ISOM Newsletter

December 9, 2017

Autumn 2017 e-Newsletter

 

DEPARTMENT & FACULTY NEWS | PUBLICATIONS | CONFERENCES | DOCTORAL PROGRAM | MSIS PROGRAM | MSCM PROGRAM | SEMINAR SERIES | VISITING GUESTS


DEPARTMENT & FACULTY NEWS

A MESSAGE FROM THE CHAIR: Kamran Moinzadeh
Another year has gone by and as we begin 2018, I’d like to provide you with a summary of activities and accomplishments that we have achieved together at ISOM in 2017. First, we successfully recruited two excellent colleagues in Information Systems, Yingfei Wang and Stephanie Lee, who both joined us in Autumn quarter after completing their degrees at Princeton and Stanford. Second, our MS programs have flourished and contributed to our mission. The Master of Supply Chain Management (MSCM) Program was launched Summer 2016 and the first cohort completed the program in June of 2017. The second cohort of 42 students, who joined us out of a pool of 144 applicants, started the program in Summer 2017. The MS in Information Systems (MSIS) Program graduated its seventh cohort. The current cohort consists of 47  students, who were admitted from a pool of 309! Due to a strong applicant pool in MSIS, the program is planning to expand next year. Last year, both the MSCM and MSIS programs went through a change of directorship. The new directors are Yong-pin Zhou (MSCM) and Ming Fan (MSIS). I wish them the best. I would also like to thank Deb Dey (MSIS) and Apurva Jain (MSCM), the founding directors of MSIS and MSCM, respectively, who did a wonderful job as directors. We all know that the success of these programs today is due to their hard work. Finally, our undergraduate concentrations in IS and OM are very popular among students, with enrollments of over 340 and 102, respectively.

During 2017, ISOM faculty won many major teaching awards, including the prestigious Bowen Award, Dean’s Graduate Teaching Award, Pacific Coast Banking School Dean’s Leadership Award, Dean’s Research Award, MSIS Outstanding Teaching Award, MSCM Excellence in Teaching Award, GEMBA Excellence in Teaching, MBA Professor of the Quarter, Undergraduate Teaching Professor of the Quarter, and Undergraduate Faculty of the Year. On the research front, we had an excellent year with a total of 18 (A) publications! Our faculty are now on the editorial boards of ISR, OR, MS, JMIS and POM, all major (A) journals in the IS and OM areas. Lastly, our doctoral students were very successful in the job market and were offered positions at top schools, including  Michigan, Purdue, Indiana and Lehigh University.

During Summer 2017, we hosted two workshops: the ISOM/Amazon workshop and the SMART workshop. Both workshops were well attended and I believe this is something that we need to do regularly. Furthermore, our doctoral students interned at Amazon.

There are many more items to report, but I think these will give all of us a good idea about our impact at Foster and in our professional communities.

FACULTY NEWS
MARTHA PILCHER (pictured above, centered) retired from Foster and the University of Washington.  She joined UW in 1987 and was promoted to Senior Lecturer in 1994 in the Information Systems & Operations Management Department.  Martha spent 30 years teaching a wide variety of classes in Operations Management, Quantitative Methods, and Statistics to undergraduates, graduates, and executives.  Martha held an adjunct lecturer position in the Department of Health Services from 1989 as well as the Graduate School of Business at the University of Colorado from 1992.  Martha’s dedication to students and warm southern charm will be missed!
USTC – UW INSTITUTE FOR GLOBAL BUSINESS AND FINANCIAL INNOVATION
Three ISOM professors traveled to USTC during Autumn Quarter to present a seminar.  The USTC-UW Institute for Global Business and Finance Innovation began the recruiting process for the 2018-2019 Academic Year.  The institute also hosted eight visiting scholars throughout Autumn Quarter.
MING FAN  presented at USTC on November 3, 2017.  His seminar was entitled “Launch on a High Note:  How Prefunding Affects Crowdfunding Outcomes.”
HAMED MAMANI presented at USTC on December 24, 2017.  His seminar was entitled “An Analysis of Price vs. Revenue Protection: Government Subsidies in the Agriculture Industry.”
YONG TAN presented at USTC on December 11, 2017.  His seminar was entitled “Optimizing Two-Sided Promotion for Transportation Network Companies: A Structural Model with Conditional Bayesian Learning.”
YONG TAN’s paper “Do I Follow My Friends or the Crowd?  Information Cascades in Online Movie Ratings,” was awarded the 2017 Management Science Best Paper Award in Information Systems.  The paper was co-authored by Y. Lee and K. Hosanagar.
NEW FACULTY 
STEPHANIE LEE has joined the Department as an Information Systems Assistant Professor.  She earned her doctoral degree in Economics from Stanford University.  Her areas of interests include: economics of information technology and digitization, economics of innovation, industrial organization, and applied microeconomics.
YINGFEI WANG has joined the Department as an Information Systems Assistant Professor.  She earned her doctoral degree in Computer Science from Princeton University.  Her areas of interests include:  machine learning, recommendation systems, Bayesian optimization, dynamic pricing, e-commerce, online auction, deep learning, natural language processing, and healthcare analytics.

