Over the past several years, advances in information communication technologies have changed the way companies and employees do business worldwide.

To highlight how technology can best be used to improve an organization’s business models, Carnegie Mellon Pittsburgh recently hosted the fourth annual Undergraduate Conference in Information Systems. The conference attracted nearly 50 of the world’s brightest students as well as internationally renowned experts.

“The first three conferences were held at Carnegie Mellon Qatar, and we brought it to Pittsburgh this year to appeal to more students from the Americas and make it a truly global event,” said Jeria Quesenberry, associate teaching professor of information systems in Carnegie Mellon’s Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences.

“It’s a really good opportunity for students to present their research and receive feedback from their peers and faculty members who encounter information technology problems in different cultural contexts,” she added.

Kevin Chen, a senior in information systems, presented on the United States’ HealthCare.gov and what went wrong with the site’s infamous launch last fall.

“HealthCare.gov is really a case study on how to mess an IT project up,” Chen said. “When it launched on October 1, there were a ton of errors and it has a success rate of only one percent.”

Chen walked the conference attendees through how everything went wrong, with a focus on people, process and product mistakes.

“I believe people is the most important category, because without the right team, it’s not going to work,” he said. “The government used the cheapest option with a lower quality staff. And, they did zero user testing!”

Chen also pointed out how overly optimistic schedules and a missed and evolving project scope contributed to the disastrous rollout. To fix the problem, he recommended changing the hiring process for the contracting firm, increasing user input, using agile software methods and phasing in more complicated features in the future.

Princeton University’s Dale Markowitz, a junior computer science student, presented her findings on bringing affordable Internet access to people in developing countries. Markowitz’s solution to increasing bandwidth is a low-cost piece of hardware called “BeagleCache.”

Markowitz won the “Most Promising Researcher” award at the conference for her detailed explanation of testing the device and describing its capabilities.

Additional awards were given to Taylor Poulos from CMU Pittsburgh, for best presentation on “How Hackathons Will Change IS Students” and Daniel Cheweiky from CMU-Qatar, for the best paper, “Evaluating the Use of Emerging Technologies in Education.”

CMU Pittsburgh students Michael Ferraco, Dillon Grove, Nathan Hahn and Jonathan Miller won first place in the poster competition for “GreenLight,” their wireless, green energy lighting system.

The event was commenced by Ilker Baybars, dean and CEO of Carnegie Mellon University in Qatar and the George Leland Bach Chair and Professor of Operations Management at the Tepper School of Business. During his opening remarks, he recognized that the conference program was a collaborative effort with input from faculty and staff at Carnegie Mellon in both Pittsburgh and Qatar. Baybars also expressed his excitement to see so many undergraduate students from different universities present their research at the conference.

Raul Valdes-Perez, a Carnegie Mellon alumnus who co-founded the business software company Vivisimo in 2000, gave the keynote lecture, “Advice is for Winners.” Valdes-Perez drew on his experiences as an observer, traveler, father, academic research scientist, board member and software Internet entrepreneur for guidance on how to seek advice for making better career and life decisions. Valdes-Perez was a 2007 Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year (North Central) and the Pittsburgh Venture Capital Association 2013 Outstanding Entrepreneur.

“It was remarkable to see a group of students – from different universities, regions and backgrounds – discussing and sharing their research work. It was the type of experience that extends the boundaries of a typical college classroom. UCIS gave students the opportunity to live the mission of the University – to exchange ideas in an environment where discovery, creativity, and personal and professional development were able to flourish,” Quesenberry said.

Quesenberry co-chaired the conference with Selma Limam Mansar and Divakaran Liginlal, both associate teaching professors of information systems at CMU Qatar.

For more information, visit http://qatar.cmu.edu/ucis.