IBIT News

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.

IBIT Scholarships 2023

The Institute for Business and Information Technology announces the 2023 scholarship recipients.

IBIT AmerisourceBergen Scholarship
Aashmun Doshi

IBIT Kyndryl Scholarship
Abdalaziz Sawwan

IBIT Kyndryl Scholarship
Zhengkun Ye

IBIT Meta Scholarship
Ethan Chheda

IBIT Pfizer Scholarship
David Levit

IBIT Scholastic Scholarship
Rachel Koffel

Stewart Family Endowed Scholarship

DIF Scholarship
Mitchel Zilbershteyn

Digital Innovation Foundry Scholarship

DIF Scholarship
Russell Abernethy

Tech leaders Kurshan, Meyers, and Sridharan honored at 21st Annual IT Awards

Temple University’s Institute for Business and Information Technology (IBIT) honored three exceptional technology leaders at its 21st Annual Information Technology Awards.

This premier exclusive event, held Thursday, May 4, 2023, in Philadelphia, brought together an elite group of technology leaders, innovators and disruptors for an engaging evening of discussion about the rapidly changing digital landscape and how we prepare for the road ahead.

The evening spotlighted IBIT’s three honorees for 2023 who shared their expertise and vision with the attendees through keynote presentations.

Dr. Barbara “Bobbi” Kurshan, Board Member of American Public Education, Inc., received the 2023 Information Technology Innovator Award. Dr. Kurshan, co-author of “InnovateHERs – Why Purpose-Driven Entrepreneurial Women Rise to the Top,” has honed her vision of “what can be” using technology while supporting education companies and developing innovative products. She currently serves as a Senior Innovation Advisor at the Graduate School of Education at the University of Pennsylvania where she builds and advises education innovation ecosystems and co-directs the global certificate in Innovation and Entrepreneurship.

Bobbi’s keynote focused on “Innovation and Entrepreneurship, Synergistic But Not Synonymous.”

Gregory S. Meyers, Chief Technology and Digital Officer at Bristol Myers Squibb, received the 2023 Information Technology Leader Award. As a key leader at one of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies, Meyers is responsible for the company’s digital transformation, the IT function and cybersecurity. He leads the company’s digital health initiative which performs cutting edge R&D using Artificial Intelligence to transform the way patients who suffer from serious diseases are diagnosed, treated and monitored.

Greg’s keynote focused on “You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet, Tech in the Next 20 Years.”

Karthik K. Sridharan, Executive Vice President and Chief Information Officer, OceanFirst Bank N.A. received the 2023 Information Technology Award for Distinguished Alumni. Prior to his role at OceanFirst Bank, Karthik was the Chief Technology Officer at Citigroup and held leadership roles in global technology management with JP Morgan Chase and Bank of America Merrill Lynch. He was also Industry Manager at Microsoft before entering the financial services industry. Karthik is a graduate of Temple University’s Fox School of Business.

Karthik’s keynote focused on “Let’s Apply Digital Disruption to Impact Our Communities.”

“This year’s group of honorees are truly exceptional in their contributions to the IT community, and we are proud to recognize them as digital transformation leaders,” says Dr. Munir Mandviwalla, IBIT’s Executive Director and Professor of MIS at Temple University’s Fox School of Business.

For more information about the IT awards and to learn more about the honorees, please visit https://ibit.temple.edu/itawards/. To see the event pictures, click here.

Contact ibit at ibit@temple.edu.

Investigating the entrepreneurial potential of immersive applications

Ethan Berg wants to help people build new worlds — professional-quality immersive, 3D spaces and experiences — without any coding skills. Berg (FOX ’20) is the CEO and co-founder of the startup Agora World Inc which offers a drag and drop no-code design space to create spaces for the metaverse.

Berg and Agora won Temple’s Idea Competition in 2021 as well as the Digital Innovation Award from the Digital Innovation Foundry (DIF), which included access to talent and resources. Today, Agora’s no-code platform accommodates users of all experience levels, from professional designers to those with minimal design background, making it an accessible solution for creating professional-quality 3D content and immersive social experiences,” Berg says. “What used to take a team, investment, and months to create now can be created quickly with no code.” Berg quickly saw the value of DIF talent and resources, to “study this space and get a better understanding of where we’re headed and where we can go.”

