The Association for Information Systems (AIS) nominates one exceptional volunteer every month to be in their volunteer spotlight. Martha Garcia-Murillo, associate professor and director of the M.S. in telecommunications and network management program at the School of Information Studies (iSchool), was selected as the April 2010 spotlight for her work on the Latin American and Caribbean Association for Information Systems.
Garcia-Murillo and her team began the Latin American Mini-track at the 2000 Americas Conference on Information Systems (AMCIS) in Long Beach. The mini-track, which originally consisted of eight researchers, has continued to grow and evolve to include several hundred researchers.
In 2006, the AMCIS was held in Mexico City, making it the first time AMCIS was held outside of the United States. Garcia-Murillo and her team acted as chairs in Mexico City, writing a large track of Latin American papers in Spanish as well as offering a tutorial training session on information systems research for Latin American researchers. This year’s conference in Lima will be the second AMCIS held out of the United States.
Garcia-Murillo is also recognized for her work establishing RELCASI (Revista Latinoamericana y del Caribe de la Associación de Sistemas de Información, Journal of the Association for Information Systems for Latin American and the Caribbean).
The AIS was founded in 1994 to be a global organization for academics specializing in information systems. Today the AIS are an international professional society consisting of 4,000 members from 90 countries and a key player in the advancement of the information systems academic community.
Garcia-Murillo earned an M.S. in economics and a Ph.D. in political economy and public policy from the University of Southern California. She advises the iSchool’s Black and Latino Information Studies Support student group, and organizes its annual BLISTS Leadership Program.
Before coming to Syracuse, she worked at USC’s Center for Telecommunications Management where she was involved in developing industry sponsored reports in telecommunications and cable. She also worked as a regulatory officer at the International Telecommunications Union in Geneva, Switzerland, where she wrote the working document for the negotiations among Central American countries for the harmonization of telecommunications regulation in the region.