Happy New Year for Business Analytics and Operations Research with Resolutions!

I hope that you have recovered from your New Year's Eve celebrations and are off to a fabulous start of the New Year!

Due to the blizzard of 2010, my family and I did not make it to NYC (and neither could many of our friends fly in) so we will not be attending the Salute to Vienna New Year's Concert 2011 in Lincoln Center with a ballet from Ukraine today, but my 92 year old uncle, who now lives in Manhattan, and was one of only three employees to show up at the bridge design engineering firm where he still works last Monday, will be there!

So, instead of being in NYC, I began 2011 in Amherst with a big bowl of blueberries, Greek yogurt, and muesli, and a delicious cup of Starbuck's coffee (a Christmas gift) and settled down to checking my email when my attention got pleasantly diverted from all the e-list renewals by the blogpost, New Year's Resolutions from Dr. O.R. Field, by Dr. Mike Trick.

I had reflected on last year's events in a recent blogpost, and, frankly, marveled at how many of the highlights were professional conferences around the globe where not only do colleagues reconnect and present their latest scientific discoveries but also exchange personal and professional stories and they do so in exciting venues.

Mike Trick, in his on target post, written with a lot of wisdom and humor, in an interview format, nails the celebratory events of our profession and calls them parties, right in the spirit of the season! He writes: Look at the parties I throw every year (that is “professional meetings” when discussing reimbursements with department heads). The last party I threw in Austin drew more than 4600 people! I remember ten years ago I would hold two parties a year and be lucky to get 2000 at either one of them. Any (of) my European parties (and what parties they are!) are also breaking records every year.

I concur and when I think of what I am looking forward to 2011 -- tops are the terrific conferences that will take place in 2011!

Thanks also to Mike for bringing out the fact that females add so much to both the leadership of INFORMS as well as to so many of its fun and rewarding professional activities from panels organized by WORMS to one of my favorites at the annual INFORMS conference -- the WORMS luncheon (which is a must get-together for many of our PhD graduates, male or female).

The success of Operations Research and Business Analytics is based on the discoveries, achievements, and accomplishments of its professionals, and the numbers (including students) that are attracted to it. The challenges facing our world today cannot be fully addressed nor resolved without the brainpower (past, present, and future) of our field.

The downside of the blizzard and the transportation disruptions was that we did not go to NYC; the upside was that we stayed back in Amherst to a landscape of great snow-covered beauty and tranquility and I wrote a paper on a topic that I had been researching for over a year. All the pieces fit together from the theory to the algorithm and the numerical examples and I was able to show the equivalence between two network equilibrium systems in economics and ecology and the paper cites the first paper (on spatial price equilibrium) that I ever published in the journal Operations Research and it was with my dissertation advisor at Brown, Stella Dafermos. There is nothing like the "Aha!" moment, which makes one soar intellectually (and emotionally)!

So when the going gets tough, go and do research!

Let me end with the beginning quotes from Oh! The Places You'll Go! by the incomparable Dr. Seuss, the nom de plume of Theodor Seuss Geisel, who was born and raised in Springfield, Massachusetts, graduated from Dartmouth College, and received his doctorate from Oxford University:

Congratulations!

Today is your day.
You’re off to Great Places!
You’re off and away!

You have brains in your head.
You have feet in your shoes.
You can steer yourself any direction you choose.
You’re on your own. And you know what you know. And YOU are the guy who’ll decide where to go.

You’ll look up and down streets. Look’em over with care. About some you will say, “I don’t choose to go there.” With your head full of brains and your shoes full of feet, you’re too smart to go down a not-so-good street.

And you may not find any you’ll want to go down. In that case, of course, you’ll head straight out of town. It’s opener there in the wide open air.

Out there things can happen and frequently do to people as brainy and footsy as you.

And when things start to happen, don’t worry. Don’t stew. Just go right along. You’ll start happening too.

Oh! The Places You’ll Go!

You’ll be on your way up!
You’ll be seeing great sights!
You’ll join the high fliers who soar to high heights.

Happy New Year to everyone!

Number 100 -- Oh, the Places You'll Go!

This is my 100th blog post, since starting this blog in January 2009. It is also the first day of September and a gorgeous, crisp day in Amherst, Massachusetts.

The anticipation of the new academic year is clearly in the air!

I decided to name this blog post, "Oh, the Places You'll Go!" after the famous Dr. Seuss book. Dr. Theodore Seuss Geisel was born in Springfield in Western Massachusetts. Western MA is the home of numerous writers and creative folks, and I like to think that academics strive to be creative and productive.

As someone who works on networks from transportation and logistical ones to social networks, I practice what I write about and "preach." One of the best benefits/recognitions of doing solid research is the invitations that one garners and the places that one gets to go to. Indeed, one of my favorite senior colleagues is Professor Martin Beckmann, who is the co-author of the classic book, Studies in the Economics of Transportation, and who was on my dissertation committee at Brown University. He is a brilliant economist whose love of life and good food and friends has taken him around the world. I have been at conferences with Professor Beckmann from Mallacootta in the outbacks of Australia to Stockholm, Sweden, one of my favorite parts of the globe. Although he is in his mid80s he still travels and meets with colleagues in Europe and Asia. He is an amazing scholar, individual, and lover of life! You can see some photos of Professor Beckmann (even with me on a beach in Australia) if you click here and scroll down the page. Professor Beckmann is the recipient of the Robert Herman Lifetime Achievement Award in Transportation Science, among other notable recognitions.

I received an invitation a few weeks back to be a plenary speaker in Cape Town, South Africa, at a conference on life cycle management that will take place next week and, regretfully, I had to turn down this invitation since the new academic year begins next week at UMass Amherst.

Yesterday, I received an invitation to speak at a conference, which also really piqued my interest -- a conference in Mongolia! This conference, which is on Optimization, Simulation and Control will take place July 25-28, 2010, and it is worthwhile to check out the website. However, and this is painful, I have already made a commitment to be a plenary speaker at the Computational Management Science Conference to be held in Vienna, Austria, July 28-30, 2010, an invitation that came first and that I could not refuse.

Also, I have already committed to giving a tutorial on Fragile Networks at the ALIO-INFORMS conference to be held in Buenos Aires, Argentina, June 6-9, 2010, which I am very much looking forward to, and where I will really put my Spanish to practice!

Since beginning this blog, I have in 2009 alone given talks in Dallas, Ithaca, Northfield (Minnesota), Cambridge, Vienna, Rome, New York City, and Chicago and in Davis, California (but virtually). Each year brings new destinations and new adventures! The life of an academic is never dull but does require spirit, flexibility, and stamina! Some photos taken at conferences, speaking venues, and of other activities can be found here.