Two Ball State University seniors won an award in Ireland for their work improving the reliability of computer systems at Indianapolis International Airport.
Zac Adkins and Howard Wickelman entered a Business Fellows project from last year into the International Business Informatics Case Study Competition, which took place during the week of Sept. 18 in Dublin, Ireland.
Informatics is the study of how information effects business, Adkins said.
Adkins and Wickelman won the award for best project in the cooperative category, which involves students working with professional clients.
They were the only undergraduates in the competition, with the majority of participants being master's level students from Europe, with two coming from Asia, Fred Kitchens, associate professor in the Department of Information Systems and Operations Management, said.
The two received a certificate for winning, but Adkins said the prestige was more important, and he has already met professionals interested in the work he is doing.
"It'll be unbelievable for us in the future," Adkins said. "It's going to look amazing on our resum+â-¬s."
The competition is in its first year and was designed as an immersion experience in state-of-the-art business practices and technology for students from Dublin City University, Kitchens said.
For their Business Fellows project, five students created a prototype network of servers that worked together in order to improve stability and reliability at the airport, Kitchens said.
"We need the reliability that there will always be at least one computer still working," he said. "So we proposed a system for the airport where they will have servers spread out all over the airport ground, so that if any one location has a plane run into it or a tornado comes through ... the other computers in the group will take over instantly."
People using computers around the airport will never know that the other computers were taken out, Kitchens said.
Adkins said he was very impressed with the competition, especially considering it was in its first year.
"It was such a good experience," Adkins said. "We learned so much while we were there."
One of the most important skills he learned was how to write a case study paper, Adkins said. He and Wickelman spent many hours condensing the 65-page document they submitted for Business Fellows into a 1,500 word paper for the competition.
The competition was a good idea because students are the ones doing cutting-edge research with new technologies, Kitchens said.
"Business people aren't necessarily up to speed with the latest technology," he said.
The competition included speakers, workshops and project presentations.
One of the projects presented was a plan to reorganize the emergency response system in Ireland, which is inefficient because many roads and addresses are unmarked, and caller ID is not available because it is considered a violation of privacy, Kitchens said.
The competition was a worthwhile event that Adkins and Kitchens would recommend to students in the future, they said. Kitchens said he was talking to officials at Dublin City University about starting a student exchange program.
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