This is the first post of a series on the EURO Conference, which took place June 22-25, 2025 in Leeds, UK. This Operational Research (OR) Conference brought together 2,000 delegates from around the globe and was historic since it also marked the 50th anniversary of the establishment of EURO - the Association of European Operational Research Societies. There were delegates even from China!
This post is on the serendipity of conferences - it is always a delight to see colleagues in person, some of whom you might not even have realized would be coming.
On Sunday, June 22, 2025, in the hotel elevator, I saw Kathy Stecke of the University of Texas Dallas and we burst out laughing. Then, en route up a big hill to the University to register on Sunday, I was greeted with a warm: Hello! on the street by Razia Amzad of Springer Nature. At registration, it was truly a delight to see Christina Phillips, Graham Rand, Tetyana Romanova, Martine Labbé, and Gendreau Michel! And, amazingly, in my third conference presentation on 20 years of EURO conferences I have photos of many of these wonderful colleagues in my slide deck. A delight was to even see at registration the photographer who took the official photos at my Blackett Lecture at The Royal Society on December 5, 2024, thanks to The OR Society.
Conferences can be very energizing and inspiring from the scientific knowledge exchange perspective to all the wonderful personal connections. On June 24, 2025, after my second conference presentation, I was thrilled to see Anand Subramanian, the genius behind the Subject_To interview podcasts, who came all the way from Brazil. Then, to meet up with Suresh Sethi, whose passion for life and scholarship fills me with hope, plus to see Kostas Nikolopoulos, one of the outstanding editors of the Journal of the Operational Research Society (JORS) of The OR Society, and its publisher Richard Goodman, along with Sunil Tiwari, whose dynamism and intellect delight, made for an extraordinary afternoon. Joining us was Pritha Dutta, one of my former Isenberg School of Management, UMass Amherst PhD students, who traveled all the way from Portland, Oregon, where she is now an Assistant Professor at Willamette University. Pritha presented on her latest research on humanitarian operations with applications to India.
After my third conference presentation, and the wrapup of the conference, as we were heading to the Leeds train station from the hotel, I saw Senay Solak, who is the Chair of my OIM Department at the Isenberg School of Management! We were delighted to see each other and walked together to the station, each heading onwards on our journeys.
Many thanks to EURO and to The OR Society for such wonderful conference experiences, which further emphasize the importance of face to face professional meetings.
And, then at the Leeds train station, I saw Janny Leung of Macao, who actually chaired the session that Senay spoke at the day before. We had an excellent conversation about some initiatives.