Sixth President of AIS: Michael Vitale

Michael Vitale’s presidency of AIS in 2000-2001 followed the world’s failure to collapse due to the Y2K problem. During his term, he was involved in more mundane, but important matters for the association. Perhaps the most important was planning how ICIS, then an independent meeting, would be folded into AIS. Necessary actions included creating a new non-profit corporate structure, drawing up the necessary consolidation paperwork, revising the AIS constitution, reviewing and updating other legal documents, and refining the functions and procedures for the Atlanta office. The consolidation of AIS and ICIS was formally celebrated at a dinner during ICIS 2000 in New Orleans.

In addition to the merger, decisions were taken:

• For AIS to participate in curriculum and accreditation efforts. 
• To conduct a periodic member survey.

Michael Vitale is the director at the Asia Pacific Centre for Science and Wealth Creation at Monash University in Melbourne and holds a professorship there. He focuses his teaching, research, and consulting on commercialization of innovation, particularly in biotechnology. He also undertakes research into the creation of wealth from science, and works with Monash Scientific researchers, commercialization professionals, and external venture capitalists and business people in applying the center's skills and theory to the practical conversion of Monash scientific research output into wealth.

Before joining Monash, Michael held a joint professorial appointment at the Melbourne Business School (MBS) and the Australia New Zealand School of Government (ANZSOG). At MBS, he was the director of the innovation research program. At ANZOG he focused on IT governance and innovation in the public sector.

Michael was dean and director of the Australian Graduate School of Management (AGSM) in 2001-2002 after having been a professor in the Centre for Management of IT at the Melbourne Business School and the Foundation Professor of Information Systems and head of the Information Systems Department at the University of Melbourne.

Prior to coming to Australia, he was a fellow at the Ernst & Young Center for Business Innovation in Boston and an associate professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School where he wrote more than 50 case studies on the use of information technology in organizations. His industry experience includes four years as vice president of Technology and Corporate Services at the Prudential Insurance Company of America.

Michael served on the editorial boards of MIS Quarterly (senior editor), Information Systems Research (associate editor), Journal of Strategic Information Systems (Asia Pacific editor), and Information Systems Journal (editorial board member). He was the program co-chair for the Australian Conference on Information Systems in 2000, the co-chair of the support committee for the International Conference on Information Systems in 2000, and a member of the Council for the Australian Computer Society in 1997-1998. He is a fellow of AIS.

BA (Mathematics), 1982, Oakland University; PhD (Mathematics), 1972, Dartmouth; MBA, 1982, Harvard University.