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PUBLICATIONS

FACULTY PUBLICATIONS
MASHA SHUNKO, T. Yunes, G. Fenu, A. Scheller-Wolf, V. Tardif, S. Tayur.  (January 2018). Product Portfolio Restructuring: Methodology and Application at Caterpillar.  Production and Operations Management, Volume 27(1), 100-120.
YONG TAN, D. Liu, and V.S. Mookerjee. (January 2018).  When Ignorance Can Be Bliss: Organizational Structure and Coordination in Electronic Retailing. Information Systems Research. Retrieved from: https://doi.org/10.1287/isre.2017.0725. 
YONG TAN, P. De, L. Hao, and Y-M. Li.  (August 2017). Quality of Service Based Pricing Schemes for Content Sharing in Peer-to-Peer Networks. Production and Operations Management, Volume 26(8), 1427-1443.
MICHAEL WAGNER. (December 2017).  Robust Inventory Management: An Optimal Control Approach. Operations Research.  Retrieved from:  
https://doi.org/10.1287/opre.2017.1669  
YINGFEI WANG, H. Ouyang, H. Deng, and Y. Chang.  (November 2017).  Learning Online Trends for Interactive Query Auto-Completion.” IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering, Volume 29(11), 2442-2454.
FORTHCOMING PUBLICATIONS
DEB DEY, A. Kim, and A. Lahiri.  “Combating Online Piracy: The ‘Longer Arm’ of Enforcement.”  Management Science.
DEB DEY and A. Lahiri.  “Versioning and Information Dissemination: A New Perspective.”  Information Systems Research.
KAMRAN MOINZADEH and SHI CHEN.  “Inventory Control and Delivery Quotation for Supply Chains with Prefabrication and Modularization.”  Operations Research.

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CONFERENCES | INVITED TALKS

INFORMS 2017
&
Conference on Information Systems and Technology (CIST)
Houston, TX  |  October 22 – 25, 2017
SHI
CHEN
His paper entitled “Transparency as a Supplier Social and Environmental Responsibility Screening Mechanism” co-authored by B. Kalkanci and E. Plambeck was presented at the conference.
ELINA
HWANG
Her paper entitled “Fostering Innovation: Exploration is not Everybody’s Cup of Tea,” was presented by co-author and PhD student Vipul Aggarwal.  Prof. Hwang also served as a member of the CIST 2017 Program Committee.
FOAD
IRAVANI
Presented his paper entitled “Price vs. Revenue Protection:  An Analysis of Government Subsidies in the Agriculture Industry,” co-authored by Hamed Mamani and S. Alizamir.  He also chaired both the Models for the Management of Agriculture Industry and Models in Sustainable Operations Management sessions.
TED KLASTORIN Presented two of his papers:

  • “Optimal Contracts in Decentralized Projects,” co-authored by Michael Wagner.
  • “Teaching Project Management’s Four Letter Word: Risk,” co-authored by G. Mitchell.
HAMED MAMANI Served as a chair for the Emerging Trends in Healthcare Policy session.
His paper entitled, “Reference Pricing for Healthcare Services,” co-authored by Shima Nassiri (PhD alum) and E. Adida was presented at the conference.
MASHA SHUNKO Three papers that Prof. Shunko co-authored were presented:

