Students Encouraged to Tap Omaha's Entrepreneurial Roots

October 2, 2009

Omaha provides a tremendously fertile starting ground for entrepreneurs, and innovation is the key to helping new businesses grow.

Tom Chapman of the Greater Omaha Chamber of Commerce serves as moderator for the panel discussion.

Those were the words of encouragement provided to students at the College of Information Science & Technology by a panel of successful entrepreneurs and business people.

"Omaha has a number of people dedicated to furthering new growth platforms," said Tom Chapman, Director of Innovation and Entrepreneurship for the Greater Omaha Chamber of Commerce. "I think this is a special place at a special time."

Chapman served as moderator for the panel, which included Joe Olsen, founder and CEO of Phenomblue; Bob Beck, Chief Information Officer for TD Ameritrade; Dusty Davidson, founder and CEO of Bright Mix, and founder of Silicon Prairie News; and Stephanie Monge, director of marketing for Graffiti Tracker.

The lunchtime discussion was part of a continuing effort to arouse interest in the College's new IT Innovation bachelor's degree. Gerald Wagner, Ph.D., distinguished research fellow at IS&T, envisioned and developed the degree. He also arranged the panel discussion and is planning similar monthly events.

Wagner said that by presenting the panel of seasoned entrepreneurs to the students, "we hope to interest them not only in the new degree but also in staying within the Omaha community after they graduate and putting their ideas to work here."

Olsen told the students and faculty who attended the discussion that while it may not be possible to teach people how to be innovative, "You can teach young people to be innovative about how they think about their business."

He encouraged the students to be open to all their ideas and to take whatever action is necessary to bring them to fruition. "Innovation leaves no room for blinders," he said.

Panel members and the audience watch a video presentation detailing the new IT Innovation degree prior to the start of the discussion.

Olsen used Phenomblue as an example of how a great and unique idea can lead to success.

Phenomblue is a multi-platform digital software creation company where interactive product engineering is produced by a team of programmers and designers. The company has created Web sites, micro sites, video games, high-speed video delivery, offline communication platforms, real-time tracking and reporting systems with a focus on building brands through immersive interactive experiences.

"We started real small as a visual effects company," he said. "At the time, nobody in the marketplace was doing 3D software. We saw a niche, built a company around that service, and started getting a ton of work."

Beck told the audience that Omaha "is deeply rooted with a tremendous amount of technology innovation."

He said few people in Omaha realize that TD Ameritrade's online investment business has more than six million clients, "97 percent of which never interact with a human being. Which proves you do not have to interact with a human being to get quality results," - a fact made possible by innovations in information technology, Beck said.

Davidson reminded the students that a poorly-performing stock market can lead people to look toward investing in start-up companies. "Small amounts of capital can really get things done," he said.

Monge, who formerly worked as a business writer for the Omaha World-Herald, said she was amazed at the number of  new IT companies and individual entrepreneurs she encountered in her job. "I had no idea there was such a vibrant, creative community here," she said.

Beck advised the audience to take the initiative and try something new.

"There is more opportunity for entrepreneurs now than any other time in history, and IT is the place," he said. "I think it's limitless."

Dr. Shi’s Research Continues to Earn Global Recognition

January 14, 2010

Although the mathematical and management concepts with which Yong Shi, Ph.D., M.B.A., deals are quite difficult for the average person to comprehend, the awards and recognition he is receiving make it clear to everyone his value as an educator and researcher.

Dr. Shi, second from left, accepts the Fudan Prize at the Graduate University of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing.

A professor of Information Systems & Quantitative Analysis at UNO's College of Information Science & Technology (IS&T), Dr. Shi serves as the Charles W. and Margre H. Durham Distinguished Professor of Information Technology.

In November, he traveled to Beijing, China to receive the Fudan Prize of Distinguished Contribution in Management. Presented at an elaborate ceremony televised there nationally, the Fudan prize "is considered China's version of the Nobel Prize," Dr. Shi says.

The award, shared by Dr. Shi and two other professors in China, was given in recognition of his lengthy research and discovery in the field of Fuzzy Groups, Multiple Criteria and Multiple Constraint-level Programming, Data Mining and Intelligent Knowledge Management.

Dr. Shi says that although the three recipients shared a prize of 1 million yuan (RMB) (about $147,000), "the most important thing to me is the recognition of my work.

In his acceptance speech delivered to an influential audience at the Graduate University of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Dr. Shi said his work, as management language, extends "the traditional ‘point' optimal solution into the ‘plane' based optimal solution structure for system design, applying concepts of multiple criteria decision-making to solve data mining problems, and establishing intelligent knowledge theory and its applications."

