Pace University – Page 5 – Seidenberg School News

Seidenberg goes to the International Conference on Information Systems

During the week of December 13^th, 2018, several Seidenberg students and faculty traveled to San Francisco to attend the International Conference on Information Systems (ICIS). ICIS, the leading conference in the academic information systems field, is held annually in the middle of December at a new location. Seidenberg community members had the opportunity to travel to California for last year’s prestigious conference.

Attendees of the conference—Dr. Daniel Farkas, Dr. Namchul Shin, Dr. Li-Chou Chen, student Tianyu Wang, Dr. Yegin Genc, and Dr. Isaac Vaghefi—hosted workshops, presented talks, and papers, and won some pretty amazing awards.

Dr. Farkas and Dr. Shin hosted a GIS workshop during the conference. The half-day workshop on Location Analytics and Location of Things brought in scholars from around the world interested in this area to discuss their professional experiences and research.

Left to right: Dr. Namchul Shin, Dr. Dan Farkas and a colleague from University of Redlands, CA, who is one of the co-organizers of the workshop held at ICIS.

Dr. Farkas also worked with Dr. Chen to present a TREO talk on the topic of “Individual Attitude, Trust, and Risk Perception towards Blockchain Technology, Virtual Currency Exchange, Cryptocurrency Transactions and Smart Contracts.” This talk opened up dialogue about each of these subjects at the conference.

Tianyu, who is in the process of obtaining a Ph.D., presented a paper, co-authored with Dr. Chen and Dr. Genc, titled “An N-gram-based Approach for Detecting Social Media Spambots.” Tianyu won the Doctoral Research Award from the PRE-ICIS SIGDSA symposium for the paper.

Lastly, and most impressively, Dr. Vaghefi won an award for the highly competitive “Paper-A-Thon,” in which he competed against 15 international teams. The paper submitted by Dr. Vaghefi, “DIGITAL DETOX? Understanding Users’ Abstinence from Social Network Sites Use,” was selected as the best paper to be presented at the conference. Overall, the paper “embeds a series of mixed-method studies to understand how social network users can take a break from technology and its positive outcomes,” according to Dr. Vaghefi.

With Tianyu’s Doctoral Research Award and Dr. Vaghefi’s winning “DIGITAL DETOX?” paper, Seidenberg had some major wins at the ICIS. The Seidenberg community continues to create leaders in the information systems field.

If you’re interested in attending the ICIS this coming December, get in touch with one of the previously mentioned faculty members and get started on your ideas!

Start your summer Internship search ASAP

Summer is the best time to take advantage of New York City’s opportunities. With thousands of available internships with the best companies in the world, it’s the perfect time to make a name—and a resume—for yourself with these opportunities. The start of the spring semester is the perfect time to begin your summer internship search.

Don’t fret, Pace University and Seidenberg are here to help. With Career Services right on campus, it’s easy to get your resume and cover letter updated and on point. The next step is even better: opening yourself up to endless internship opportunities! If the search is overwhelming you, then check out this list of internships available this summer:

You can assist scholars with HTML, CSS, Ruby, and more at the Kode with Klossy summer camp for young women. With supermodel, Karlie Kloss, as your boss, it’s sure to be an encouraging and engaging summer opportunity.

Look into the Cybersecurity Summer 2019 Internship at IBM. According to IBM’s application website, interns have the opportunity to “work with IBM subject matter experts, learn and assist with several tasks including how to identify crown jewel assets, methods to protect them and test to ensure they are well protected.”

There’s another fantastic opportunity at Canon this summer working in their Technology Systems internship program. According to their application website, interns “will be exposed to business, marketing, and strategy initiatives… will be involved in projects that help [interns] learn, develop business skills, and provide a meaningful contribution to Canon’s business and goals.”

At Google, interns have the opportunity to work in Information Technology. The application website states that interns will “provide support for desktops/laptops and user access to corporate network and applications both on the network as well as through remote VPN access,” as well as “assist with moving equipment and users,” and much more.

Also watch out for internships at Bloomberg, NBC, Adobe, Sprint, and News Corp. No matter what company you choose to work for—or get accepted to work for—you will gain incredible industry knowledge to shift your career forwards.

Job search engines and platforms like LinkedIn, Indeed, and Glassdoor are helpful resources for finding companies that have internship openings. If there is a company that you really want to work for, but their openings don’t show up on any of these sites, then head directly to the company’s site to find their positions and applications. Sending a quick email to their hiring manager is also a good way to get your foot in the door.

If you’re looking to expand your horizons or just gain more experience, the knowledge that you can gain from industry experience will stick with you forever. If you apply and are accepted, let us know! We want to celebrate with you and cheer you on.

This Seidenberg Blog Writer wants to tell your story!

