International OR2017 Berlin Conference Was Fabulous with 910 Participants from 46 Countries

Yesterday evening I arrived back in Massachusetts from the fabulous International Conference on Operations Research, OR2017 Berlin, in Germany.

The invitation to delivery a semiplenary talk at this conference I received back in November 2016 from Professor Jan Ehmke, a super creative, dynamic, and productive scholar in transportation and logistics and very well-known in our INFORMS community. Professor Ehmke was one of the two Chairs of the Program Committee, along with Professor Natalia Kliewer of the Freie University,  and was also on the Organizing Committee. It took me only about 24 hours to respond with a resounding, "Yes." I figured it was doable, although the dates of the conference September 6-8, 2017, coincided with the first week of classes at UMass Amherst. Professor Ehmke kindly scheduled my semiplenary on the Friday, the last day of the conference, so that I could meet with my Transportation & Logistics class students for the first class and a wonderful doctoral student covered the second class. (I am bringing back a lot of chocolates for the students). Also, I am delighted that we now again have a direct link from our local airport, Bradley in Hartford/Springfield, to Europe, with a daily flight to Dublin via Aer Lingus, which made the trip to Europe and back in 4 days manageable.

I gave Dr. Ehmke a list of topics that I could speak on and the one selected was: Blood Supply Chains: Challenges for the Industry and How Operations Research Can Help. 

So, after teaching my first class this past Tuesday, I was off to the OR2017 Berlin conference via Aer Lingus, with a short layover in Dublin, and I arrived Wednesday morning in Berlin. Accommodations were in the Harnack Haus, a historical scientific building, with additional rooms across the street and in proximity to the conference venue, which was the Freie University, in a green and stunning part of Berlin known as Dahlem.

 

 The main building there for the conference was the Henry Ford Building.

Shortly after registering at the guest house, and while marching with my luggage to the site of my room, I was greeted on the street by the Chairs of the conference: Professor Natalia Kliewer and Professor Rolf Borndorfer of the Freie University.

After freshening up, and, before going to the sessions, since the scientific program with a theme of the conference being: Decision Analytics for the Digital Economy, I treated myself to a marvelous lunch at the neighboring French cafe (several of us also indulged in some baked treats the day after).

The conference had numerous coffee breaks, receptions, a conference dinner, and even lunches, at which one could socialize and discuss with speakers their research.

 

 

Below is a photo taken with Professor Ehmke.

It was special to see my colleague from the University of Connecticut School of Business, Professor and now Associate Dean Robert Day, who also took advantage of our new air link to Europe.

I thoroughly enjoyed all the talks that I attended and, of course, the plenary and semiplenary talks, as well (although it was tough to decide which ones to go since the latter had multiple parallel ones).  The scientific quality of the presentations was uniformly excellent and I very much enjoyed talks from sustainability and logistics themes to social network models to machine learning and optimization.

I enjoyed speaking with Christian Rauscher, a Springer editor, and his colleague at the Springer display booth. I have seen Christian at wonderful Operations Research conferences around the globe.

Also it was a pleasure to see fellow INFORMS Fellow, Dr. Robert Fourer, who even came to my semiplenary talk.

Another wonderful experience was seeing the one and only Professor Marco Lubbecke from Aachen, who also gave a semiplenary talk and meeting Professor Jan Ehmke's dissertation supervisor at a sumptious breakfast: Professor Dirk Mattfeld.

Professor Stefan Zimmer was the chair of my semiplenary session and afterwards I was presented with a lovely gift of a personalized mug with the title of my talk on it and some yummy gummy bears inside.

After my presentation, I spoke with conferees from India who are also working on blood supply chains. Amazing to have 46 different countries represented at this conference!

And to make this conference experience extraordinarily special, while taking an exploratory walk after sessions on Thursday I saw the billboard of Angela Merkel below

and I came upon the John F. Kennedy Institute at the Freie University, where I had given an invited talk 15 years ago, when I was a Distinguished Chair at the University of Innsbruck under a Fulbright.

Coincidentally, when I received my PhD from Brown University in Applied Mathematics in 1983, with a specialty in Operations Research, John F. Kennedy Jr. received his undergraduate degree and his mother, Jackie Kennedy Onassis, was there (and my mother was thrilled). I have also met his sister Caroline Kennedy at an event at the Radcliffe Institute at Harvard University a while back.

