Robert P. Schumaker

Dr. Schumaker is the George W. and Robert Pirtle Endowed Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Texas at Tyler (UT Tyler) and Director of the Data Analytics Lab within the Soules College of Business. He received his PhD in Management from the University of Arizona in 2007, an MBA degree in Management and International Business from the University of Akron in 2001, and a Bachelors of Science degree in Civil Engineering from the University of Cincinnati in 1997.

He is also the Associate Editor for DSS, a member of the ACM Distinguished Speakers Program (April 2013 – April 2019), has authored a book on Sports Data Mining, several book chapters, multiple journal articles in DSS, ACM TOIS, CACM and JASIST as well as had his research featured in the Wall Street Journal and numerous other media outlets.

Research Interests
Dr. Schumaker’s overall research interests involve using data science to solve very large and complex business problems. These interests further branch into data mining, machine learning, natural language processing, sentiment analysis, system building and textual analytics. In particular, he focuses on the areas of Textual/Financial prediction, Sports Analytics and Healthcare Informatics.

Teaching
Dr. Schumaker began teaching in Fall of 2000 and has proven to be a very effective teacher with an overall rating of 4.20 on a 5.0 scale (5.0 = Excellent, 4.0 = Above Average, 3.0 = Average, 2.0 = Below Average, 1.0 = Failing) that covers 123 classes to date. He has strong teaching interests in technical subjects such as Business Information Systems, Database, Data Mining, eCommerce, Internet Applications, Networking, Programming, Quantitative Investment, Telecommunications and Security. His teaching philosophy is to make the material relevant to real-world business problems and to teach it in an engaging yet enjoyable manner. Many of Rob’s former students specifically adjust their schedules to take additional classes from him.

Experience
Dr. Schumaker has extensive knowledge of the retail hardware industry, working for 10+ years in a family-owned business. He also has vast experience in the IT field as Interim Director of Technology of the University of Akron’s College of Business and Director of the IS Dept Computer Lab at Iona College.

Prof. Farhi Marir is a full professor and fellow member of British Computer Society (BCS) for the last fifteen years. His research interest revolves around knowledge management, business intelligence and big data & analytics. He joined Zayed University in 2013 and is currently the director of the big data research lab and he is also acting director of institutional research where he is leading an AED 2 Million project for the development of a university wide data warehouse and business intelligence dashboards. In the research lab he is leading the development of ZU Big Data Analytic tools and setting up a research group in computational data analytics. To consolidate the research theme, he developed a new cross-programs data analytics course and he is also the principal investigator of an AED 175K on Big Data for hospitality in Dubai funded by the UAE Ministry of Higher Education National Research Funding (NRF). He is also principal/co-investigator for six multidisciplinary research projects applying data and text mining paradigm to investigate and discover new knowledge in the domains like Diabetic, Autism, Quran, Dubai Finance and English teaching all funded by the University Research Incentive Funding (RIF) worth more than half Million AED.

Prior to joining Zayed University, Prof. Farhi Marir was working for twenty years in different UK universities of which he spent thirteen years as the director of the Knowledge Management Research Centre (KMRC) at London Metropolitan University (2000-2013). During his work in UK universities, he developed several undergraduate and postgraduate programs in software engineering, advanced databases and data warehousing and data mining. He also led around thirty five researchers working on thirty five UK and EU funded research projects on data warehouse and business intelligence for different UK industries including health, transport, education, economy government worth more than £7 Million. He personally supervised twenty five PhD students to completions (two of them completed in 2014 and 2015 while he is in Zayed University) and he published more than hundred papers and articles in refereed journal and international conferences. He is currently co-supervising three PhD students based in UK and Algerian universities.

Before that Prof Farhi Marir worked in Algerian universities for six years. From 1984 to 1988, he was leading the department of computer Science in the University of Batna in Algeria where he developed several programs and courses in software engineering, databases systems, artificial intelligences and programming languages. From 1982 till 1984 he set up the first university computer center which he managed for 2 years before becoming the head of the computer Science department.

Ernesto Damiani joined Khalifa University as Chair of the Information Security Group and Program, and EBTIC as Research Professor. He is on extended leave from the Department of Computer Science, Università degli Studi di Milano, Italy, where he leads the SESAR research lab and is the Head of the Ph.D. Program in Computer Science. Ernesto’s research interests include secure service-oriented architectures, privacy-preserving Big Data analytics and Cyber-Physical Systems security.

Ernesto holds/has held visiting positions at a number of international institutions, including George Mason University in Virginia, US, Tokyo Denki University, Japan, LaTrobe University in Melbourne, Australia, and the Institut National des Sciences Appliquées (INSA) at Lyon, France. He is a Fellow of the Japanese Society for the Progress of Science.

He has been Principal Investigator in a number of large-scale research projects funded by the European Commission, the Italian Ministry of Research and by private companies such as British Telecom, Cisco Systems, SAP, Telecom Italia, Siemens Networks (now Nokia Siemens) and many others.

Ernesto serves in the editorial board of several international journals; among others, he is the EIC of the International Journal on Big Data and of the International Journal of Knowledge and Learning. He is Associate Editor of IEEE Transactions on Service-oriented Computing and of the IEEE Transactions on Fuzzy Systems. Ernesto is a senior member of the IEEE and served as Vice-Chair of the IEEE Technical Committee on Industrial Informatics. In 2008, Ernesto was nominated ACM Distinguished Scientist and received the Chester Sall Award from the IEEE Industrial Electronics Society. Ernesto has co-authored over 350 scientific papers and many books, including “Open Source Systems Security Certification” (Springer 2009).

Dr Tapiwa Chiwewe is a research manager at IBM Research in South Africa. He leads the data driven healthcare and advanced & applied artificial intelligence groups that innovate to beneficially transform industries and the way people live, work and relate to each other in Africa and beyond. He has led teams in developing solutions for managing air quality, designing solar systems, analysing cancer pathology reports, and excising interference from extra-terrestrial radio signals among others. He is a recipient of IBM's outstanding technical achievement award, a Senior Member of the IEEE and an adjunct associate professor at the University of the Western Cape. Tapiwa holds B.Eng., M.Eng. and Ph.D. degrees all in Computer Engineering from the University of Pretoria, South Africa.
 
Prior to joining IBM he worked as a senior engineer at the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), South Africa's central and premier scientific research and development organisation in the mechatronics and micro manufacturing group. Tapiwa has also worked at Fifth Dimension Technologies (5DT) specializing in the development of virtual reality training simulators for the construction, mining and military industries that were shipped all over the world. He has served as a university lecturer, reviewed articles for journals and conferences, organised workshops and conferences, and chaired and served on technical program committees.