Georgia Tech’s 2017 Homecoming Reunion Weekend

Georgia Tech
Image: gtalumni.org

An IT executive with 20 years of experience, Antoine Chaya is the senior director of strategic accounts at Oracle Corporation in Redwood Shores, California. Antoine Chaya holds a PhD in information technology management from Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech), which will hold its Homecoming Reunion Weekend from October 19 through 21, 2017.

Georgia Tech’s 2017 Homecoming Reunion Weekend will kick off with a reception at 6:30 on Friday in the GT Global Learning Center. At 10:00 a.m. on Saturday, attendees will have the opportunity to meet current students during the Student Panel: Student Life at Tech Today, followed by presentations on Georgia Tech traditions at 11:30.

Saturday will also feature a President’s Update and a Faculty Feature presentation by Dr. Sy Goodman, a professor of international affairs and computing in the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs. On Sunday, Georgia Tech alumni can attend the Ramblin’ Wreck Parade prior to the football game against Wake Forest.

For questions regarding the Homecoming Reunion Weekend, call 404-385-5460 or send an e-mail to homecoming@gtalumni.org.

New Georgia Tech-Designed Interface May Redefine Robotic Control

Robotic Control
Image: recode.net

A senior business administrator with a wealth of experience in the technology sector, Antoine Chaya serves as senior director of strategic accounts with the Oracle Corporation. Before joining this Redwood Shores, California-based organization in 2006, he served as managing director of Global Crown Capital in San Francisco, California, and as director of consulting with the offices of the Oracle Corporation in Atlanta, Georgia. Antoine Chaya laid the foundation for his successful career with a Ph.D. in IT management from the Georgia Institute of Technology.

Commonly known as Georgia Tech, the Georgia Institute of Technology has a longstanding reputation for innovative technological research and development. In April 2017, Georgia Tech researchers announced the creation of a new computer interface that may revolutionize the way technicians control robots.

Traditional robotic control interfaces consist of a complex series of rings and arrows that appear on a computer monitor. To move a robot or get it to perform a specific task, individuals must manually turn and/or adjust each of these rings and arrows by clicking on them with a mouse. Although robotics professionals have become quite adept at this traditional system, those without years of targeted expertise in the field have found it awkward and error-prone.

By contrast, the new Georgia Tech interface is far simpler and more efficient. It promises to save a great deal of time in training and operational processes. Eliminating the rings-and-arrows system entirely, the new interface allows users to simply point and click on a particular item. The robot then will automatically go into motion to interact with that item in a specific way.

Wines Grown in Napa Valley

Napa Valley Wine Country
Image: napavalley.com

A graduate of Georgia Institute of Technology with a PhD in information technology management, Antoine Chaya serves as senior director of strategic accounts at Oracle Corporation. In his free time, Antoine Chaya enjoys sampling wines in California’s Napa Valley Wine Country.

One of the most well-known wine regions in the United States, Napa Valley offers a number of high-quality wines to try. The following are just a few of the most popular.

1. Cabernet Sauvignon. The most widely grown grape variety in Napa Valley, Cabernet Sauvignon grows well in the valley’s warm, dry climate. The Cabernet Sauvignons produced in the valley are recognized as some of the best in the world.

2. Merlot. Although Merlot now serves as a varietal wine itself, in the past winemakers typically blended it with other wines such as Cabernet Sauvignon. Merlot is the second most common wine produced in Napa Valley.

3. Pinot Noir. Grown in the cool Los Carneros district of Napa Valley, Pinot Noir is the third most common wine grown in the valley and stands out as one of few reds that go well with seafood.

How to Store Red Wine After Opening a Bottle

Wine Storage
Image: latintimes.com

Software executive Antoine Chaya serves as senior director of strategic accounts with Oracle Corporation in Redwood Shores, California. Outside of his work in the software sector, Antoine Chaya enjoys learning about fine wines.

After opening a bottle of red wine, there are several ways to preserve it if you fail to finish off the bottle. When red wine comes into contact with the air, it reacts with oxygen to form vinegar. As such, red wine preservation often focuses on minimizing contact with atmospheric oxygen.

To reduce oxygen exposure, you can re-cork the wine after opening it and keep it in a cool, dark place. Because low temperatures slow down the reaction with oxygen, the refrigerator is an ideal place to keep opened red wine bottles. There are also countless wine preservation products on the market, some of which function better than others. Wine preservers typically reduce oxygen exposure by pumping an inert gas into the bottle or creating a vacuum within the bottle.

Georgia Institute of Technology MBA Program Concentrations

Georgia Institute of Technology MBA Program
Image: scheller.gatech.edu

Before becoming senior director of strategic accounts for the Oracle Corporation, Dr. Antoine Chaya earned his master of business administration from the Georgia Institute of Technology before going on to earn his PhD from the same institution. Now based in San Francisco, Antoine Chaya graduated from his MBA program with a concentration in management.

The Georgia Institute of Technology MBA program requires students to take three electives, or nine credit hours, to earn a concentration in a specific area. Students can spread their electives out more broadly if they wish, but they may accumulate up to three concentrations over the course of their 33 hours of electives. Concentrations are split into two broad categories: functional and interdisciplinary.

Functional concentrations focus on aspects of business that apply to almost any organization. Topics including business law, marketing, and strategic management are common functional concentrations. Interdisciplinary concentrations, meanwhile, bring in knowledge from cultural studies or more specific fields, such as real estate. Georgia Tech offers interdisciplinary concentrations in such areas as international business and strategic sustainability.

