To the Department of Information Systems Community,
It is the end of the first semester serving as the Interim Chair for the department. We had a wonderfully positive start to the semester with the largest turnout for a Welcome Week event in years. Our students enjoyed lunch, swag, tours of research labs, while getting to meet each other.
We welcomed Dr. Todd Karner to UMBC as the new Assistant Graduate Program Director for Health IT. Dr. Jimmy Foulds began as the Graduate Program Director for the Online M.S. program, where he immediately increased the AI course offerings.
In other faculty news, Dr. Patricia Ordóñez, M.S. ’10, Ph.D. ’12, will lead UMBC’s contributions of a $5 million NSF project to establish a new science educational center at the Arecibo Observatory site in Puerto Rico. Dr. Houbing Song has been recognized by Clarivate as a highly cited researcher in 2023. The selection is based on highly cited papers (top 1%) as well as qualitative analysis.
October was National Cybersecurity Awareness Month and the department participated by spotlighting student organizations, alumni, and faculty.
We launched five new certificates in our Online MS program. Students can choose from Artificial Intelligence, Cybersecurity Informatics, Data Science Informatics, Foundations of Information Systems and UX Design, allowing them to focus on in-demand skills. We also began offering a Minor in Management and the Business Analytics Certificate in our BTA program under the direction of Dr. Karuna Joshi.
In exciting alumni news, Cornelia Carapcea ’09 was inducted into the Athletics Hall of Fame at UMBC as an outstanding member of the women’s tennis team. Zhensen Huang M.S. ’00, PhD. ’04, presented at GRIT-X during homecoming. Huang’s presentation is titled, “Create Possibility – On Campus and in Business.”
I look forward to spending the break enjoying time with family and working on ways to continue to help our department and community grow to benefit our amazing students.
Zhiyuan Chen, Ph.D.
Professor and Interim Chair
Department of Information Systems, UMBC