GET WAY DOWN INSIDE

It is my first time to see three journal articles on the same issue debate on the same issue in Information Systems Journal.

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A couple of paragraphs from call for papers of Journal of Simulation:

Agent-based models (ABMs), also sometimes called agent distillations or cellular automata models, have found tremendous success in an especially wide spectrum of applications. Such models have also been used in financial modeling, personnel modeling, in military applications such as examining the impacts of tactical airpower or logistical supply, in social science modeling and even in a variety of manufacturing applications. Multiagent systems (MAS) are a special kind of ABM in which a group of systems or entities interact with each other and their environment. An agent in a MAS can represent a human, group of humans, a machine or a software system with the capability to perceive their environment, react to changes in the environment and affect the environment with their own actions.

In an ABM, entities are constructed to have specified goals or actions. Agents can control their own destiny which means they may change their internal state depending on their knowledge of the artificial environment in which they reside and function. This cognitive capability of the agents is necessary so agents can achieve the specified goal or criterion within the context of the application. The agents are usually modeled in an object-oriented manner but suitably extended to include representation of their knowledge and roles within an environment. Thus, an agent can have knowledge of itself, knowledge received from other agents through communication and sensory channels, knowledge based on perceptions of its environment, and even memory of previous states the agent found itself. Among the challenges to ABM are designing these agents to encapsulate this information in such a way that the knowledge is controlled and exploited by the software agent, ensuring the ABM realistically captures the actual system of interest, and analyzing the emergent behavior that often arises in the use of these models.

College students participate in a variety of associations to enrich their lives, to construct their social network and to get some experience of leadership. As a Ph.D. student, especially a Ph.D. in USA, being members (or leaders) of these associations is a luxury which undergraduate can afford: we are supposed to concentrate more on our research. For some non-hobby-oriented associations, like graduate student association, involvement means responsibility, effort and time. Therefore, I prefer to join some hobby clubs for the purpose of knowing more people and filling up some of my empty time, because I've spent multiple years to train my leadership well.

My hobbies are pretty broad, so I joined several clubs here: Photography and traveling club, dance club and tennis club. Photography is sort of a social contagion. Some people who I am familiar with are really good at photography (e.g. Professor Dongwon Lee). People just cannot help marveling at those so-much fantastic pictures and then wish to do the same thing by themselves some day. I am among of them, so I start off learning photography. However, professional cameras are expensive, not to say high-quality lenses. Dance is an elegant exercise, or should I say, art. It makes me perfectly relax and step out of any upset and annoyance. Dance is also an ambassador of getting people known with each other in some social activities. Tennis is an excellent outdoor exercise: not too intensive as soccer and not too dangerous as football. It emphasizes a balance of body strength and skills.  I always believe a good body is the key to survive the Ph.D. (also known as Permanent Head Damage)

As I can manage the time better and better, I hope I am able to get out of the box and to participate some non-Chinese based associations or clubs. After all, I cannot know well about American culture and style without getting along with Americans.

I would like to talk a little bit about John Henry Holland. I first know him from my previous advisor, Prof. Chen, when I was a master at Renmin Univ. of China. Prof. Chen is the first Chinese scholar who visited the Santa Fe Institute and thereby introduced the complex system theory into China. In Santa Fe Institute Prof. Chen met Holland and then they became friends. Later then, Holland visited our Economics Science Lab in the School of Information.

John H. Holland is a Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and Professor of Psychology at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He is generally known as the father of genetic algorithms. Nevertheless, he is also the pioneer of complex system and nonlinear science.

Dr. Holland was born in 1929. He earned a B.A. in Physics in MIT and M.A. in Mathematics and Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Michigan.

In his seminal book "Adaptation in Natural and Artificial Systems", Dr. Holland introduced the Genetic Algorithm. I have read two of his influential books: "Hidden Order: How Adaptation Builds Complexity" and "Emergence: From Chaos to Order". These two books have fundamentally changed the perspectives as we see the world. Holland and his colleagues in Santa Fe Institute share a deep impatience with the kind of linear, reductionist thinking that has long dominated science since the Newton age. Instead, they are creating novel ideas about coevaltion, chaos, order and nonlinearity. This kind of ideas is demonstrating its vitality in understanding and illustrating universe, life and human social behavior.

There is a good change that my dissertation topics will has something to do with multi-stakeholder IT investment and IT standardization. Currently, my advisor and I are working in a research project associated with standardization using agent-based modeling. We are looking for some publication venues that possibly we can get our paper published in. The International Journal of

IT Standards & Standardization Research (JITSR) and The Journal of Strategic Information Systems are two among them.

The International Journal of IT Standards & Standardization Research [1] aims to be a platform for presenting, and discussing, the broad variety of aspects that make up IT standards research. This includes, but is certainly not limited to, contributions from the disciplines of computer science, information systems, management, business, social sciences (especially science and technology studies), economics, engineering, political science, public policy, sociology, communication, and human factors/usability. In particular, the journal wants to both support and promote multi-disciplinary research on IT standards; 'IT' should be understood in a very broad sense."

