Will Our Speaker Make It - Drama of Extreme Weather Events and Transportation Disruptions

*************An Update*******************

Dr. Laurie Garrow has had to cancel her presentation this Friday at the Isenberg School because of the major weather events in Atlanta and headed our way with thousands of flights cancelled.


The latest weather news is hard to miss with CNN's headlines with descriptions such as potentially catastrophic event. And this forecasted icestorm follows only two weeks after the snowstorm in Atlanta that brought the city to a halt with big political ramifications as well.

I am teaching my Humanitarian Logistics and Healthcare class at the Isenberg School this semester and we certainly have had a lot of interesting real-life events to discuss, almost in real-time!

This Friday, we are to host Dr. Laurie Garrow of Georgia Tech, who is also the immediate Past President of the Transportation & Logistics Society of INFORMS.

She is to be speaking in our UMass Amherst INFORMS Speaker Series, which I help our great students to organize.

Georgia Tech closed on Tuesday and I see that it is also closed today, Wednesday, February 12.

USA Today has the headlines:

Most Atlanta flights axed for Wednesday as cancellations soar

and I heard, yesterday,  from Dr. Garrow that several of her flights were cancelled on Delta for tomorrow, when she is planning on flying to our area so that she can speak on Friday. She managed to rebook and has reservations on a mid-afternoon flight. Now the weather in western MA will not be propitious tomorrow either.

 The costs to travellers this January because of the flight disruptions has been immense. 

We will have to wait and see -- Will the show go on? We were planning on a nice reception prior to her talk at the Isenberg School (some of you many have noticed that this Friday is also Valentine's Day).

We in operations research and management science are good at disruption management so, provided that UMass Amherst is still open, we hope to still have some event, if only a small substitute.

We will keep you informed and, in the meantime, stay safe, wherever you may be!

Two Great Upcoming Events at the Isenberg School - Not for Women Only

The weather outside is frigid but there is a lot of energy and warmth around indoors with the beginning of the new academic semester.

I have been more than busy since I am teaching two classes that I am very excited about and am also serving on a search committee for a faculty position in Systems Engineering. It is always fascinating to hear faculty candidates present their research! I've been bringing my doctoral students to these "job" talks since one can learn a lot from them.

At the Isenberg School we have two upcoming events, which are not for women only.

On Saturday, February 8th, in our lovely Isenberg atrium, the Inaugural Women in Business Isenberg conference is taking place. It is being organized by the Isenberg Women in Business Society. More information is available here.  I am especially delighted that Christina Calvaneso will be coming back and will be a panelist. Christina worked as a Student Center Associate at the Virtual Center for Supernetworks that I founded and did such a great job that I nominated her for a Leaders of the 21st Century Award, which she received from UMass upon graduation. Her area of concentration was Operations Management.

Also, on February 14th, which is Valentine's Day, the UMass Amherst INFORMS Student Chapter and I  will be hosting Dr. Laurie Garrow of Georgia Tech in our UMass Amherst INFORMS Speakers Series. The notice is below.

 

 More information on Dr. Garrow can be found here. Come join us for refreshments at 10:30AM preceding Dr. Garrow's presentation at Isenberg Room 108.

Stay warm!

Dr. Ellis Johnson from Georgia Tech Speaks

Yesterday, February 20, 2009, Professor Ellis Johnson of Georgia Tech kicked off our Spring UMass Amherst Speaker Series in Operations Research / Management Science. His talk on airline challenges and operations research attracted faculty, students, and administrators from the Isenberg School of Management, the College of Engineering, the Department of Economics, and even from the University of Vermont in Burlington! Professor Johnson is the recipient of every major INFORMS prize for his research contributions. Before joining the faculty of Georgia Tech he was with IBM for 26 years where he rose to the rank of IBM Corporate Fellow. He is also a member of the National Academy of Engineering.

Professor Johnson's talk centered on the challenges of cost reduction in the airline industry with a focus on reducing fuel costs. He compared fuel consumption of various jets, including executive jets, who would fly into smaller airports. He also emphasized the importance of doing environmentally-based research surrounding airplanes and talked about how ahead of the US Europe is in this dimension. He discussed high-speed trains in Europe and the potential/promise of such trains in the US. He had so much to report because of his extensive research contributions to airline transportation, including his work for Sabre and American Airlines, and knowledge. We did not have much time to hear about his work on airline security as well as passenger rage and passenger bills of rights, topics, which he had hoped to also be able to address, but time ran out.

After his presentation, we took Professor Ellis Johnson to lunch at the University Club on the UMass Amherst campus, which is in a building that dates to 1728 (but the food does not). We spoke about his travels to China and Thailand and about luminaries in the field of Operations Research/Management Science. We did not want the lunch to end. As one of the doctoral students said afterwards, the greatest people are also the nicest.

The UMass Amherst INFORMS Student Chapter has posted some photos from Dr. Johnson's visit to Amherst. I leave you with some pearls of wisdom from him. We asked him for advice to students so that they would be successful professionally and he offered the following:

1. be a problem solver,

2. collaborate, and

3. teach others.