Dmitry Zhdanov


Eight Outstanding School of Business Professors Earn 2015 Faculty Awards

A professor who used chocolate chip cookies to teach about quality control, three researchers who had work published in top journals, and an educator who vigorously promoted the School of Business were among the 2015 Faculty Award recipients.

“This year we honored eight outstanding faculty members for their exceptional research, teaching and leadership achievements,” said Associate Dean Sulin Ba. “The selection process was particularly difficult due to the dozens of impressive nominees. We are fortunate to have such talented, creative and remarkable colleagues.”Continue Reading


Upperclassman Yue Zhu Wins $5,000 Scholarship

Yue Zhu, an upperclassman in the School of Business, has won a $5,000 scholarship from the International Information Systems Security Certification Consortium (ISC)2, an organization that promotes international cyber security.

Zhu, who has a cumulative GPA of 3.95, said he hopes to pursue information security as a career after graduation.

“Yue is an exceptional student,” said Professor Dmitry Zhdanov, who is his academic adviser. Last year Zhu was recognized with UConn’s Outstanding MIS Junior Scholarship. He also participated in the CoMIS National Case Competition last April, in which Team UConn won the second place out of 12 colleges from around nation.

The ISC2 Foundation is an international charitable trust that aims to empower students, teachers and the general public to secure their “online life” with cybersecurity education and awareness programs and to fill society’s need for trained cybersecurity professionals.

“This is a highly prestigious scholarship in the information security field, coming from the organization which is a gold standard in information security excellence,” Zhdanov said, noting that Ryan Fried won it as a UConn student in 2012. “It is safe to say that our program is producing top-notch talent.”

Zhu grew up in China, which is still his home, but has been attending U.S. schools since the 11th grade. Although a junior, he has already accumulated enough credits to graduate.


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MIS Students Place 2nd in 2014 CoMIS Competition

CoMIS

Imagine having just 24 hours to solve your company’s most pressing IT challenge. Imagine, then, presenting a solution to your executive board immediately thereafter. This scenario mirrors the challenge that student teams faced at the third annual Competition on Management Information Systems (CoMIS), held at the University of Minnesota’s Carlson School of Management April 2 – 5.

Joining top teams from around the United States, including Arizona, Arizona State, Emory, Georgia Tech, Indiana, Maryland, Michigan State, Minnesota, Texas-Austin, and Texas-Dallas, the UConn team—led by assistant professor of OPIM Dmitry Zhdanov—was represented by three undergraduate upperclassmen: Tyler Campbell ’14Dan Marquis ’14, and Yue Zhu ’14, all MIS majors. Sean Priest ’15 was instrumental on the practice squad.

After two days of educational and networking events with corporate sponsors, each team was presented with the case and given 24 hours to deliberate. Cases were submitted the following morning, and the CoMIS judging panel evaluated each team on a 20-minute presentation of their recommendations followed by a 10-minute Q&A session.

The top team from each group presented in the final round on Saturday afternoon, and winners were announced at an Awards Banquet on Saturday evening.

For the second time in three years, the UConn team placed in the final round, taking second place to the University of Minnesota for 2014. Indiana University came in third.

Please join us in congratulating the UConn team on their achievement!

Pictured (left to right): Yue Zhu, Tyler Campbell, and Daniel Marquis


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NPR Discusses MIS Recruiting with UConn OPIM Department

Dr. Ram Gopal, department head of Operations & Information Management (OPIM) at the University of Connecticut School of Business, accompanied by OPIM faculty members Ramesh Sankaranarayanan, Sudip Bhattacharjee, Dmitry Zhdanov, and students Walid Namane, Imrus Sadiq, Carlo Guerriero, and Lily Elawar chatted with Neena Satija of NPR News about the overwhelming need for MIS (IT) skills in the state job market.Continue Reading


UConn MIS Team Wins Inaugural CoMIS Case Competition

On April 4-7, University of Minnesota hosted the first of hopefully many undergraduate case competitions in the area of Management Information Systems. This event is named CoMIS and provided the students to test their business skills and information systems knowledge against an elite group of competitors from all around the USA. Ten leading universities sent their representatives to compete, including Arizona, Arizona State, Texas-Austin, Texas-Dallas, Minnesota, Minnesota State, Indiana, Maryland, Utah and UConn.

UConn team was represented by Sebastian Guzera(MIS Senior), Walid Namane(MIS Junior) and Michael Whiteman(MIS Junior). Dmitry  Zhdanov served as the team’s coach. It is my great pleasure to inform you that UConn team became the winners of this inaugural competition.

