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Matt Mullarkey Awarded Core Fulbright Scholarship to Study in Ireland

By Keith Morelli

TAMPA (February 11, 2019) -- Matt Mullarkey, instructor with the Information Systems and Decision Sciences Department and director of the DBA program at the University of South Florida’s Muma College of Business, has been awarded a Fulbright scholarship. He became the 10th current faculty member of the college to have received the honor over the past four years.

Mullarkey, who teaches research methods and systems analysis and who was the 2016 recipient of the National Science Foundation I-Corps National Grant, received the letter notifying him of his Fulbright Scholar Core Faculty Grant on Feb. 6.

His grant, titled “Developing Information Systems Design Principles for Smart-City Districts” will allow him to travel to Ireland over a five-month period next spring and partner with researchers at the National University of Ireland, Maynooth; the Irish Innovation Value Institute, LERO Ireland and the Dublin City Council’s Smart Docklands team.

He hopes to find out about how Dublin is implementing the smart-city design and bring those insights back to the Tampa Bay area.

 “The research will investigate the working models for information systems and technologies within a smart city district,” he said, “with the express intent of sharing that knowledge with the cities of Tampa and St Petersburg,” he said. “Our goal is to better understand the efforts that exist in the Dublin City Docklands to share them specifically with the city districts, business and community leaders across the greater Tampa Bay.”

The Dublin City Docklands is a unique district within a city that has close parallels to the Tampa Bay community, Mullarkey said. The Docklands district – about 230 acres housing dozens of high tech, banking, finance, sales and services centers – is also home to more than 24,000 residents and supports another 45,000 who travel in an out to work each day. The district has more than two dozen smart city experiments ongoing, he said, and is working with government, business and community leaders to study and upgrade these efforts.

“All cities are dealing with people who are more and more connected through digital devices and platforms to each other and to organizations and services in the city,” he said. “The typical city, in turn, is more and more connected through networked sensors to the activities of and delivery of services to those people.

“The challenge all our cities face is to develop effective approaches to connecting people to services that promote healthy living and commuting within the city, intelligent design of innovative services that take full advantage of the latest technologies, and integrate technologies that foster an ethical, secure sharing economy within the city,” he said. “Ultimately, the cities that accomplish these goals stand to gain an advantage as a destination to live and work.”

Mullarkey said he was “overjoyed” when he got the letter informing him of the grant.

“I am truly humbled by the confidence shown by the Fulbright Commission in my scholarship,” he said. “I believe the award will give us a unique opportunity to learn from a leading smart-city community in Dublin and share those learnings across the greater Tampa Bay region. We have an opportunity to bridge our cities through this academically conducted but practice-inspired research effort.”

Mullarkey is the 10th current business faculty member to be awarded a Fulbright scholarship over the past four years.

“I stand on the shoulders of exceptional scholars in the USF Muma College of Business,” Mullarkey said. “I am excited to continue to partner with them to ensure that I conduct a rigorous research effort that makes a meaningful contribution to knowledge and has a real impact on practice in Tampa Bay, if not even more broadly.”

The other Muma College of Business faculty Fulbright scholars:

• Sajeev Varki, associate marketing professor, was awarded a grant in April 2018 and traveled to Belarus to conduct marketing research. He teaches marketing strategy and research.
• Tim Heath, marketing professor, will take a Fulbright-sponsored visiting professorship at Vienna University of Economics and Business in Austria, later this year. He is an area editor for the Journal of Marketing and teaches courses on marketing management.
• Anol Bhattacherjee, professor in the Information Systems and Decision Sciences Department, is now in India on the Fulbright-Nehru Distinguished Chair Award for 2018-19. He will conduct research and teach at the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur.
• Dan Bradley, professor of finance, received a core scholarship in 2017 to the Instituto Superior de Ciências do Trabalho e da Empresa (ISCTE) Business School in the University Institute of Lisbon in Portugal. He holds the Lykes Chair in finance and sustainability.
• Jerry Koehler, management professor, was named a Fulbright scholar in 2016 and lectured in 2017 about management in an MBA program for professionals at Belarusian State Economic University in Minsk, Belarus. He has been with USF since 1976 and is retiring later this year.
• Grandon Gill, director of the Muma College of Business DBA program, used his Fulbright grant to travel repeatedly to the University of Cape Town in Rondebosch, South Africa, beginning in 2015, to teach faculty from various universities how to write case studies and use cases in their classes.
• James Stock, marketing professor, was named a University Distinguished Professor in 2017 and went to the Hanken School of Economics in Helsinki, Finland, on his Fulbright scholarship, lecturing and doing research on supply-chain sustainability.
• Rob Hooker, assistant marketing professor, received a Fulbright specialist grant and traveled to Stockholm, Sweden, to lecture about supply-chain management, conduct relevant research about how it's done there and open doors of collaboration.
• Moez Limayem, dean of the Muma College of Business, was the recipient of administrative Fulbright scholarship in 2018. He traveled to Japan in June to explore the Japanese higher-education landscape.

“I could not be prouder of our amazing faculty here at the Muma College of Business,” said Limayem. “They contribute in so many ways, not only to the body of knowledge here at the college, but also to the betterment of our local, national and global communities. Their groundbreaking research is impactful and insightful and I am both honored and humbled to be called their colleague.”

As a research institution, USF led the nation in the number of Fulbright scholarships awarded last year to faculty with 12. Florida State came in second with nine. Of the 12 USF Fulbright scholars that year, three came from the Muma College of Business.