Great to See So Many UMass Amherst INFORMS Student Chapter Members at Analytics Boston

I am attending the great INFORMS Boston Analytics Conference and arrived yesterday.

The weather has not been compliant (it is cold and rainy) but the venue of the conference (the Westin Waterfront hotel), the talks (beginning with Tom Davenport's Keynote talk today), and the various networking events from the breakfasts to the lunches, etc., have been fabulous!

I am here with one of my doctoral students, Shivani Shukla, who is also the President of the award-winning UMass Amherst INFORMS Student Chapter. In addition, we have seen other students here both from the Isenberg School of Management and the College of Engineering, who are chapter members and this is great. I am the chapter's Faculty Advisor and it is so rewarding working with these terrific students.

Even one of our PhD graduates, Dr. Milad Ebtehaj, who now works at FedEX in Memphis,  is here.

The photos below  capture the smiles of our chapter members.

The talks that I have attended, so far, besides Tom Davenport's keynote, have ranged from those on supply chain themes to healthcare. It is fantastic to listen to practitioners' perspectives and to also have time to discuss deeply various issues and challenges that they are faced with.

I've had a chance to see Dr. Radhka Kulkarni of SAS, Dr. Les Servi of MITRE, Dr. Irv Lustig of IBM,  and even Dr. Larry Seiford of Michigan. Both Les and Irv were undergrads in Applied Math at Brown University as was I a while back.

This morning I took part in "Coffee with a Member," which passed by too quickly.

The Analytics conference is so educational and informative - I am very glad that some of our students could take advantage of this great opportunity!