5th Annual Business Research Conference a huge success

Conference winners with their trophies (undergraduate students, left photo and graduate students, right photo) and judges.

The School of Business and Public Administration (SBPA), in association with the NSF-Funded Logistics and International Trade (LIT) Analytics Center, organized the 2022 5th Annual Business Research Conference, supported by the National Science Foundation, and held on December 1, 2022. The conference originated in 2018 and focuses on student-led research projects mentored by SBPA faculty.

The semester-long research projects culminate with undergraduate and graduate research poster competitions judged by external judges from the industry and academia. Thirty-nine SBPA students with 33 posters participated in the conference—23 undergraduate students with 20 posters and 16 MBA students with 13 posters. The conference theme was “Emerging Technologies in the Global Business Environment.” The conference chairs were Dr. Alex Tan and Dr. Amit Arora, supported by the LIT Analytics Center and directed by Dr. Anshu Arora.

Dr. Amit Arora, Alicia R. Wallace, Dr. Charles Milligan, Dr. Alex Tan and Dr. Anshu Arora.

External judges from industry and academia for the event were Alicia R. Wallace, director of audience strategy, Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, AARP, Washington DC (industry keynote speaker). The academia keynote speaker was Dr. Charles Milligan, chief scientist, Homeland Protection Mission Area, The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab; Dr. John McIntyre, director of Georgia Tech Center for International Business Education & Research; Timothy Gifford, president, chief scientist, MOVIA Robotics, Inc.; Matthew Saal, digital finance specialist, International Finance Corporation, World Bank Group; and Dr. Anne Marie Zwerg, associate professor of management, University of Louisville, Kentucky.

UDC faculty advisors and judges were Dr. Julius Anyu, Dr. Malva Reid, Dr. Ravi Chinta, Dr. Anshu Arora, Dr. Racquel Brown-Gaston, Dr. Suzan Abed and Dr. Batao Chen.

Conference proceedings can be found here: 2022 Annual Conference Proceedings FINAL.pdf.  

Top three student teams from the MBA category

1st place—Stay or Leave: War Confronts International Business, by Sam Glenn (faculty advisor Dr. Amit Arora)

2nd place—Education and Evolution of AI: An Exploration of Sentient Robotics and the Potential Implications in Education, by Derek Johnson (faculty advisor Dr. Anshu Arora)

3rd place—How Humans and Robots Interact? Examining Humanoid Service Robots as a Fabric of ‘Society’ and ‘Environment’ Bernardo Heres and Olianka Wingate (faculty advisor by Dr. Anshu Arora)

Top three student teams from the undergraduate category

1st place—How Successful were Governmental Tactics in Alleviating the Effects of COVID-19 in the Food Supply Chain, by Antwan Brady and Jayla Toliver (faculty advisor Dr. Amit Arora).

2nd place—Enhancing Sustainability in Supply Chain Logistics, by Eduardo Bugay (faculty advisor Dr. Amit Arora)

3rd place—The Traveling Plant: Emerging Cannabis Industry and its Supply Chain, by Manda Burnham and Moolu Tesfai (faculty advisor Dr. Amit Arora)