Saturday, December 3, 2022

Looking Forward to Delivering My IFORS Distinguished Lecture in Buenos Aires!

I was deeply honored to have been selected an IFORS (International Federation of Operational Research Societies) Distinguished Lecturer.

I will deliver my Distinguished Lecture at CLAIO, which will take place in Buenos Aires, Argentina, December 12-15, 2022. Information on the conference can be accessed here.

The IFORS Distinguished Lecture program started in 1999 and the full list of previous lecturers can be found here. I find it quite remarkable that I have had the pleasure of meeting quite a few Operations Research scholars on this list!

It was such a delight to receive the letter below from IFORS.

The title of my lecture is, "Human Migration Networks: How Operations Research Can Assist with Refugees and Supply Chain Labor Shortages."


I published my first paper on human migration networks, amazingly, in 1989, and the research has continued, with many wonderful co-authors. During the COVID-19 pandemic, our research on human migration networks intensified, because of the additional challenges and also increasing refugee flows as well as labor shortages in many economic sectors around the globe. Even now we are working on another human migration network paper that focuses on coalitions and social welfare.

I have very much enjoyed working on my lecture. It is dedicated to essential workers who have sustained us in the COVID-19 pandemic with acknowledgment of all the freedom-loving people on the planet including those fighting for their freedom in Ukraine. 

Some of the papers that I will be highlighting in my lecture are: a paper published in the Journal of Global Optimization, co-authored with Professors Patrizia Daniele and Ladimer S. Nagurney, on refugee networks, and the paper that I wrote and which was published in Operations Research Perspectives, which integrates human migration networks with labor in supply chain networks.

I will also highlight research that we published in the IFORS journal, International Transactions in Operational Research, on policy interventions for bringing human migration population distributions in line with system optimization.

I very much appreciate that IFORS posted the statement below on Russia's war against Ukraine on its homepage.


Coincidentally, the last time that I was in Buenos Aires, which was in June 2010 for the ALIO-INFORMS Conference, the World Cup was taking place and I blogged the experience. And, now, the World Cup is again taking place, but in the month of December, and in Qatar, and I will be back in Buenos Aires! I leave you with several photos that I took in Buenos Aires.


And congratulations to Argentina for making it to the quarterfinals of the World Cup today!