Differences Between Red and White Wine Production

Wine
Image: winery.csu.edu

Serving as Oracle Corporation’s senior director of strategic accounts since 2006, Dr. Antoine Chaya has a PhD in information technology management, as well as numerous years of experience in the information technology field. When he isn’t working, Antoine Chaya likes to indulge in Napa Valley wines.

Napa Valley wineries offer a range of red and white wines. But what are the differences between the two, besides color? Though both types of wine are made from grapes, the processes used to make red and white wine differ slightly. White wine can be produced from either dark- or light-colored grapes, while red wine is made exclusively using dark-colored grapes. This is because the color of wine depends on the amount of tannin, a naturally occurring polyphenol, found in the skins, seeds, and stems of grapes. The production of white, or colorless, wine involves fermenting grape juice. On the other hand, red wine is made by fermenting grape juice, pieces of grapes, and grape stems. Fermenting all parts of the grapes effectively preserves the tannins, lending the wine its standard reddish quality.

The Napa Valley’s Oldest Winery

Beringer, Napa Valley
Image: beringer.com

As senior director of strategic accounts at Oracle, Antoine Chaya brings to bear extensive experience in information technology and management. In his spare time, Antoine Chaya enjoys exploring the wines of the Napa Valley.

The Napa Valley is a popular region for producing New World wines, and Beringer is the oldest winery in the region. Brothers Frederick and Jacob Beringer completed their first year of wine production in 1876.

The winery offers tours to their guests to explore the Old Winery’s historic wine tunnels or the Rhine House mansion, constructed in 1884 for Frederick Beringer. Rhine House now houses a tasting room where guests can try wines paired with cheese or chocolate. Guests may also wish to explore the large collection of handcrafted Victorian stained glass windows in Rhine House, impressive even for the 1880s, when homes might only have one or two such windows. Each year on Founder’s Day, the winery features tastings, live music, and wine seminars.

Simple Tips for Napa Wine Tasting

Napa Wine Tasting
Image: napavalley.com

Dr. Antoine Chaya is an MBA and PhD graduate of the Georgia Institute of Technology. Having lived and worked in and around San Francisco, Dr. Antoine Chaya is familiar with the wines of Napa Valley. When an oenophile ventures to Napa to taste its wines firsthand, these wine tasting tips will help make the experience pleasant and comprehensive.

–Wine is very sensitive to temperature, and wrapping a hand around the bowl of the glass can cause the wine to warm, affecting the taste. To taste wine as it was meant to be tasted, hold the glass by its stem.

–Gently swirling wine within a glass allows the liquid to aerate after being pressurized within a bottle. Aeration forces oxygen into the wine and unleashes the flavor.

–The purpose of a wine tasting is to taste wine rather than to drink it. By allowing the wine to touch every corner of your palate, and then gently spitting it out, you allow the wine’s vapors to exit through your nostrils, giving you a well-rounded taste.

–Drier, lighter wines tend to have less residual sugars than their heavier, sweeter counterparts. When planning your tasting, aim to sample light wines toward the beginning of your experience and dark wines toward the end for the best effect.

Analyzing the Cost-Effectiveness of Corporate IT Investments

Antoine Chaya earned a PhD in information technology (IT) management from the Georgia Institute of Technology (GT). During his studies, Antoine Chaya collaborated with GT professor Sabyasachi Mitra to publish a paper on analyzing the cost-effectiveness of corporate IT investments in 1996. Their study assessed the IT budgets of more than 400 large and medium-sized businesses in the United States.

The study showed that since the 1970s corporate IT investments had increased dramatically. However, it was difficult to quantify the benefits derived from these IT investments. In fact, some research showed a drop in productivity for information workers as companies ramped up their IT investments. Nonetheless, the 1996 GT study found that higher IT investments correlated to lower average production costs as well as total costs. In addition, the GT study determined that large companies typically spend more on IT as a percentage of revenues when compared to smaller firms.

IT continues to be a major area of investment for businesses of all sizes today. A recent survey of IT executives found that more than 40 percent of those surveyed expected their budgets to grow in 2015.

Early Research on Link between IT Investment and Financial Performance

Antoine Chaya leverages his extensive expertise in information technology to serve as the senior director of strategic accounts for Oracle Corporation in Redwood Shores, California. While working on his PhD at the Georgia Institute of Technology, Antoine Chaya co-authored a paper for the 29th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, which was titled Exploring the Relationships between IT Investments and Organizational Performance: Preliminary Empirical Evidence.

As noted in the paper’s abstract, businesses invested nearly a trillion dollars, or 50 percent of capital expenditures, into their IT capabilities during the 1980s. Firms made these outlays despite the fact that there were no data quantifying the return on investment (ROI) for doing so. The researchers attempted to determine whether there was a connection between a company’s information technology (IT) expenditures and its financial performance.

The study evaluated five years of financial and IT data from more than 600 large and mid-sized U.S. businesses. The researchers determined that greater IT investments were linked with lower average total costs and production costs, but higher average overhead expenses. Additionally, the authors concluded there was generally a delay between IT-related spending and ROI. A subsequent publication on the topic by Antoine Chaya and his co-investigator found that larger corporations typically allocate a greater percentage of their revenue to IT than smaller companies.