Name: Heidi Lanas
Hometown: Panama City, Panama
Major: Information Engineering and Management
Class of 2004
When Heidi Lanas learned that the SMU School of Engineering was launching
a master's degree program in information engineering and management (MSIEM),
she knew she had found exactly the graduate program she was looking for.
A native of Panama, Lanas earned an undergraduate degree in industrial
engineering with a minor in business from Universidad Catolica Santa
Maria La Antigua, one of the best private universities in Panama.
She then spent five years working for Citibank, where she learned thatinformation
was the key to making the right business decisions.
Lanas says she hopes the MSIEM program at SMU will help her blend technical
and managerial skills with a focus on the information technology field. "I
want to develop excellent information systems that will allow corporations
to explore all different possibilities for business, and choose the best
decisions," she says. " The best thing about this SMU program is that with
its mixture of management and technology, you see the operation as a whole,
with a complete perspective as an engineer and as a manager. So you are
able to see what your needs are and how to develop a solution to fulfill
them."
Lanas had originally hoped to take the MSIEM program through SMU at the
City of Knowledge in Panama, but was so eager to get started she decided
to come to Dallas this year.
"Since the very first moment I got here, it has being an amazing learning
experience," she says. "There is so much to do in my home country, and
I just hope that I can put in practice everything I'm learning here in
the program."
