Seated,
from left, Dr. Zand (at computer) and Cobra Rahmani. Standing: Xiao Dan Yu,
Alvin Tarrell, Travis Good and Aaron Read. Photo by Tim Fitzgerald/University
Relations.
Doctored
Up
Information Technology Ph.D. program attracts
students from top universities in the world
The five received their undergraduate and
graduate degrees from some of the top universities in the world: Harvard, MIT,
Beijing Institute of Technology in China, Brigham Young University, Amirkabir
Polytechnic University in Tehran, Iran.
They could have picked just about anywhere to
study for their doctorate degrees.
They chose the College of Information Science
& Technology at UNO and the Ph.D. in IT (Information Technology) program,
an innovative and increasingly well-recognized doctorate program that offers
unique flexibility of study under the umbrella known as IT.
"We emphasize that this is not a CS (computer
science) program, and it's not an MIS (management information systems)
program," says Professor Mansour Zand, the director of the Ph.D. in IT program.
"It's an IT program. You need to have a more holistic perspective."
The Ph.D. in IT program began in the fall of
2003 with 10 students. It since has grown to a total of 26 students, including
the five who began this fall. The students come from 10 different countries.
Ten are women.
Producers, not consumers
As soon as they arrive, Zand says, "We try our
best to open their eyes wide. We tell them that up to this moment, they were
consumers of knowledge. Now, they are going to be producers of knowledge. We
tell them they've got to move beyond reading the book and start writing the
paper."
The students listen. "These 26 people have
produced more than 150 papers that have been printed in publications and
journals and presented at conferences," Zand says, "which is very impressive."
Four students have graduated from the program.
They are working as a faculty member at a university in China, as a private
corporation research scientist and in bioinformatics research at UCLA. Another
is conducting post-doctoral work at Ohio State.
The five new students say a variety of factors
attracted them.
Xiao-Dan Yu came to UNO from Beijing after
researching the program on the Internet. Aaron Read, a graduate of BYU, says he
wanted to explore the opportunities presented by the UNO Institute for
Collaboration Science. Travis Good, a graduate of the School of Government at
Harvard, says he heard from others how "well-connected" the college and the
Peter Kiewit Institute (PKI) are to business and industry.
"I also was intrigued by the interdisciplinary
approach of the program," Good says.
Faculty access, excellence
He is especially appreciative of the
one-on-one contact he receives from his professors and advisors at the college.
"There is a focus on developing the individual student here," he says. "I'm not
just a face in the crowd, I'm valued as a collaborator. And I think the breadth
and quality of instruction is well beyond what you'd receive in a standard
Ph.D. in CS program."
Alvin Tarrell spent 20 years in the U.S. Navy,
finishing his career at Offutt Air Force Base. He received two master's degrees
from MIT and currently is a Department of Defense contractor at Offutt.
At MIT, "I had a hard time getting access to
instructors," he says. "The instructors here, I'd describe as more
down-to-earth. They're not standing up on a pedestal talking down to you. They
talk with you."
Read says he believes he has more research
opportunities at UNO than he might in other Ph.D. programs. "The professors
here have greater access to organizations and businesses."
Cobra Rahmani, who received her undergraduate
and graduate degrees in Tehran, says she appreciates the local culture. "Omaha
is a smaller city than I am accustomed to but it has great resources."
Yu says she appreciates the inclusion of many
fields of study, which range from data mining and warehousing to
bioinformatics, networking and software engineering and information assurance.
"I like the program because I am exposed to different subjects," she says.
"Whether it's CS or MIS, I can choose the classes I like … and find what I am
interested in here."
Other students in the Ph.D. program echo a
satisfaction with the quality of instruction and the range of opportunities.
Azamat Mametjanov obtained his master's at UNO and stayed on for the doctorate
in IT. "I really enjoy the collaboration with the professors here, and how the
Ph.D. program offered the opportunity for the continuation of my work."
