IBIT

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