  • “A Quality Value Chain Network: Linking Supply Chain Quality to Customer Lifetime Value,” co-authored by Q. Yu, and S. Mankad.
  • “New Perspective on Performance Measurement in Multi-server Queuing Systems,” co-authored by H. Do and A. Scheller-Wolf.
  • “Listen to the Crowd: Network Effects and Online Reviews in Restaurant Sales Forecasting,” co-authored by S. Mankad and Q. Yu.
YINGFEI
WANG
Presented her paper entitled “Ensemble Bayesian Optimization for Partially Controllable Sequential Information Processes,” co-authored by W. Powell.  She also chaired the Machine Learning in Healthcare session.
FISHER
WU
Prof. Wu served as a member on the CIST 2017 Program Committee.
YONG-PIN ZHOU His paper entitled “How Does Servers’ Workload Impact Customer Lifetime Value?  An Empirical Study,” co-authored by Q. Yu and M. Kamalahmadi was presented at the conference.
VIPUL AGGARWAL (PhD) Presented his paper entitled “Fostering Innovation: Exploration is not Everybody’s Cup of Tea,” co-authored by Elina Hwang.
MOHAMMAD ARBABIAN (PhD) Presented his paper entitled “The Impact of 3D Printing on Manufacturer Retailer Relations,” co-authored by Michael Wagner.
SHAHRYAR DOOSTI (PhD) Presented two of his papers:

  • “How Rewarding the Reward?  Demand Estimation of Reward-Based Crowdfunding Platforms,” co-authored by Yong Tan, and S. Xiao.
  • “Do Mobile Applications Bring a Longer Tail?  An Empirical Study of Sale Concentration in Online Channels,” co-authored by Y. Wang.
SORAYA ‘Nadia’ FATEHI (PhD) Presented two of her papers:

  • “Crowdfunding via Revenue-sharing Contracts,” co-authored by Michael Wagner.
  • “A Robust Optimization Approach for Crowdsourcing Last-mile Deliveries,” co-authored by Michael Wagner.
ARAVINDA GARIMELLA (PhD) Presented her paper entitled “When do Givers Take and Takers Give? Reciprocity Styles and Student Interaction on MOOC’s.”
ZIXUAN
MENG (PhD)
Presented two of her papers at the conference:

  • “Real Currency or Virtual Currency: Selling Virtual Items in Digital Games,” co-authored by Yong Tan and L. Hao (PhD alum).
  • “Reward on User Generated Content.”
EMISA
NATEGH (PhD)
Presented her paper entitled “Dynamic Pricing and Demand Forecasting for Revenue Maximization in the Presence of Gray Market,” co-authored by Hamed Mamani and Foad Iravani.
KYUNGMIN ‘Jamie’
PARK (PhD)
Presented her paper entitled “Online Dating Matching Dynamics: Differing Impact of Information Disclosure by Beauty,” co-authored by Elina Hwang, S-H Cho, and D. Lee.
KYUNGSUN ‘Melissa’ RHEE (PhD) Presented her paper entitled “Uber Introduction and Spillover Effects on Transportation System: Empirical Study,” co-authored by Yong Tan, Jinyang Zheng (PhD alum) and Y. Wang.

Ms. Rhee’s other paper “Technology Restriction and Demand Shifts in Transportation Dynamics: An Empirical Study,” co-authored by Yong Tan,  Jinyang Zheng (PhD alum), and Y. Wang was nominated for the CIST 2017 Best Student Paper!

TONGXIN  ZHOU (PhD) Presented two papers during the conference:

  • “Competition in Mobile Operating Systems: The Strategy of Facebook,” co-authored by Xue ‘Jane’ Tan (PhD alum).
  • “Reward Scheme Design Decision under the Multinomial Logit Model in Online Reward-Based Crowdfunding Market,” co-authored by S. Xiao.
ZHIJIN ‘Jin’
ZHOU (PhD)
Presented her paper entitled “Assessing the Impact of Disclosure Policy on Investment Pattern: Evidence from a Natural Experiment in Supply Chain Finance Market.”
Professors Ming Fan, Mark Hillier, Stephanie Lee, Yong Tan and PhD students Zibo Liu and Jiaying Deng were also in attendance.
International Conference on Information Systems (ICIS)
Workshop on Information Systems and Economics (WISE)
Seoul, Korea  |  December 10 – 15, 2017
ELINA
HWANG
Presented her paper entitled “Rebalancing Geographic Healthcare Disparity Through Telemedicine Consultations,” co-authored by Yong Tan, X. Guo, and Y. Dang.

Prof. Hwang also served as a discussant for the Online Review session during WISE.

STEPHANIE
LEE
Served as a discussant for both the E-Commerce and O2O & Omni-Channel sessions during WISE.
YONG
TAN
Five of Prof. Tan’s papers were presented throughout the ICIS and WISE.

