Congratulations to Center Associate Dr. Patrizia Daniele of the
University of Catania in Italy on her promotion to Full Professor! Also,
it is not very often that there is a paper with 4 female co-authors. I
was delighted that the paper, "Cybersecurity Investments with Nonlinear
Budget Constraints and Conservation Laws: Variational Equilibrium,
Marginal Expected Utilities, and Lagrange Multipliers," co-authored with
Gabriella Colajanni, Dr. Patrizia Daniele, and Dr. Sofia Giuffre, is
now in press in the
International Transactions in Operational Research.
Dr. Daniele took part in the 3rd Dynamics of Disasters conference, in early July, 2017 in Kalamata, Greece, and jointly
presented a paper with Emilio Alvarez-Flores, a former undergraduate
Isenberg School alum, a student of Dr. Daniele's, Valeria Caruso, and
me, on game theory and disaster relief.
It was a pleasure co-organizing
the Dynamics of Disasters conference
with Dr. Ilias Kotsireas from the Wilfrid Laurier University in Canada
and Dr. Panos M. Pardalos of the University of Florida. Also speaking at
this conference were Center Associates: Dr. Dmytro Matsypura of the
University of Sydney in Australia, whose recent paper, "Wildfire Fuel
Management: Network-based Models and Optimization of Prescribed
Burning," co-authored with Dr. Oleg Prokopyev of the University of
Pittsburgh, was published in the
European Journal of Operational
Research, and Dr. Ladimer S. Nagurney of the University of Hartford, who
spoke on disaster communications.
We had the pleasure of hosting Dr. Matsypura at the Isenberg School, his PhD alma mater, through the UMass Amherst INFORMS Speakers Series on November 3, since he was on sabbatical this Fall.
Also presenting at the Dynamics of Disasters conference was Timo
Gossler, a doctoral student of Center Associate Dr. Tina Wakolbinger of
the Vienna University of Economics and Business in Austria. Dr.
Wakolbinger was the organizer of the fabulous
2017 EURO HOpe conference,
which focused on humanitarian operations and which took place at her
university, shortly before the Dynamics of Disasters conference.
Center Associate Dr. Stavros Siokos,
who is the Managing Partners of Astarte Capital Partners, based in London, England, deserves a big
congratulations! His company was recognized as a "Most Innovative
Manager of 2017" by the Institutional Asset Management Awards at a
ceremony at the Pierre Hotel in NYC in November.
And he was featured on the cover of the Finance Monthly with an interview in the November Issue!
Congratulations also to Center Associate Dr. Shivani Shukla, who
successfully defended her PhD dissertation:
Game Theory for Security
Investments in Cyber and Supply Chain Networks, and assumed a tenure
track Assistant Professor position at the University of San Francisco in
California. She is my 20th PhD student to receive her doctorate. The
paper, "Multifirm Models of Cybersecurity Investment Competition vs.
Cooperation and Network Vulnerability," that we co-authored, was
published in the
European Journal of Operational Research in 2017.
Kudos to Center Associate Dr. Sara Saberi of the Foisie School of
Business at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) in Massachusetts, who
is lead author of the paper, "A Competitive Multiperiod Supply Chain
Network Model with Freight Carriers and Green Technology Investment
Option," with Center Associate Dr. Jose M. Cruz of the University of
Connecticut, her colleague, Dr. Joe Sarkis, and me, which
is in press in the European Journal of Operational Research. Dr. Saberi presented
this work at the MSOM conference at the UNC Flagler School in June. Dr.
Saberi also received a grant from APICS joint with Dr. Sarkis.
Center Associate Amir H. Masoumi was again heavily involved in
organizing the latest Business Analytics competition at Manhattan
College, which took place last May and is now an international
competition. Center Associate Dr. Dong "Michelle" Li of Arkansas State
University, was one of the judges. Kudos to Dr. Masoumi on his
publication, "Mergers and Acquisitions in Blood Banking Systems: A
Supply Chain Network Approach," that we co-authored with Center
Associate Dr. Min Yu of the University of Portland,
which was published in the International Journal of Production Economics in 2017. Also, Dr.
Yu was a co-author of our paper, "Consumer Learning of Product Quality
with Time Delay: Insights from Spatial Price Equilibrium Models with
Differentiated Products," with Dr. Li, which
is now in press in the journal Omega.
Congratulations to Doctoral Student Center Associate Deniz Besik, who
had two papers published in 2017, one in the
Journal of Global
Optimization and
the other in Socio-Economic Planning Sciences. This
year she was elected President of the
UMass Amherst INFORMS Student Chapter. The chapter was recognized with its 12th award, in as
many years, at the INFORMS Annual Meeting in Houston in October, with
the Magna Cum Laude Award for its activities in 2016. In 2016, Doctoral
Student Center Associate Pritha Dutta served as the Chapter President.
Kudos also to her for receiving the first place award by a PhD student at the
NEDSI conference in Springfield, MA, in March for her presentation on a
game theory model for blood donations.
We welcome Mojtaba Salarpour as a Doctoral Student Center Associate. Mr.
Salarpour matriculated into the Management Science doctoral program at
the Isenberg School in Fall 2017 and will be working on disaster relief.
The INFORMS Houston conference, October 22-25, 2017, served as a great venue for many Center
Associates to reconvene, with participants and speakers including Center
Associates Professor Patrick Qiang of Pennsylvania State University
Great Valley, Professor Trisha Anderson of Texas Wesleyan University,
Professor Amir H. Masoumi of Manhattan College, Professor Min Yu of the
University of Portland, Professor Dmytro Matsypura of the University of
Sydney in Australia, Professor Jose M. Cruz of the University of
Connecticut, Professor Dong Li of Arkansas State University, Professor
Sara Saberi, and Center Associates Professor Shivani Shukla as well as
Deniz Besik and Pritha Dutta.
Also, articles that we authored on topics from blood supply chains to
investing in infrastructure to disaster relief and game theory to
FirstNet in
The Conversation were reprinted in many major publications outlets and I had the pleasure of being interviewed for
multiple radio news shows in the US and in Canada. Finally, it was wonderful to be back at the Radcliffe
Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University as a Summer Fellow
and
to also speak at the ORBerlin Conference in September!
Thanks for the support! We wish everyone a Marvelous New 2018 Year!
Below are links to examples of some of our recent publications.
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