Two months before receiving her master’s degree from Wilmington University in May, Nitika Tanuboddi added a significant achievement to her résumé: the Graduate Student Research Award from Epsilon Pi Tau (EPT) Honor Society, the leading international honor society for technology. 

Tanuboddi was one of 11 regional winners in the William Everett Warner Awards Program, named after the founder of EPT. The awards were presented in March, at the International Technology & Engineering Educators Association annual conference, held in Orlando. 

Tanuboddi, who earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Journalism in her native India, enrolled at WilmU in 2020 in the Information System Technology graduate program, with a concentration in Information Assurance. She developed the research paper that earned her the award, AI Solutions for Today’s E-Commerce Evolution, as part of the Field Experience/Internship course taught by Adjunct Professor Dr. Bonnie Whitlock. 

“Professor Whitlock was so encouraging while we were choosing our projects, and guided us through the process,” Tanuboddi says. In doing preliminary research to decide on her topic, Tanuboddi says she learned that artificial intelligence has had a significant role in the growing e-commerce industry, particularly during the pandemic. “That’s when I came up with my topic,” she says.  

She says her research demonstrated that “AI has helped us in the e-commerce field not only in terms of our shopping needs, but also through technological advancements like chatbots, voice assistants, etc. That has led to more consumers enjoying the big shift to shopping online, from the comfort of our homes, rather than in stores.”

Tanuboddi came to the United States in 2017 and lives in Newark with her husband. With her master’s in Information Security, she hopes to become a business analyst in the banking industry or in information technology.

—Bob Yearick