Thursday, August 2, 2018

A Big Thank You to the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University

This summer I had the great pleasure of being back at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University as a Summer Fellow. This program was made available to those who had been Fellows at Radcliffe and wanted to return. Having had an incredible year as a Science Fellow back in 2005-2006, and also having been a Summer Fellow in 2017, I knew that I wanted to return for numerous reasons.

The past two months of being back at Radcliffe and living in Cambridge, at 83 Brattle Street, have been idyllic. My project theme this summer was entitled: Perishable Product Supply Chains from Food to Blood. During the Summer Fellowship not only did a tremendous amount of work get accomplished (my co-editors and I completed our edited volume: Dynamics of Disasters: Algorithmic Approaches and Applications,with Springer as the publisher, a paper on food supply chains was completed and submitted to a journal, and two other papers are nearing completion, with all acknowledging Radcliffe), but the interactions with the exceptional community of scholars, writers, artists, scientists, engineers, and human rights activists, made for excellent talks, conversations that lingered, new friendships made, and sustenance obtained that will support us in both present and future endeavors. Below are a few photos from the Summer Fellowship including several of the delicious lunches that we were served!
 
 
And, since Cambridge/Boston is such an attractive location globally, I had the pleasure of also hosting students, alums, and friends, with a highlight being dinner at the UMass Club in Boston at which we saw a rainbow over Boston  and the sun setting.

And no wonder I always feel so at home at Radcliffe, the library there has a bunch of my books!
A huge thank you to the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, its staff, and its amazing community, which recognizes the importance of multidisciplinary research in pushing the frontiers.