This was my third trip to Berlin - in March 2015 I  gave a plenary talk at a physics conference entitled: Design of Sustainable Supply Chains for Sustainable Cities.

The OR2017 Berlin conference set new standards as to attention to detail and organization and I am very grateful for experiences that I will never forget.

Of course, I also had to indulge in some Wiener schnitzel, which will keep me fortified for quite a while, and it was as delicious as it looks in the photo below.

And, on my flight back from Dublin to Hartford/Springfield I rewarded myself by watching the movie Hidden Figures, about AfroAmerican female mathematicians who made an impact on the NASA space program. And, when the Euler method was mentioned as the method Katherine Johnson used to approximate a very important trajectory in a eureka type moment, I was thrilled. Our work on projected dynamical systems, which I had mentioned in my semiplenary talk, also involves a general iterative scheme, with a special case being the Euler method!

Plus, guess which books have been on my bedside stand?!

During OR2017 Berlin, we received messages that the INFORMS conference will take place at the originally scheduled dates in Houston, despite Hurricane Harvey, so I hope to see again many colleagues back in the US. And, strangely enough, the case study that I described in my semiplenary talk, based on our recently published paper, was focused on a blood service organization in Florida potentially merging with another organization under status quo and disaster scenarios, and now we await the brunt force of Hurricane Irma, the strongest hurricane ever recorded in the Atlantic.

Operations Research has never been more important!

Internet of Things, Network Economics, and Operations Research

Next week, while I will be speaking on cybersecurity at the Heinz College at Carnegie Mellon University, my collaborator on our NSF ChoiceNet project, and now NSF EAGER project, Associate Dean in the UMass Amherst College of Engineering Professor Tilman Wolf, will be flying to Berlin, Germany, to present our invited paper at the 1st IEEE International Conference on the Internet of Things Design and Implementation.

The title of our paper is below and it will be published in the Proceedings of the First IEEE International Conference on Internet-of-Things Design and Implementation (IoTDI), Berlin, Germany, April 2016.

The abstract is as follows: Many solutions to important societal problems relating to the environment, health care, transportation, etc. seek to utilize the promises of the Internet of Things (IoT), where sensing, computation, and actuation merge the physical world with the computational world. To date, many such solutions have focused on a single problem domain and require dedicated sensor and actuator infrastructure. This vertical integration makes the development of innovative, novel solutions costly and difficult to deploy. An architectural approach to addressing this challenge is to enable horizontal integration, where sensors and actuators from different applications can interconnect with any computational IoT application. In order to isolate complexities and to support heterogeneous systems and software, it is necessary to provide clear abstractions. We present such abstractions in the form of a layered protocol architecture that describes the necessary interfaces. Beyond technical challenges for horizontal integration, this paper also addresses network economic considerations since the various entities owning and operating sensors and actuators need suitable economic motivation to participate in such an approach. We believe that this work provides a conceptual foundation for future, scalable IoT solutions.

In quantifying the synergy associated with horizontal integration, we have assumed that system optimization, in the form of total cost minimization, is the desired criterion. This reflects centralized decision-making. Earlier applications of synergy measures that I have done research on were in the context  of supply chain networks and included a means of evaluating mergers and acquisitions.

Since the costs on the links prior to horizontal integration in the Internet of Things (IoT) and post correspond to generalized costs, this gives us the flexibility to include risk measures, emission measures (if there are environmental concerns), and other relevant criteria, and, with appropriate extensions, even time.

Below are the networks corresponding to two applications prior to integration in our IoT framework that includes ideas from network economics and operations research.

 Also, we may have different degrees of horizontal integration:

The synergy measure is calculated as follows:

Interestingly, in supply chain network applications, thus far, the network topologies (see the references in a prior blogpost) have been less expansive than in the IoT context revealed here. Also, the added links in the horizontal integration cases corresponded to transportation activities and not data transfer activities as in the above network figures.

Wishing everyone at the IEEE conference in Berlin, Germany a very rewarding time!

Why the Germanwings Plane Crash Seems So Close to Home

The shocking news of the Germanwings plane (flight 9525) crash today over France in the Alps on a flight from Barcelona to Dusseldorf with 150 lives lost is resonating far and wide.

This airplane disaster feels very close to home to me.

