UWF student wins Best Paper Award at international conference
The International Conference of Accounting, Business, Leadership and Information Management brings together professionals from countries around the world to network with one another. The conference, which was held May 15 and 16 in New Orleans, evaluated papers submitted by undergraduate and graduate students from universities around the world and selected three to win a Best Paper Award.
One of these awards went to Hi Tran, a senior in the College of Business at the University of West Florida, majoring in Management Information Systems. The paper, “A model on users’ trustiness in privacy and security in ubiquitous computing,” was co-authored with June Wei, associate professor, MIS.
“It was an amazing experience,” said Tran, “being able to meet other professionals from around the world, listen to the various lectures and be exposed to all that’s happening in my field.”
Tran’s particular field of interest is ubiquitous commerce, which is defined by Richard Watson, a scholar on the subject, as “the use of ubiquitous networks to support personalized and uninterrupted communications and transactions between a firm and its various stakeholders to provide a level of value over, above, and beyond traditional commerce.”
Tran’s paper investigates the factors that influence the adoption of u-commerce, mainly users’ trustiness in privacy and security.
“Privacy and security are very different, but both are important to people,” said Tran. “Privacy concerns include unauthorized use and distribution of personal information. Security concerns include system failures and information integrity. We need to build trust, a belief that the system works as it should.”
Tran was also grateful for the contributions of his advisor, June Wei.
“June was always encouraging me to make continuous improvements on the paper,” said Tran. “I believe that factor improved the quality of the paper significantly.”
In addition to winning the award, the conference allowed for Tran to meet professionals in his chosen field and gather information from those he respects.
“I feel very fortunate that I was able to go,” said Tran. “I gleaned a lot of information from my mentors and it helped me with my consideration for graduate school.”
Tran also spent the summer interning in Washington D.C. at the Federal Aviation Administration headquarters. He was able to help develop an information system that met the needs for monitoring daily working activities at the Office of Airports Compliance and Field Operation. He was also able to take part in building the imagery tracking system for the Airport Geographic Information System.
“The internship only lasted for 10 weeks but it made a difference in my professional and personal development,” said Tran.
For more information on MIS, visit uwf.edu/management.