Recently, Azamat participated in the doctoral
symposium at the Object-Oriented Programming, Systems, Languages and
Applications conference (OOPSLA'07) where he received best paper accolades.
OOPSLA is one of the largest first-tier conferences in computer science. The
symposium typically attracts students from top universities, including MIT,
Carnegie Mellon and Stanford.
Azamat's presentation earned him the "most
promising student" introduction to the leading researchers at OOPSLA. He since
has been invited to interview at various universities, including MIT.
William Sousan is another UNO graduate who
finds the program to be a convenient way to work on his degree part-time while
holding a full-time job and being close to his wife and children. "Thankfully,
I have a very supportive family. My computer is in the basement, and the kids
will say, 'Dad's going to be in his cave all weekend.'"
John Murphy traveled to Omaha with his wife,
who serves in the military. "I wanted to work on my Ph.D. and was actually
applying at UNL when I saw an ad for an open house at PKI in the newspaper. I
visited, met with the professors and found out the program is a perfect
marriage of CS and MIS."
Murphy says he has not been disappointed. "The
quality of the professors is absolutely superb. It's a real honor to be working
with them."
Satish Srinivasan is a graduate of the Indian
Institute of Technology in Kharagpur. "I've seen a lot of positive changes
since I joined the program. We have good students, good graduates, great
faculty and facilities and good research opportunities. I don't know what else
we could wish for."
Alumni support sought
One thing Professor Zand says he hopes for is
increased support from alumni, such as the establishment of fellowships or
scholarships, as well as increased financial support from the local business
community.
"They have been very generous to the
undergraduate programs, but we need more finances to support the teaching
assistant (TA) and graduate assistant (GA) positions here," he says. "We
currently have 16 Ph.D. students supported as either TAs or GAs, the majority
by faculty grants."
He says expanded partnerships with businesses
are win-win situations. "They could come to us with a complex business problem
that could become a research project for our students, who might provide a
comprehensive solution at a fraction of the cost of hiring an outside
consultant," Zand says. "We want to open the door to this kind of relationship
as often as we can."
For more information, visit the program's Web
site at www.ist.unomaha.edu/index.php?p=phd
Finding the work in IT at Union
Pacific challenging and rewarding are, from left, former intern Luke
Christiansen, Chief Technology Officer Lynn Andrews and current intern Keith
McDermott. Photo by Tim Fitzgerald/University Relations.
UP interns put on fast track
Part of PKI Career Resource Center's intern
program
As a sophomore studying computer science and
computer engineering at the Peter Kiewit Institute, Luke Christiansen was
considering Omaha's premier employers when he took a look at the Union Pacific
Corporation.
"My first thought was, 'Railroad technology?
What?'"
Then he took a closer look.
"The more I checked into it, the more I saw
that interested me," Christiansen recalls. "I found out that the Information
Technologies division is really very sophisticated." So he applied for an
internship. "On the way home from the interview, they called and said, 'When
can you start?' It was just a natural fit."
He worked as a year-round intern, part-time
during school and full-time in the summer months. The 23-year-old from Blair,
Neb. graduated last spring. "I was given many opportunities throughout my
two-year period as an intern," he says.
Today, Christiansen is a project engineer at
Union Pacific (UP). As part of the Client Services group, he helps manage and
lead IT projects that include the migration of more than 18,000 devices and
2,000-plus software applications to Windows Vista. "The fact that I could step
into a company like Union Pacific and get a project like this right off the bat
- I love it."
Christiansen says he had the chance to attend
the university of his choice. He chose the unique combination afforded by the
Peter Kiewit Institute (PKI), which combines UNO's College of Information
Science & Technology with the University of Nebraska-Lincoln's School of
Engineering. While at PKI, he was named a Scott Scholar, students who benefit
directly from the scholarship funding provided by the Suzanne and Walter Scott
Foundation.
"Had PKI not existed," he says, looking
backward, "I would not be working at UP today."
Career Resource Center offerings
In addition to the on-site recruiting done by
Union Pacific and other corporations, the Career Resource Center at PKI makes
internship and full-time job offerings available to PKI students.