Dr. Shi is working to "combine Chinese traditional people-oriented behavior management with Western mathematical and logic methods to solve man-machine interdependence problems in complex management systems (and) identify high-efficient management strategy."

Dr. Shi, right, receives the Georg Cantor Award.

In June 2009, Dr. Shi received the Georg Cantor Award from the International Society on Multiple Criteria Decision Making (MCDM). The society's highest recognition, the award honors "a researcher who, over his distinguished career, has personified the spirit of independent inquiry and whose many innovative ideas and achievements are decidedly reflected in the theory, methodology and current practices of MCDM."

Dr. Shi expressed pride at receiving both awards, "as a representative of UNO faculty members as well as for my 18 years of service here."

Indeed, Dr. Shi has established himself as a premier instructor and researcher. Born in Chengdu, China, he received a bachelor's degree in mathematics from Southwest Petroleum Institute in Sichuan, China, and a Ph.D. in Management Science with a minor in Computer and Production System Design from the University of Kansas. He earned his M.B.A. from the National Center for Industrial Science and Technology Management Development, Dalian University of Science and Technology in China.

Dr. Shi came to the University of Nebraska in 1991 and joined the College of IS&T faculty in 1996. He also holds a courtesy appointment in the UNO College of Business Administration.

Since publishing his first paper in 1981 at the age of 25, he has written fifteen books and published more than 150 papers in 59 academic journals and other publications.

He is a leader in the field of management systems and strategies. "There are more than 30 people working on this, in five or six other countries, doing research following and based upon my initial work," he says.

In 2002, Dr. Shi founded the International Journal of Information Technology and Decision Making. The now bimonthly journal features each paper is judged suitable for publication by a committee of four scholars selected from among 700 reviewers worldwide.

"This journal, this is like my baby," Dr. Shi says. "As editor in chief, I have to read every paper submitted and initially judge its suitability for publication before sending to the reviewers."

He is a founding member and Deputy Director of the Research Center on Fictitious Economy and Data Science at the Chinese Academy of Sciences. The Center's prestigious Board of Policy Advisors includes Omaha businessman and philanthropist Walter Scott Jr., Dr. Hesham Ali, Dean of the College of IS&T, and many distinguished leaders in mathematics, sciences and business from around the world.

Dr. Shi and his wife, Bailing, have a son, Chris, a Millard North graduate studying astrobiology at UCLA. "He published his first paper when he was 18," Dr. Shi says, smiling. "He beat me by six years, which is good."

A popular visiting lecturer at universities including Princeton and Ohio State, Dr. Shi says he's had many opportunities to leave UNO but is happy he has turned them all down.

"Omaha is a good place to live, and UNO and the College of IS&T are young, which means they tend to encourage more research than other universities might," he says. "From supporters like Mr. Scott to my distinguished colleagues and friends, as well as the self-fulfillment of my research, there are many factors that give me the satisfaction to stay here."

In his speech in Beijing, Dr. Shi noted that "the academic ocean is endless. As a scholar, I feel I have endless enthusiasm for doing research (and) I will dedicate my life to innovative research in management."

IT for Development Class Connects Students, Small Businesses

January 18, 2010

The students of Dr. Peter Wolcott's fall Information Technology for Development class made more than friends of the South Omaha small business owners with whom they met and worked.

Members of the IT for Development class meet, from left, Mohammed Alrumaih, Abdullah Alhazaa, Luis Flores Morales, Atul Rayamajhi and Dr. Peter Wolcott. Photo by Tim Fitzgerald/University Affairs

They made a difference.

The course, part of the Information Systems and Quantitative Analysis curriculum, partners students at the College of Information Science & Technology with several microenterprises in a continuing effort to solve issues relating to the use of information technology as a tool to grow their companies. Dr. Wolcott attended a workshop sponsored by UNO's Service Learning Academy in January 2006 that sparked the idea for the course. He teaches the course with Dr. Sajda Qureshi, who also is involved in the IT for Development research.

"It provides an opportunity for hands-on experience solving real-world technology issues," Dr. Wolcott says. "It also offers the students an opportunity to develop and experience cross-cultural relationships with the business owners. They find out what it's like to overcome the barriers presented by language or knowledge, and in the end, they learn something about themselves, as well."

That was true for Luis Flores Morales. He and fellow student Abdullah Alhazaa worked with the owner of Panaderia Nieto's, a South Omaha bakery.

"We were able to teach him about using a computer to help establish and build his business, but we learned some lessons, too," Morales says. "While he was learning how to forward and reply to emails, we were teaching him how to type more efficiently. At the same time, we were learning about entrepreneurship, seeing the challenges small businesses face and how they overcome them."

