Hard to believe that not only is the horrific 2020 year behind us, but that this month marks the beginning of my 13th year of blogging! Interestingly, I went back to my very first blogpost, which was on the new US administration in 2009 and the election of President Barack Obama. In the post, I also noted a Letter to the Editor that I had had published in The New York Times, which spoke about how much I enjoyed teaching my Transportation and Logistics class. And I taught this class, albeit remotely, this past Fall because of the pandemic. Now, once again, we have a new incoming administration, to be led by President-elect Joe Biden, and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris, on the horizon!
2020 has been a remarkable year in human history and there is now hope because of the Covid-19 vaccines. It was a year in which so many in our profession pivoted to inform the public through their writings, virtual speaking engagements, and many interviews with the media. I learnt so much from speaking to many journalists from The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, The Chicago Tribune, and The Boston Globe, as well as numerous other publications, including industry-based ones. It was a pleasure to be on NBC News in Boston and in Dallas and to also be on many radio programs, including NPR and Marketplace (and, remarkably, quite a few of the holiday cards that we received noted that I had been heard by friends and relatives from near and far)! I so much enjoyed the intellectual exchanges with journalists that I wrote a tribute to them in a recent blogpost. One journalist thanked me for my blog and reached out to me because of my writings. In addition, during this pandemic I managed to write three articles in The Conversation on the impacts of the pandemic on blood supply chains; game theory and competition for medical supplies (and now relevant to vaccines), plus the vaccine cold chain. These articles generated a great deal of interest and I was honored to be written up by the Isenberg School of Management and the University of Massachusetts Amherst in its 2020 Report on Research with the photo below on the back cover of this report.
With all the disruptions and pain and suffering caused by the pandemic, I am thankful that we managed to continue our research at the Supernetwork Center, with several articles of relevance to supply chains in the pandemic written. Also, our newest Dynamics of Disasters volume, will be published soon by Springer.
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