration was key. “Both sides were very willing to share ideas and critiques,” he says.

Through the Digital Innovation Foundry, students and faculty connect to industry to engage in real-world problem-solving, research, and experimentation. IBIT industry partners get access to Temple’s research and expertise.

Bandyopadhyay sees the benefits. “The work was relevant and useful. We are often heads down into our day-to-day operations, and so greatly benefited from a new perspective that our partnership with the Digital Innovation Foundry brought” he says, noting that the DIF team brought fresh perspective to the tote tracking question. “The professors are in touch with the latest and the greatest. The students are smart, and they can produce wonders in short time.”

Learn more about DIF at: https://ibit.temple.edu/DIF

HouseCall VR wins 2023 Digital Innovation Award

The Digital Innovation Foundry is pleased to announce that HouseCall VR is the recipient of the 2023 Digital Innovation Award in partnership with Temple University’s Innovation and Entrepreneurship Institute’s (IEI) Be Your Own Boss Bowl Competition.

HouseCall VR will receive $2,500 and mentorship to develop their idea. The Digital Innovation Award is open to all Temple University students, alumni, faculty and staff.

Entries were selected by the DIF team based on the following criteria:

Digital – does the idea apply technology in an interesting and/or novel manner?
Problem – does the idea solve a real business or societal problem?
Practical – is the idea practically doable given current technology, context, and resources?

Spatial strategy in the next generation Internet

IBIT’s Digital Innovation Foundry organized a research workshop on “Next Generation Internet: Metaverses, AR, VR, MR, and Digital Twins” on April 28, 2023, in Philadelphia to investigate use cases, design, and enterprise goals. The workshop, which included a carefully selected mix of accomplished academics and practitioners, generated a nuanced view of immersive spaces that goes beyond headsets to consider spatial strategy.

The participants discussed and debated the following key questions in the context of spatial strategy:

How can organizations envision appropriate opportunities?
How will organizations source capabilities?
How will organizations measure the impact of engagement and experience?
What are the implications for current and new business models?

As a result, the workshop generated new ideas and insights on topics such as:

Talent: How will we train entrepreneurs, designers, and programmers to think in more than 2 dimensions and imagine new realities where appropriate?

Tools: What tools are needed to create content for multidimensional worlds? How will we embed programming inside objects?

Ecosystems and models: Will we need new markets and associated platforms to source objects? What kinds of standards are needed?

Management: What are the appropriate governance mechanisms? What are the sharing and licensing mechanisms?

The workshop followed a highly participative model including short presentations followed by collaborative feedback sessions involving all the participants.

Academic participants included: Simon Cho (Temple), Philip Dames (Temple), Yogesh Dwivedi (Swansea University), Blake Ives (College of Charleston), Sirkka Jarvenpaa (University of Texas, Austin), Munir Mandviwalla (co-chair, Temple), Solon Moreira (Temple), Pavankumar Mulgund (University of Memphis), Ilias Pappas (co-chair, University of Agder), Sofia Papavlasopoulou (Norwegian University of Science & Technology), Matti Rossi (Aalto University), David Schuff (Temple), Ozgur Turetken (Ryerson University), and Yajiong (Lucky) Xue (East Carolina University).

Industry participants included: Himesh Bhise (LLR Partners), Vince Ford (Curtis Institute of Music), Pablo Mora (AmerisourceBergen), Yehonatan Tamir (Meta), Brian Tebin (Corning, Inc.), Raghushri Sankaran (Scholastic, Inc.), and David Woodson (KPMG).

Thanks to Curtis Institute of Music and Scholastic, Inc. for sponsoring the workshop.