Largest Gathering Of E-Business Research Centers Comes To Philadelphia

Largest Gathering Of E-Business Research Centers Comes To Philadelphia

UNIVERSITY PARK, PA—Philadelphia will be the site for the second annual eBusiness Research Center Director's Forum . This event will bring together the largest concentration of e-business research directors in the country, under one roof, to develop a roadmap for future industry research and collaboration. This research is needed to better understand the impact the digital economy has on productivity and the return on investment in technology. The attendance list of research directors can be found at www.ebrc.org .

The forum will begin at 9:00 a.m. on, Thursday, November 21 and conclude at 4:00 p.m. on November 22, at the SAP Executive Education Center in Philadelphia, PA. Headquartered in Walldorf, Germany, SAP is the world's largest inter-enterprise software company and the world's third-largest independent software supplier. The company is a major employer in the Philadelphia area.

The Penn State Smeal College of Business' eBusiness Research Center (eBRC) is the organizer of this forum that brings together the directors of major e-business research centers from all over the U.S. to identify areas of collaboration such as sharing of information on current research topics, industry best practices, curriculum development, faculty and student affiliations, publications, and conferences.

"We are hosting this eBusiness Forum, in what we hope will be a continuing annual event, to lay the foundations for a community of e-business research," says Nirmal Pal, executive director of the eBusiness Research Center in the Penn State Smeal College of Business.

The eBusiness Research Center is one of five research centers in the Smeal College of Business. It conducts research on how businesses strategize, operate, market, and manage in the realm of electronic commerce and business. Established in June 1999, this center has become a preeminent source of information for decision-makers in industry, academia, and government. The eBRC is home to a network of researchers from universities around the world, as well as consultants, hardware, and software suppliers, and other enablers of e-business. It has developed a powerful "virtual global network" of e-business scholars and is developing close links with industry partners with whom it can share, learn, and enable new developments in e-business. Its current industry partners include IBM, Unisys, Xerox, AT&T Wireless, Delphi Ventures, SAP America, Cigna and Tyco.

eBRC recently co-hosted a conference— Accelerating Global Commerce Through Technology and Policy —at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. The conference addressed the technology sector's rebound and economic recovery, and keynote speeches were made by Commissioner of the Federal Trade Commission Thomas Leary; IBM Director Mike Nelsen; Director of Internet Programs Elliot Maxwell, Aspen Institute; and Associate Director of Information Technology and e-government Mark Forman, Office of Management and Budget. A white paper from the conference can be found at www.ebrc.psu.edu/events/pastEvents/index.html .

Associate Research Director of eBRC, Dr. C. Lee Giles received the 2002 IBM Distinguished Faculty Award. Dr. Giles, holder of the David Reese Professorship of Information Sciences and Technology, was recognized for his development of eBizSearch. This new Web tool is an experimental niche search engine that finds and indexes documents about e-business, e-commerce, and related resources. The search engine probes the Web sites of universities, commercial organizations, research institutes, and government departments to retrieve and catalog academic articles, working papers, consulting reports, magazine articles, and published statistical facts. Rather than sifting reams of potentially irrelevant information eBizSearch focuses tightly on relevant data, making it more productive.

Nirmal Pal of the eBRC can be reached 814-865-5670 or nirmalpal@psu.edu