Hi, I’m Brianna Adkins. I’m a sophomore Communication Studies major, so it’s probably odd that I spend most of my time at the university sitting in the Seidenberg lounge with my laptop out. Am I coding? No. Am I designing the next innovative project with Pace University’s Design Factory? No. What I am doing is writing about the Seidenberg students who do these wonderful things. This is because I am the newest writer for the Seidenberg Blog.

I started this position in November 2018 during my first semester on the New York City campus. As a transfer from the Westchester campus, it was quite a shock moving into the city. When I was hired for this job, it seemed like a dream come true! I get to be a writer in Downtown Manhattan! I love writing, technology, and writing about technology, so being able to work at Pace University’s Seidenberg School with a position rooted in both of those interests is a fantastic chance to explore those topics.

As a former Kode with Klossy scholar, I know that technology impacts everything. I learned how to code with HTML, CSS, Ruby, and even a little bit of JavaScript over a two-week coding course before my senior year of high school. I learned coding with a group of 20 other amazing young women, one of which I get to work with at Seidenberg as well—I’m looking at you, Elysha Ang.

I was brought back onto the Kode with Klossy team as a teaching assistant the summer before my freshman year of college. I had the opportunity to teach young women in St. Louis, Missouri alongside a team of fantastic STEM women. Technology changed my life for the better, and my interest in it grew with my exposure to it.

While I only know a little bit about technology, in my new position as Seidenberg’s resident writer I’m being introduced to a world of innovative creations and projects by Pace University students. Insider knowledge of the projects Seidenberg students are working on is a privilege that I hold close to me.

I get to tell the stories of students who are creating apps, changing the rules in sports, and even going so far as traveling around the globe to work with international clients. These students are making waves before they’ve even left school. Their voices and stories are heard through the Seidenberg blog.

I’m looking forward to telling more stories in my time as a writer for the Seidenberg Blog. You can email me at badkins@pace.edu or you come visit me in the Seidenberg lounge and share your story! I would love to hear from any student or faculty member; you know where you can find me. I’ll have my laptop and my mind open.

The wait is over: The NYC Master Plan is finished!

Pace University unveiled the long-awaited NYC Master Plan’s revitalization of One Pace Plaza and 41 Park Row on Jan. 28 with a crowd of students, staff, and benefactors in attendance. After a few speeches and cheers from the audience, the ribbon—covered with golden Pace logos, of course—was cut, officially opening the space up to the Pace community. The master plan project, which was completed by FXCollaborative and Sciame construction, began in 2017 just as President Krislov started his term as Pace University’s President. About a year and a half later, the new building now holds a variety of revamped spaces. A new school store, multiple conference rooms, study lounges, elevators, and a small food station now reside in the immense and beautiful building. The unveiling showed off all of these new spaces to the public.

The excitement of the ribbon cutting spread throughout everyone attendance at the unveiling. The event started off with few speeches by President Krislov and others who brought this project to life.

President Krislov’s words rang through the room: “Here in One Pace Plaza, we entirely transformed the place, creating state-of-the-art new learning facilities and student spaces. We opened up walls, opening Pace University to our community. It looks fantastic—and it looks to our future.”

As soon as the ribbon was cut, a mass of Pace Performing Arts Dance students flooded the room and danced to entertain the audience. Immediately after its completion, attendees flooded into the new space to check everything out. Refreshments and snacks were served, more Pace Performing Arts students kept the crowd entertained with musical entertainment, and totes were handed out as a small gift to those who attended.We will remember this event for a long while because it celebrated a new space for students to grow and create. With the Pace community growing, it’s nice to see that the spaces are growing with it. Check out the new space as soon as possible, because once you check it out, you won’t want to leave.

Pace University Seidenberg students visit IBM for artificial intelligence insights

On October 24th, students from Pace University’s Seidenberg School of Computer Science and Information Systems visited the IBM TJ Watson Research Center for an eye-opening field trip into the world of research and tech.

The audience in attendance included faculty, undergraduate and graduate students. One of these students attending was Charlotte Coffin, a senior majoring in computer science, who is currently working on her honors thesis titled, “An Introduction to Quantum Computing using the Number Guessing Game on QISKit.” QISKit is IBM’s open source platform for quantum computing, so the trip was particularly useful for Charlotte!

During the trip, students learned about the types of research taking place at IBM and identified potential research collaboration opportunities. IBM’s researchers discussed technological topics including quantum computing, blockchain, IoT wearables, artificial intelligence, and big data analytics.

Students spent the day in Thinklabs, research rooms, and with IBM professionals who introduced them to the real-world version of what they are studying at Pace University. For many students, getting an inside look at a company like IBM was a glimpse at the future.

Tianyu Wang, a PhD Computer Science student nearing graduation, noted that the trip was “a really great experience.”