Over six months in 2022, the DIF team of Druvakumar Valugubelly (FOX MIS ’22) and Mitchel Zilbershteyn (FOX MIS ’24) supervised by Solon Moreira, Assistant Professor of Strategy and Entrepreneurship applied Agora’s platform to explore commercial metaverse applications.

Moreira’s DIF team applied design science research to prototype solutions for three different business problems. The goal was to investigate applications with entrepreneurial potential that are technically and practically feasible for companies. And identify the requirements and resources that companies will need to enact an entrepreneurial metaverse strategy.

The team built three prototype spaces a mall, a neighborhood, and an outdoor concert venue. Visitors to these spaces might shop, go house hunting, or attend a music festival. Moreira explains that a real estate agent could use the neighborhood space to showcase homes in a planned development. Before the foundation of a new house is even poured, a potential buyer could look at the view from “their” balcony. “It was exciting for the Temple team to be part of something that will dramatically change and shape the world of business,” Moreira says.

The team presented Berg with valuable feedback, and he was impressed by the “amazing” spaces they built. Valugubelly says he enjoyed the chance to work with LiDAR 3D scanning for the Agora project. “This project helped me better understand how software iteration and testing work,” he adds. Zilbershteyn, says that DIF provides “a valuable connection to industry experts, and the opportunity to engage with professors on research.” “As we continue to evolve, collaborating with the DIF team has provided valuable insights, helping us refine our platform and better serve the diverse needs of our users,” Berg says.

The DIF project also generated new research. Moreira worked with Executive Director and Professor Munir Mandviwalla on a manuscript – “Exploring Entrepreneurship in the Metaverse: Design Requirements and Resources” – which has been accepted at the 18th International Conference on Design Science Research in Information Systems and Technology (DESRIST 2023). Going forward, DIF is collaborating with Agora on additional research and is hosting an integrated industry-research workshop on the business application of metaverses, AR, VR, MR, and digital twins.

The mission of DIF, part of the Institute for Business and Information Technology (IBIT), is to generate innovation by assessing, integrating, and prototyping digital technologies in collaboration with industry, startups, faculty, and students. See: https://ibit.temple.edu/DIF

Learn more about Agora at: https://agoravr.world/

Digitally transforming peer-to-peer car buying and selling

Yousif Memon’s (CST ’17) passion for cars has transformed into an app that is transforming peer-to-peer purchasing of automobiles.

Kuaay began in 2020 when Memon returned to Temple University for Techstars’ “Startup Weekend.” He, along with Keenan Hawekotte, won the competition for their pitch which evolved into Kuaay – a peer-to-peer car buying platform.

Since then, according to Memom we’ve added payment transfer, DMV docs for all 50 states, VIN check, vehicle valuation tools, and shipping to the app. That means the next time I go out to buy a car, my phone is all I need. No more paper and pens, no waiting for the bank to open, and no begging friends and family for rides. I can get the car home and register right on my phone.

IBIT’s Digital Innovation Foundry (DIF) connected with Kuaay through their entry into Temple’s Idea Competition. DIF’s initial goal was to assist Kuaay on implementation and platform architecture. DIF brought in Stephen Hullender, now a recent Temple Computer Science graduate (CST’22), to lead the implementation of a key enabler for Kuaay – notary capabilities.

Now, Hullender has expanded his role into design and navigation and developing algorithms to ease transactions between two parties, especially across state lines. Learning how a mobile app works and contributing to the app’s development improved my confidence. I was able to obtain a wide breadth of knowledge in software development and architecting a solution.

Memon notes we came out of the gate solving niche problems for real people and are on the way to solve bigger problems for even more people by digitizing the entire purchase, shipping, and registration cycle associated with peer-to-peer car buying. Memon added that DIF support and platform architecture guidance has been invaluable in helping us move forward.

Manoj Chacko, Associate Director, IBIT, who manages the DIF – Kuaay relationship including providing advice on platform architecture, notes: Kuaay has the potential to completely digitize and simplify the way someone sells or purchases a used car across state lines.

Going forward, DIF is expanding its relationship with Kuaay into business mentoring and researching the used car buying market.

The mission of DIF which is part of the Institute for Business and Information Technology (IBIT) is to generate innovation by assessing, integrating, and prototyping digital technologies in collaboration with industry, startups, faculty and students. See: https://ibit.temple.edu/DIF

Learn more about Kuaay at: https://www.kuaay.com/