Beautiful Boston is Back

I was in Boston yesterday on a gorgeous sunny Sunday.

This was my first time back since the Boston Marathon bombings on April 15, 2013.

I have been spending a lot of time in Sweden, as part of my sabbatical this year and, upon my return to Massachusetts, knew that I had to go back to Boston to visit the locations of the bombings and to pay tribute to all those who have suffered so much. The shock of that day continues but, as I have written on other occasions, New Englanders are resilient.


In the photos below, taken around the Boston Common yesterday, I tried to capture the pure joy of  the people in Boston and the beauty of nature coupled with the architecture and landscaping.

I also meandered on Boylston Street and stood close to the marathon finish line where the two bombs had exploded that day a few seconds and just over 200 yards apart.   

At the next INFORMS annual meeting, which is taking place in Minneapolis, I will see one of the Boston marathon runners, Professor Alla Kammerdiner, from New Mexico State University, who invited me to speak in a session that she organized for the conference on cybersecurity and big data. She managed to finish the race before the bombs struck and then heard the news as she was making her way back to her hotel.

Yesterday, I also saw the headquarters of The One Fund Boston, which has raised over 60 million dollars to assist the victims and their families. The administrator of One Fund Boston is the UMass Amherst alum, Ken Feinberg. I heard him speak on April 27, 2013 at the UMass Rising Gala in Amherst. He is an amazing speaker and has been an administrator of several other well-known victim funds.

 

And, coincidentally, I stopped at the Four Seasons hotel to catch my breath and the staff was setting up for a wedding. Only after I returned back to Amherst, did I find out that the wedding was that of the son of Professor David Simchi-Levi of MIT, who is well-known in operations research and supply chain circles, and his wife, Ethel. The wedding announcement was in The Sunday New York Times. I congratulated David with a hearty Mazel-tov!

Beautiful Boston is back and it felt really good to be back in Boston!

Festive Scenes from Boston

Wherever you may be during this peaceful, yet, festive, time of the year, the wonder of this season makes it truly special.

Being a resident of Massachusetts, albeit the more rural western part, I never miss an opportunity to travel and to see other sights. Much of my travel is work-related, which I do enjoy immensely.

Yesterday, my family and I were in Boston, not for work, but to experience the celebratory atmosphere at this time of the year and to see some friends.

Above are some photos taken yesterday in Boston that capture the serenity and spirit from Quincy Marketplace to Faneuil Hall, the State House with its gold dome, and the skaters on the Boston Common.

Amazing not to have snow as a blanket but green grass instead.

Even the geese seem to be having second thoughts about migrating south.

Boston, Cambridge, and Upcoming Conference in Buenos Aires

I was in Boston and Cambridge this past week where the roads and streets were clear of snow, unlike the Washington DC area, which is being pummeled by a huge snowstorm that has grounded travel to a halt.

Having spent a year as a Science Fellow at Harvard in 2005-2006 at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, I like to go back fairly regularly. Cambridge and Boston are two magnificent locations in my state of Massachusetts and I get my muse in those places (among others).

While in Cambridge, I met the Executive Director of the Latin America Research Center of the Graduate School of Business Administration at Harvard University, who is based in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Buenos Aires is the venue for the ALIO-INFORMS Conference that is taking place in early June, 2010. At the conference, I will be giving a tutorial, Fragile Networks: Identifying Vulnerabilities and Synergies in an Uncertain Age. Additional tutorial topics and plenary lectures can be found here. The New York Times had a recent article on Buenos Aires which highly recommended it as a fascinating destination.

At the ALIO-INFORMS conference, which will bring operations researchers and management scientists from around the globe to discuss their latest research, I will also be taking part in a panel on International Collaborations, a topic that I have been writing about on this blog recently. The panel is organized by WORMS, Women in Operations Research and the Management Sciences, a fora of my professional society INFORMS. The convener of this panel is Dr. Sadan Kulturel, a Professor at Penn State Berks. Joining me on the panel will be: Drs. M. Gulnara Baldoquin, Karla Hoffman, and Lorena Predanas. The panel will focus on different means of international collaborations such as funded projects, international research and teaching projects, sabbaticals, etc. The panelists will discuss their unique perspectives on issues affecting the success of women in academic positions in the US and in Latin American countries. I am very much looking forward to being on this panel, giving my tutorial, and to going to the ALIO-INFORMS conference.

Above I share with you some photos of the intellectual capitals of the universe (Boston and Cambridge) taken this past week (including photos of Harvard Yard and Radcliffe Yard, with a recent sculpture, and where I had my office as a Science Fellow). I could not resist also including a photo of the bronze sculptures of the ducks made famous in the book, Make Way for Ducklings, on the Boston Common. Note the absence of snow although it is February!