Teams were given 24 hours to analyze a case and prepare their presentations. Case sponsor and topic were not known in advance; to everyone’s surprise and excitement, the case was about Minnesota Wild – a professional hockey team playing in the NHL. Students were asked to identify the best way for the team to boost its social media presence and turn it into revenue. As part of the case, students were given a wealth of data collected from the Wild’s Facebook page (data known as Facebook Insight). Students had to prepare a 20-minute presentation followed by an intensive Q&A session from the judges.

A panel of industry experts judged students’ performance, including two members of the Minnesota Wild front office, as well as executives from 3M, Medtronic, Ernst and Young and others. To preserve competition integrity, university affiliations were not available to the judging panel. UConn team went as Team Apollo.

The teams were broken down into three groups for the first round of the presentations. Group winners went on to the finals to give their talk one more time. UConn was matched with UT-Austin and Arizona State in group B. After winning the group, UConn’s Team Apollo went on to the final to face Utah Cyber Snipers and Maryland’s Dream Team. Utah finished second and Maryland third.

This was a fun an exciting event, many new friendships were made. The fact that our team ended up as the winners makes it even more exciting and speaks highly of the quality and dedication of our students and MIS program. We’ve set a high bar for ourselves going forward.

Pictured left to right: Jan DeGross (of MIS Quarterly) presents the CoMIS 1st place award to UConn Team – Walid Namane, Michael Whiteman, Sebastian Guzera and Dmitry Zhdanov (Coach)


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Annual Faculty Awards

At the beginning of this month, the Teaching and Research Committee met and evaluated nominations for the annual Faculty Awards.  A total of nine winners, a runner up, and two honorable mentions were awarded.

Under the Research category the winners are Sarah Rice and David Weber for Best Paper.  Their paper is titled “How Effective is Internal Control Reporting under SOZ 404? Determinants of the (Non-) Disclosure of Existing Material Weaknesses.” Continue Reading


UConn MIS student wins an information systems security scholarship from ISACA

In Fall 2010, students from the University Of Connecticut School of Business participated in an opportunity to compete for a $500 scholarship sponsored by the Greater Hartford Chapter of ISACA. ISACA is a leading independent, nonprofit, global association for the promotion of information, guidance and certifications in the field of auditing security controls for computer systems. The competition was held in conjunction with the undergraduate elective course IT Security, Governance, and Audit, offered by Professor Dmitry Zhdanov of the Department of Operations and Information Management (OPIM).

Student presentations were evaluated based on the following criteria:

Relevance of the presentation to the audit and risk management profession

  • The extent of the student’s work including depth of research, ability to communicate and synthesize the materials, approach taken and completeness of the subject matter
  • Delivery of the presentation.

This year’s award was presented to Bryan Sovinsky (pictured), a senior in Management Information Systems (MIS).  His project presentation covered the topic of Steganography, the art of concealing secret messages within ordinary computer documents, akin to writing in invisible ink. The Chapter also awarded five other participants – Gregory Coppola (MIS), Daniel Turcotte (MIS), Juan Ramos (ACES), Pathik Patel (Accounting) and Lori Gupta (Finance) – an annual membership in ISACA for their presentations which covered a wide range of topics on computer security.

The awards were presented and their achievements celebrated at a February 16, 2011 chapter meeting.

ISACA is a leading non-profit global provider of knowledge, certifications, and education on information systems (IS) assurance and security, enterprise governance and management of IT, and IT-related risk and compliance.  ISACA hosts international conferences, publishes the ISACA Journal, and develops international IS auditing and control standards, which help its constituents ensure trust in, and value from, information systems. ISACA also advances and attests IT skills and knowledge through the globally respected Certified Information Systems Auditor™ (CISA®), Certified Information Security Manager® (CISM®), Certified in the Governance of Enterprise IT® (CGEIT®) and Certified in Risk and Information Systems Control™ (CRISC™) designations.

From 1978, the Greater Hartford Chapter of ISACA has promoted the professional education and development of its members in the field of technology auditing and risk management.  For more information, visit .

The Department of Operations and Information Management (OPIM), which offers the highly acclaimed Management Information Systems (MIS) undergraduate program, is consistently ranked in the top 25 in information systems graduate education (US News) and among the most productive and impactful research departments in the world (OR/MS Today, Communications of the ACM, Communications of the AIS, and AISNET). For more information, visit http://www.business.uconn.edu/opim/


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