  • “Management Responses to Online Reviews: Helpful or Detrimental?” Co-authored by Y.J. Lee, K. Xie, and A. Besharat.
  • “Learning from Project Failure in Kickstarter,” co-authored by Xue ‘Jane’ Tan (PhD alum), Lin Hao (PhD alum) and Y. Lu.
  • “Do Mobile Applications Bring Longer Tail? An Empirical Study of Sales Concentration in Online Channels,” co-authored by PhD student Shahryar Doosti, and Y. Wang.
  • “Rebalancing Geographic Healthcare Disparity Through Telemedicine Consultations,” co-authored by Elina Hwang, X. Guo, and Y. Dang.
  • “From Automobile to Autonomous: Does Self-Driving Improve Traffic Safety?” co-authored by Jinyang Zheng (PhD Alum) and Y. Zhang.
ARAVINDA GARIMELLA (PhD) Presented her paper entitled “Launch on a High Note: How Prefunding Strategies Affect Crowdfunding Outcomes,” co-authored by Ming Fan and S. Kotha.
BEHNAZ GHAHESTANI BOJD (PhD) Presented her paper entitled “An Empirical Study on the Effects of Gamification in Weight-Loss Online Communities.”
KYUNG SUN ‘Melissa’ RHEE (PhD) Presented her paper entitled “Social Hiring: The Right LinkedIn Connection that Helps You Land a Job,” co-authored by Elina Hwang.
Professors Ming Fan, Fisher Wu and PhD student Kyung Min ‘Jamie’ Park were also in attendance.
CONFERENCE PRESENTATIONS
DEB DEY Attended the Conference on Digital Economy (CODE) 2017 in Jaipur, India on December 20 – 23, 2017.  He presented his paper entitled “Versioning: A Tool for Information Dissemination,” co-authored by A. Lahiri.
ELINA
HWANG
Attended the Conference on Health IT and Analytics (CHITA) in Washington D.C. on November 3 – 4, 2017.  She presented her paper entitled “Rebalancing Geographic Healthcare Disparity through Telemedicine Consultations.”  Co-authored by Yong Tan, X. Guo, and Y. Dang.  Her presentation paper was chosen as the Best Conference Paper Runner-Up.
TED KLASTORIN Was an invited speaker at the Product Innovation and Technology Management (PITM) Conference held at the University of Houston on October 21, 2017.  His presentation was entitled “A New Paradigm for Teaching Project Management: Emphasizing a Four Letter Word.”
ARAVINDA GARIMELLA (PhD) Presented her paper entitled “Launch on a High Note: How Prefunding Affects Crowdfunding Outcomes,” co-authored by W. You, at the 2017 Conference on Digital Economy (CODE) in December.
INVITED TALKS
FOAD IRAVANI Prof. Iravani was invited to give two seminars during the Autumn Quarter.  He presented his paper entitled “An Analysis of Price vs. Revenue Protection: Government Subsidies in the Agriculture Industry.”

  • USC, Marshall School of Business on October 13, 2017.
  • Georgetown University, McDonough School of Business on October 27, 2017.
YONG
TAN
Prof. Tan was invited to give two seminars during the Autumn Quarter:

  • USC, Marshall School of Business on November 16, 2017.  His seminar title was “Conform or Be Cast Out: Quantifying the Effect of Platform Endorsements and Consumer-generated Reputation on Demand in the Online Service Marketplace.”
  • UCI, Paul Merage School of Business on November 17, 2017.  His seminar title was “Optimizing Two-Sided Promotion for Transportation Network Companies: A Structural Model with Conditional Bayesian Learning.”
RESEARCH
MING
FAN
Attended research meetings in Hangzhou and Beijing, China in December to work on new projects.
FOAD IRAVANI Visited co-author at Yale to work on a new research project.
HAMED MAMANI Visited co-authors at UCLA and Yale to work on new research projects.
YONG
TAN
Visited co-authors at University of Texas, Dallas to work on new joint research projects.

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DOCTORAL PROGRAM

2017 INCOMING DOCTORAL STUDENTS
DENG, JIAYING
AREA: Information Systems
EDUCATION:
BE, Shanghai University of Finance & Economics, Computer Science and Technology with minor in Finance (2017)
RESEARCH INTERESTS:
Economics of Information Systems
Data Mining
Social Media
FANG, ZHEN
AREA: Information Systems
EDUCATION:
BA, Tsinghua University, Information Management & Information Systems with minor in Computer Technology (2017)
RESEARCH INTERESTS:
Economics of Information Systems
Data Analytics
E-Commerce
LIU, ZIBO
AREA: Information Systems
EDUCATION:
BE, Tsinghua University, Electronic Engineering (2017)
BS, Tsinghua University, Economics (2017)
RESEARCH INTERESTS:
Machine Learning
Data Mining
E-Commerce
ZHANG, YIMING
AREA: Operations Management
EDUCATION:
BS, University of Science and Technology of China, Statistics (2017)
RESEARCH INTERESTS:
Statistics
Operation Research
Data Analytics

