I used to think Twitter was a fad that was going to pass, despite the constant feedback about its utility that I was receiving from Smith students. I couldn’t imagine why anyone would want another piece of “keep in touch” technology.

Some people’s career paths advance in a straight line. Hart Rossman, Vice President and Chief Technology Officer of Cybersecurity Services and Solutions for Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), has a career that seems to be growing in ever-widening circles.

The Smith School is happy to welcome the following new professors to the school: Accounting & Information Assurance Hanna Lee Derek Johnson Decisions, Operations & Information Technologies Tunay Tunca Inbal Yahav Ilya O. Ryzhov Pamela Armstrong Ilchul Yoon Rui Zhao

The Smith School’s Center for Health Information and Decision Systems (CHIDS) has several ongoing projects exploring the challenges involved with integrating social media into healthcare.

P.K. Kannan, Harvey Sanders Associate Professor of Marketing and director of the Center for Excellence in Service, and Ai-Mei Chang, professor of systems management at UMUC , is studying how the web affects interactions between government agencies and the public.

Look for more big-impact research from Smith faculty in the area of social media. The following working papers are available on SSRN. Contact individual faculty members for more information about their specific area of study.

When a video of unhygienic behavior by a Domino’s Pizza employee went viral on YouTube and came to the attention of bloggers nationwide, company management turned to Twitter to address the issue and ease its customers’ food safety concerns. The episode was a graphic (revoltingly graphic!) depiction of the way online communities and the content they create have the power to boost a company’s sales and reputation, or sink it for good.

Research by Bruce Golden Surgeons discharge patients to ensure that their surgeries will not be cancelled for a lack of recovery beds.

Research by P.K. Kannan and Amna Kirmani Consumers are willing to buy multiple formats of content when they can count on consistent quality and use the formats in different ways.

Research by Vojislav Maksimovic Innovative firms are more victimized than other firms in emerging economies.