Pontikes Center For Advanced Analytics and Artificial Intelligence

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Last Updated: Apr 10, 2026, 10:51 AM

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About the Pontikes Center

The Pontikes Center for Advanced Analytics and Artificial Intelligence is a first of its kind.

This unique virtual think tank combines big data and analytics with artificial intelligence to create optimum data impact.

The Pontikes Center is supported by a board of advisors which includes many of the top analytics specialist in business today. The board influences the path of collaboration and instruction, ensuring that our students have the training and knowledge they need to positively transform business. Board members also interact with students, both in the classroom and online.

The Center integrates several different industries, all of which are connected through analytics. These include: engineering, finance, health care, human resources, insurance, logistics, manufacturing and retail.

For more information about this center or the new analytics courses contact the SIU College of Business and Analytics at 618-453-2459 or at info@business.siu.edu.

Pontikes Center Director, Jim NelsonJim Nelson, Pontikes Center Director

Jim Nelson, Ph.D., joined SIU in 2005 after more than ten years of industry experience and more than fifteen years of teaching and research experience. He earned a bachelor of science in computer science from California Polytechnic State University and worked as an “operating system pathologist” at IBM Santa Teresa Labs and then as a project manager at a California software startup. He went back to school at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and earned a master’s degree and a Ph.D. in information systems.

It was at Colorado where he began his research career of conceptual modeling, cognitive science, very large databases, artificial intelligence, expert systems, and text mining. He is now considered one of the leading researchers worldwide on cognitive and behavioral issues involving conceptual modeling. Nelson specializes in field research, getting out of the office and visiting organizations of all sizes to collect real-time, real world, relevant research data.

As director of the Pontikes Center for Advanced Analytics and Artificial Intelligence he coordinates the development and implementation of analytics courses in the online M.B.A. and undergraduate business programs. He serves as the point of contact for the Pontikes Center Board of Advisors consisting of executives responsible for analytics efforts in major companies across the Midwest. He has coined the term “hunch mining” to address the area of cognitive analytics.

Nelson is an instrument rated private pilot and flies across the country visiting research sites and spreading the word about SIU and the Pontikes Center.