He says the experience was mutually rewarding.

"He saw the advantage of technology for business development and we improved our problem-solving skills," Morales says. "Before this, we only had the IT perspective. Now we have a greater perspective."

In their project, Alhazaa and Morales helped the bakery owner evaluate and purchase a computer, create recovery disks for backup, built a website and made recommendations for continued computer training and to convert the computer's software to Spanish-language editions.

They also assisted another South Omaha business, Andean Boutique, in formulating a technology plan, creating backup for security and selling the firm's handcrafted imports from Peru online.

"It was difficult, my not speaking Spanish," says Alhazaa, "which made it even more important to build a trust between us, an understanding that we were there to help their business and the community."

Students Mohammed Alrumaih and Atul Rayamajhi worked with the owner of a longtime South Omaha restaurant, El Alamo, to address technology issues including tracking sales and inventory, improving the order process between the dining room and the kitchen, and launching a website to attract new business and expand the restaurant's catering services.

Alrumaih says he learned the role of "give and take" when providing consulting services to a business. "We both had to sacrifice time to meet with each other," he says, "but only then was I able to see his true needs and provide appropriate solutions."

It was time well spent, Alrumaih says. "In the end, it was nice seeing how excited he was and happy with the project."

The class will be offered again in the fall, Dr. Wolcott says. For more information, visit his web page, www.isqa.unomaha.edu/wolcott/pwhome.htm.

Spring Open House

January 11, 2010

UNO Receives Grant for Student/Faculty Exchange with EU partners

September 11, 2009

Omaha - The University of Nebraska at Omaha's (UNO) College of Information Science & Technology (IS&T) is the recipient of a $194,000 ATLANTIS Mobility Grant from the U.S. Department of Education's Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education (FIPSE).

The four-year, highly competitive international grant will facilitate student and faculty exchanges between three partners of the University of Nebraska at Omaha -- UW-Eau Claire, Austria's Management Center Innsbruck (MCI) and Germany's Braunschweig University of Technology (TUBS). The two European Union (EU) partners have both been sibling universities of UNO for many years. As a part of this grant, the EU partners will receive a similar amount in Euros from the FIPSE counterpart in the EU. The exchange program will emphasize the vital role of information and communication technology in the world today, focusing on entrepreneurship, global collaboration and global IT project management and research. UNO and UWEC will share the responsibility of recruiting students from both campuses for the EU trips and will also receive the EU students on their campuses. The students will get to choose where they would like to go.

Deepak Khazanchi, professor and associate dean for Academic Affairs in the College of Information Science & Technology, who is the UNO principal investigator on this grant, said that he is delighted that UNO students will be able to benefit from another extraordinary opportunity to study abroad.

"The neat part of the grant is that students from the two American campuses studying in Austria and Germany will not only pay only local tuition, they will receive a $5,000 stipend for living expenses, which means that approximately $120,000 of the $194,000 will go directly to students," Khazanchi said. Over the four years of the grant, a total of 48 US and EU students and 18 faculty are expected to participate in the program. A total of 12 students will study abroad per year (six from the EU and six from the US schools - UWEC/UNO).

Additionally, the grant provides some faculty the opportunity to visit students studying abroad as well as giving them an opportunity to run lectures and workshops at the partner schools. The faculty visits will be shorter, generally one week, and are meant to encourage international collaboration among faculty and institutions.

"This innovative program will provide an excellent opportunity to expand and enhance the international experiences for our students and faculty and extend our ongoing relationships with University of Wisconsin -- Eau Claire and the participating EU institutions (Technical University of Braunschweig and Management Center Innsbruck)," said UNO Chancellor John Christensen.

Only 25 schools across the nation received ATLANTIS grants this year, including the State University of New York, Michigan Technological University, UW-Madison, Purdue University, DePaul University, Temple University, and the University of California-Irvine.

For more information, call (402) 554-3502.

Nebraska INBRE Scholars Program

January 27, 2010

The College of IS&T invites students interested in a career in biomedicine to apply for the Nebraska INBRE Scholars Program. The INBRE Scholars program provides undergraduate students interested in a career in biomedicine the opportunity to work on a paid research project. The program lasts for two years starting (usually, although other qualified applicants are encouraged to apply) in the summer of the sophomore year. The program pays a stipend during the academic year and a stipend plus a housing allowance during the summer. More information about Nebraska INBRE can be found here (http://brin.unmc.edu). For information, please contact Krystal Peteler (kpeteler@unomaha.edu).

Click here to apply.