“The researchers at the Research Center work on speech recognition, machine learning, natural language understanding, and information retrieval products, among others,” said Tianyu. “I particularly appreciated witnessing the collaborative working environment. The company supports various researchers that work in both small and large teams. I can see the researchers had a great time doing their work; most [of] them were absolutely top-notch and super-accessible and friendly.”

Tianyu, along with the rest of the group in attendance, also had the chance to see an innovative project in the works by IBM: artificial intelligence generating movie trailers.

“An example of a recent artificial intelligence research project is generating movie trailers automatically using machine learning algorithms,” Tianyu explained. “After training a couple of movies with label data, the program can generate a trailer automatically, within one day. This approach saves the cost of producing a trailer. Through this example, I could certainly see the real implementation of supervised learning solutions, and how artificial intelligence can impact the business.”

Andreea Cotoranu, Assistant Dean of Academic Innovation at Pace University, highlighted how grateful she and her students were for the field trip opportunity.

“The Seidenberg School is grateful for its dedicated adjunct faculty, especially Professor Stephan Barabasi, as well as for the passionate and generous team at the IBM Research Center for continuing to facilitate collaboration and discussion on key research topics and promote continued learning within the Seidenberg faculty and student body,” she said.

The IBM trip was another fantastic learning experience provided by the Seidenberg School of Computer Science and Information Systems. Keep your eyes peeled for future events with major technology companies!

ICYMI: The Seidenberg Tech Leadership Series Fall 2018

There was an exciting lineup at Pace University’s Seidenberg School of Computer Science and Information Systems on both the New York City and Westchester campuses during Fall 2018: the Tech Leadership Series! The speakers at the events ranged from the Seidenberg School’s benefactor himself – Ivan Seidenberg – to the chief information officer at Cadillac, Lesley Ma. Students had the opportunity to hear from industry professionals over the duration of the semester. Here’s a recap ICYMI:

Jeff Coffin, “Embedded Linux: What the Heck is it?”

On Oct. 25, Jeff Coffin spoke at the New York City campus at 163 William

Street. The Software and Systems Engineer at AJA Video Systems, Inc. appeared in conversation with his daughter, Seidenberg student Charlotte Coffin, to chat about embedded linux (and what the heck it is). Students had the opportunity to speak with Jeff about his many years of experience in the technology industry and network with him as well.

Ivan Seidenberg, “Verizon Untethered: An Insider’s Story of Innovation and Disruption”

The next event took place at the New York City campus on Nov. 8, and this was an exclusive event for all Seidenberg students. Mr. Ivan Seidenberg himself was at the Seidenberg Lounge for a discussion on his book detailing

his tenure at Verizon. The former Chairman and CEO of the telecommunications company spoke on the topic titled, “Verizon Untethered: An Insider’s Story of Innovation and Disruption.” The first students at the event had the opportunity to receive a copy of his book.

Peggy Yao, Tech Collective Lunch & Learn: Mindfulness for Professional & Personal Success

On Wednesday, November 14, the Westchester campus hosted the third segment of the leadership series at Goldstein Academic Center. Special

guest, Peggy Yao, spoke about mindfulness at the Seidenberg Tech Collective meeting. Mindfulness is a topic not often associated with the technology industry. Students were able to learn tips for a more mindful outlook, network with Peggy, and – as always – enjoy lunch on us.

Lesley Ma, Global Chief Information Officer for Cadillac

On Tuesday, November 27, the Global Chief Information Officer (CIO) for Cadillac at General Motors, Lesley Ma, spoke at the New York City campus. Lesley shared her experiences as a leader at a global firm and fielded questions from students about her career so far. Students received plenty of tips and advice about marketing themselves for cool opportunities and got to network with an industry superstar. We were so excited to present our students with this great opportunity to network and learn from an industry leader.

Merin Joseph, WESTMED Practice Partners and WESTMED Medical Group

The next event in the series was on November 28 at the Westchester campus. Series speaker, Merin Joseph, gave insider experience from her position as Executive Vice President and Chief Information Officer at WESTMED Practice Partners and WESTMED Medical Group. Students joined in on this event to get networking experience and tips on how to succeed in their chosen fields. Merin shared a wealth of knowledge earned throughout an exciting career.

Daniel Barchi, Chief Information Officer for New York-Presbyterian Hospital

On Wednesday, December 12, the Chief Information Officer of NewYork-Presbyterian, Daniel Barchi, spoke on the New York City campus for a discussion and networking session with students. We were happy to present our students with this great opportunity to network and learn from an industry leader in the medical and technological fields. Daniel gave a frank and fascinating recounting of his experience as a leader in a dynamic industry, including some exciting stories about narrowly avoided crises.

Did you attend any of our events? We’d love to hear what you thought – and if you have any suggestions on who to invite next, give us a shout in the comments or on social media!