Welcome to the 2nd Annual Statistical Challenges in Electronic Commerce Research Symposium!  The MIS Research Center , in cooperation with the Biostatistics Division of the School of Public Health , the Computer Science and Electrical Engineering Department of the Institute of Technology , and the Departments of Marketing/Logistics Management and Information/Decision Science of the Carlson School of Management, is pleased to host this research symposium.   The focus is on interdisciplinary work involving the use of statistical methods in the development of e-commerce and Internet-related research. This event follows up the inaugural event held at the R. H. Smith School of Management at the University of Maryland last year.

With the pioneering work in 2005 of our University of Maryland Statistics colleagues, Wolfgang Jank and Galit Shmueli, the research symposium that we put together this year is built on a firm foundation of scholarly interest and researcher participation.   Thank you, Galit and Wolfgang, for your good ideas!

The purpose of the symposium is to showcase issues and solutions at the interface of Statistics, Econometrics, Computer Science and Data Mining as they relate to current e-commerce and technology research.  The coverage touches on healthcare services, e-markets, marketing strategy, financial services, auctions, Internet-based selling and strategic pricing, e-procurement, customer relationship management, IT investments, and other current topics.  Based on the submissions we received and the participants who have registered, this symposium brings together a diverse and interesting group of university faculty and business professionals from the Statistics, Economics, Marketing, Computer Science, IS, Public Affairs and Public Health disciplines for the presentation and development of research in the e-commerce space.

We would like to thank Andrew Odlyzko, Director of the Digital Technology Center , ADC Professor of Mathematics, and Assistant Vice President for Research at the University of Minnesota , for participating in this research symposium and offering the opening keynote talk.  Andrew is a renaissance man among our university faculty, with diverse interests—including information security, mathematics, economics, e-commerce, and the history of the railroad industry—who came to us from ATT Bell Labs.  If you want to get into an interesting conversation with Andrew, ask him about whether the world is really flat, or tell him your secrets for raising “unfettered” research funding in the university environment.   You can learn more about Andrew Odlyzko, his work with the DTC (www.dtc.umn.edu), his writing and his background by visiting his Web page (www.dtc.umn.edu/~odlyzko/).

Our second keynote speaker, recently returned from Europe , is Andreas Weigend of Weigend Associates LLC, a frequent industry-university speaker and global traveler/corporate consultant.   Andreas has recently had visiting university appointments at Tsinghua University , Shanghai Jiaotong University , and Singapore National University .  He is currently teaching data mining and e-business at Stanford University , and was Chief Scientist at Amazon.com from 2002-2004.  Andreas’ unique perspectives on data mining, the “search society,” and the opportunity to take advantage of new infrastructures for knowledge discovery in processes, organizations and markets fit well with the themes of this symposium.  We are happy to have him with us on Tuesday.  To learn more about Andreas, visit www.weigend.com.     

We also are delighted to have you with us, representing your discipline, your school and university, and your individual research interests.  We hope that the program and events in SCEC 2006 this year, and the extent of intellectual interactions that occur during these two days, May 22 and 23, will further stimulate your interest in the research problems in this area, and lead to new insights for your own work and new collaborations.