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MSIS PROGRAM

In celebration of Alaska Airlines Day at Foster, the MSIS program hosted a meet & greet networking event with the Alaska Airlines technology leadership team on November 9, 2017. This event featured a Q&A session with Alaska Airlines CIO, Charu Jain and career exploration sessions with leaders over the mobile, infrastructure, and data science divisions. Charu joined the MSIS Advisory Board over the summer and has been a very active and engaged member of the MSIS community! Charu and her team have coached MSIS students through mock interviews, met with alumni to explore engagement opportunities, and are helping to create a women in tech event series for the future. The partnership between the MSIS program and Alaska Airlines is thriving – thank you to Charu and her team for their commitment to MSIS student success!

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MSCM PROGRAM

MSCM students began fall quarter with an intensive negotiations course and stayed in full swing all quarter long. Students cheered on the huskies at a football game, ran the Dawg Dash, competed with each other in the Littlefield supply chain simulation, and attended career services events. MSCM bade farewell to 2017 at our first annual holiday social for students and alumni.

This fall the MSCM program was also delighted to welcome two new advisory board members: Jody Franich, Vice President, Global Services Supplier Management at The Boeing Company and Sam Eldersveld, Director, Fulfillment Execution Data Science (FEDS) at Amazon.

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SEMINAR SERIES

October 6, 2017
RUOMENG CUI
Emory University | Operations Management
TITLE: Managing Information in Online Marketplaces: Field Experiments
November 3, 2017
JASON CHAN
University of Minnesota | Information Systems
TITLE: The Digital Sin City: An Empirical Study of Craigslist’s Impact on Prostitution Trends
November 17, 2017
ARAVINDA GARIMELLA
University of Washington | Information Systems
TITLE: Launch on a High Note: How Prefunding Affects Crowdfunding Outcomes
December 1, 2017
NIKOS TRICHAKIS
MIT | Operations Management
TITLE: Data-driven Methods to Improve Kidney Allocation and other Resource Allocation Systems
December 8, 2017
SERGUEI NETESSINE
University of Pennsylvania | Operations Management
TITLE:
Price to Compete … with Many: How to Identify Price Competition in High Dimensional Space

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VISITING GUESTS

VISITING INTERNATIONAL INTERNSHIP & TRAINING (VISIT) STUDENTS 

YUE ‘Megan’ JIN is a PhD student from the School of Economic and Management at Tsinghua University.  Her research interest will focus on user behavior in online communities.  Prof. Yong Tan will work with her as her faculty sponsor during her one year internship.  Currently, she’s analyzing the data she has gathered from a social Q&A community and an online review website.  She wants to modify the model she has already established and analyze the features of the text using machine learning.  During her time here, she also hopes to visit famous and historic attractions in Seattle and America.
JUAN QIN is a second year PhD candidate from the School of Economics and Management at Harbin Institute of Technology. Her study mainly focuses on big data. During her two year stay she will be working with Prof. Yong Tan. Currently, she is working on a project focusing on Smart Transportation. She wants to successfully complete this project and network with colleagues here in order to develop future collaboration on interesting projects.  Being in Seattle for two months so far, she has gotten accustomed to the climate and has gradually fallen in love with the beautiful UW campus.
SHENWEI HUANG is a fourth year PhD candidate from the School of Management at Zhejiang University. His main focus of study is Economics in Information Systems. During his stay, he will be working with Prof. Ming Fan. Currently, he is analyzing the data gathered from a crowdfunding market to trace specific patterns of user behavior. During his time in Seattle so far, he has visited the Space Needle and was impressed by the view from the top.
RUOXIN ZHOU is a fourth year PhD candidate from Guanghua School of Management, Peking University. Her study mainly focuses on online learning. Prof. Yong Tan will work as her faculty adviser during her one-year stay at UW. Currently, she is analyzing the data she has gathered from a well-known online education website in China and hopes to get good results during this year. She has been in Seattle for almost three months and has already visited Houston, TX for the INFORMS 2017 Conference. Ruoxin will work to achieve all her academic goals during her stay, but would also like to explore Seattle and the rest of the country.

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University of Washington
Foster School of Business
ISOM Department
Paccar Hall  |  Box 353226
Seattle, WA  98195-3226
(206) 543-1043 | disom@uw.edu
www.foster.uw.edu/isom