The Journal of Strategic Information Systems [2] focuses on the management, business and organizational issues associated with the introduction and utilization of information systems as a strategic tool, and considers these issues in a global context. The emphasis is on the incorporation of IT into organizations' strategic thinking, strategy alignment and management of change issues. The journal publishes research and case study papers from around the world which:

• investigate the very nature of business in the context of emerging IT

• discuss the justification and evaluation of information systems

• discuss the organizational implications of IT

• consider how organizations have been transformed as a result of the astute management and application of IT

The International Conference on Information Systems (ICIS) [3] is the most prestigious gathering of I/S academics and research-oriented practitioners in the world. Every year its 45 or so papers and panel presentations are selected from over 200 submissions, and the ICIS Proceedings, available on CD-ROM through 2000, are in the permanent collections of libraries throughout the world. The Conference activities are primarily delivered by and for academics, though many of the papers and panels have a strong professional orientation.

Of special interest to me is that ICIS invites nominations for the ACM SIGMIS Doctoral Dissertation Award Competition every year. They look for outstanding doctoral dissertations around the globe in the field of information systems. Ph.D. students who are working on Information Systems dissertations are eligible for nomination for ICIS Doctoral Consortium.

[1] http://www.nets.rwth-aachen.de/~jakobs/standards_journal/journal_home.html

[2] http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/525447/description#description

[3] http://home.aisnet.org/displaycommon.cfm?an=1&subarticlenbr=79

Academic community is not the only choice for my career. If I were to be a part of academic community some day, however, it might be the IS community. Perhaps the most well-known professional organization in the field of IS is AIS, which is The Association for Information Systems. It was founded in 1994, with the purpose of serving as the premier global organization for academics specializing in Information Systems.

AIS treat a basket of 6 journals as top journals in "IS field". They are (in alphabetical order):

European Journal of Information Systems

²       Information Systems Journal

²       Information Systems Research

²       Journal of AIS

²       Journal of MIS

²       MIS Quarterly

The Link of the journal ranking is

 http://ais.affiniscape.com/displaycommon.cfm?an=1&subarticlenbr=432

In this posting, I would like to present a senior PhD student: PHILLIP J. AYOUB, the person who at the same research center (EII) with me. The first impression to me is that he is big and tall guy, but very easy-going, always with smiles on his face. Phill, is his nick name.

In terms of his research area, Phill examines the sociotechnical dynamics and integration of work, technology and people. He has got his papers published in a number of conferences. To name a few, they are Proceedings of the Organization Design and Management XI Annual Meeting, Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society, Proceedings of the 15th Triennial Congress of the International Ergonomics Association. In addition, Phillip has made several presentations in a variety of workshops. Remarkably, Phillip holds three pieces of patents.

Phillip is very active not only in his academic area but also in some extra-curriculum activities. He has a lot of title surrounding with him: president of Pennsylvania State University Student Chapter, head coach of men's club soccer team, Rock Climbing Supervisor and members of Aircraft Owners and pilots association.

It is really amazing to me that Phillip is a well-developed person. How can a man be successful in so many aspects of his career? I guess it is attributed to his great enthusiasm to life and excellent skills of time management.

My advisor is Dr. Angsana Techatassanasoontorn. Just like many other Thai, she has a pretty long last name. So far as I know, she is the only Thai professor at University Park. Puck (who is a Thai student in IST) once told me that there was a student in penn state who wanted to conduct an interview with a Thai professor. He searched the whole faculty list and surprisingly, he found Dr. Angsana is the only one.

Dr. Angsana has got her family with her in State College. She has a very adorable daughter. But I don't think I have the liberty to post her daughter's photo. Dr. Angsana's husband also works here. As for her hobbies, she likes yoga and takes yoga courses every Friday.

Dr. Angsana has a relatively rich experience in terms of her career. Graduating from the best university in Thailand, she starts off her career as a programmer in two companies sequentially. At this job, Dr. angsana got her passion of using knowledge to teach and train others. About fifteen years ago, she went to Arizona Univ. to further her master degree with concentration on MIS. After that, she came back to Thailand and worked as a college instructor for seven years. In 2000, she began her PhD training at Univ. of Minnesota, which has the largest MIS center in the world. The department chair and well-known scholar in the field of MIS, Professor Robert J. Kauffman is the very advisor of her. In 2005 she came to Penn State as an instructor and then become an assistant professor of IST.

As a young professor, Dr. Angsana doesn't have a fancy CV with a long list of publications. Nevertheless, I can tell that she is pretty knowledgeable. I feel very lucky to choose her as my advisor and work with her. I am her research assistant from the very beginning. She teaches me, trains me and cultivates me a lot and shows the right ways of doing research, rather than just simply assigning me some jobs while not paying too much attention to how to pull them through. That is something more than a relationship between employers and employee. I still remember some hard times in the first academic year and she is always the person I can fall back on. She gives me a lot of encouragement and compliment. I would say she is my advisor academically as well as mentally. For those who are considering applying IST and choosing advisors, believe me, Dr. Angsana is a good choice.