As of this fall, a total of 1,225 job
opportunities had been passed through the center, according to Coordinator Doug
Bahle. That compares to 1,136 in all of 2006 and 476 in 2005. The opportunities
come from 878 business partners - nearly nine times the approximately 100
business partners the resource center had in 2001. PKI students interested in
pursuing an IT internship with UP should contact Bahle.
Partners
From the Gallup Organization and the U.S.
Strategic Command (USSTRATCOM) at Offutt Air Force Base to Mutual of Omaha and
Union Pacific Corporation, each year a wide range of IT internship and
employment opportunities become available in the Omaha metropolitan area.
According to Union Pacific Chief Technology
Officer Lynn Andrews, between 20 and 30 interns are selected to work in the IT
division annually. The company recruits from the top schools in the nation,
Andrews says, and interns from the two colleges at PKI "are as good as any we
see."
They fall within one of three groups:
traditional interns who work during the summer only; engineering interns,
students who work at the company for about eight months, taking a semester off
from their studies to do so; and year-round interns, those who work anywhere
between 10 and 25 hours per week during the school year and up to 40 hours a
week during the summer.
No matter the type of internship, "with the
majority of the students, we hand them the same kind of work as our regular
employees," Andrews says. "They don't work on 'science fair' projects just to
see if they can do the work.
"At times, I get comments from our full-time
employees that the interns are working on more challenging projects than they
are."
Fresh ideas
In many cases, Andrews says, the interns bring
fresh ideas and add immediate value to a project. "It's surprising what
capabilities the students have. They learn quickly and can become useful in a
very short period of time."
Keith McDermott graduated from Creighton Prep
in Omaha in 2005 and started studying computer science and engineering at PKI
that fall. The following spring, he was selected as a year-round intern at UP
McDermott says he's been involved in many
challenging projects.
One involves engineering remote electronic
devices called "Motes." Seen as a possible way to monitor rail cars in the
future, Motes combine a variety of sensors and detectors that are in various
places along the rail lines and put the technology directly on the rail car.
The Motes could provide the car's location as well as detect problems such as
defective equipment for each car, rather than wait for a report from a
radio-frequency identification (RFID) tag reader or a defect detector along the
rail car's route.
McDermott will be part of a team analyzing
data gathered during the Motes' testing. In addition to engineering the Motes,
the project involves determining the technical feasibility, such as how the
equipment will be powered, and whether it will be cost effective when applied
to more than a million rail cars.
"I really enjoy the combination of
transportation and IT," he says.
Enthusiasm need apply
Andrews says enthusiasm is one factor he looks
for when considering internship applicants. "A 'can-do' attitude is a huge plus
when it comes to teamwork. We want to improve things for the company, and you
do that by motivating other people to help you."
He also looks for a particular interest in
working at Union Pacific.
"If they're not interested in UP or the type
of work we do, we're going to have a hard time," he says. "We're not just here
to pay students to come to work. We want them to help us get work done, and we
want our internships to be a recruiting tool.
"If you look at the people we hire, probably
80 percent have done some kind of interning here."
He also examines an applicant's resume and
academic skills, the courses taken and the resulting grades. He places emphasis
on career goals and communication skills.
"We can get any number of people who can come
in here and just do the work," he says. "What we need are people who can think,
who can plan and who can come up with new ideas."
McDermott says good communication skills are
important well beyond the internship interview. "When you're working with so
many people across different areas of the company to coordinate a project, you
don't want to wind up wasting one moment on something you shouldn't have."
Ultimately, internships allow both students
and Union Pacific an opportunity to check each other. "The 'try before you buy'
method works not only for us but also for the students," Andrews says.
It worked for Luke Christiansen. His current
duties include supervising the work of some interns and interviewing potential
Union Pacific IT interns.
"I feel very fortunate to have gone from being
an intern to being hired and now helping manage the interns," he says. "It's
been fun and challenging."
