I am originally from India. I like reading. My first job opportunity took me out of India to Germany, that is where I started looking into academic more seriously, in an interesting way. In German system, student work with professional and intermix between the industry and university system quite intrigued me at that time. And then I joined the academic career, through a PhD program at the University of Michigan. After PhD, I went to work in Singapore before coming here to Pittsburgh six years ago.

I am at business school here, we have typical bachelor's, masters and PhD programs setup. In the bachelor's program, a big component of University's business bachelor's program, it has specialization in multiple disciplines, traditional business discipline. The most popular ones here are marketing, finance, accounting and focus on ethics and leadership. The IS program is smaller when compared to all of the other programs. It is a very interdisciplinary program. We take about two students per area in PhD program overall.

Two things struck me, at the master's level, specialized masters level, a full debate on what is information system is still ongoing in many applicants' mind. In terms of whether they should be technically focused or rather they should be business oriented. Whatever that might mean, these question constantly come at the masters level. And I'm also very puzzled by that notion of thinking one or the another, rather than combining them both in many useful ways. I think as a community we need to dispel, that you should be either technical or business related, you could be both. I think we should advertise and make that more accessible way of thinking for our candidates at the master's level. At the PhD level, I think there are even more misconceptions, particularly prone because of the departmental way many of our schools are organized. Application procedure and the way the candidates are thinking about it, are still there in the boundaries between disciplines. And I think as a community we can do more to help overcome these sort of misconceptions.