Just last Thursday I was flying back from Berlin where I spoke at the DPG scientific conference and had flown there from Boston Logan the Saturday before via British Airways. On the latter flight I was seated next to a prep school (Pingrey)  group which was en route to Barcelona. There was also a school group on the Germanwings flight (Germanwings is owned by Lufthansa) that crashed today. On my flight to Boston via Heathrow on British Airways last Thursday we had extra passengers since the Lufthansa pilots were on strike, which I thought strange.

And last summer my husband and I flew via Germanwings from Berlin to Catania (after bailing out of an Air Berlin flight due to an 8 hour delay) and also from Thessaloniki to Gothenburg via Dussledorf. I had conferences to speak at in both Sicily and Greece and was spending time as a Visiting Professor at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden.

I have been seeing lots of press coverage on Professor Arnie Barnett's research in view of this Gremanwings crash. Professor Barnett of MIT is a colleague from INFORMS and is an aviation security and safety expert. USA Today has an article noting his work entitled: Despite flurry of tragedies, air crashes are rare,  We hosted him at the Isenberg School in our UMass Amherst INFORMS Speakers Series a while back.


With the black box recovery I hope that the mystery of the cause of this Airbus plane crash is solved.


Our hearts go out to all those who lost family members and friends in this plane crash.

Photos from the Great DPG Conference in Berlin

I made it back from the DPG Conference in  Berlin, Germany late last night via Heathrow to Boston Logan. The flights on British Airways were terrific as was the service and the dinner of chicken curry with chocolate mousse for dessert.

I blogged several times about this great conference which had an attendance of 6,000 and I especially enjoyed the sessions organized by the Physics of Socio-Economic Systems group.

Below I have posted some photos of the speakers and the ambience as well as some sights nearby that I thoroughly enjoyed.

I'd like to thank the organizers for inviting me to speak - I have a fabulous time professionally, culturally, and socially - hard to top.

  The Science

                                       The History and Culture

Auf wieder sehen und danke schon!

Speaking on Sustainable Supply Chains for Sustainable Cities in Berlin

For the past 3 days I have been immensely enjoying being at Europe's largest physics conference. The venue at the Technical University of Berlin has been excellent and today I had the pleasure of speaking on the Design of Sustainable Supply Chains for Sustainable Cities:
http://www.dpg-verhandlungen.de/year/2015/conference/berlin/part/agjdpg/session/5/contribution/4

I gave an overview of some of the applications of supply chains that we have investigated from electric power ones to food supply chains and then focused on the work described in a paper just published, with the same title as my talk,  in Environment & Planning B 42(1): (2015) pp 40-57.

I have enjoyed my interactions with the physicists from Dirk Helbing to Luis Bettencourt and it was great to see Duncan Watts, as well, although he and I are not physicists. I did mention at my talk this morning that I am married to a PhD in physics so I am part of the family!

I was hoping to see Angela Merkel here since she has a PhD in physics but I suspect that she was preoccupied with other matters.

The session that my invited talk was part of was perfect since it was on sustainability and was part of a symposium:
http://www.dpg-physik.de/dpg/gliederung/fv/soe/berlin2015.pdf

I would like to thank the organizers for a terrific conference - a perfect way in which to spend my spring break.

Big Bang Theory in Berlin

I am attending a huge physics conference - about 6,000 participants in Berlin, Germany and am here since I was invited by Professor Scholl who organized this conference.

Professor Scholl heard me speak at a workshop on Energy and Complex Networks last summer in Erice, Sicily and extended the kind invitation.

I have enjoyed the talks very much since there are quite a few talks on network problems.

Today was the first full day of presentations and it began with an excellent presentation by Dr. Dirk Helbing from ETH Zurich. He spoke on A Planetary Nervous System to Understand and Measure Our Society. I had last seen Dirk two Septembers ago at a terrific Risk Management Workshop in Zurich, Switzerland, at which we both spoke.

Dirk recorded his presentation this morning and said that it should be posted on Youtube in about 2 weeks.

At the end of the day I immensely enjoyed Dr. Duncan Watts' presentation: Computational Social Science: Exciting Progress and Future Challenges.

The talks here are very interdsciplinary, which I like very much. For example, Watts of small world fame, is a sociologist, who received his PhD from Cornell, and was at Columbia but is now with Microsoft in NYC.

His talk had two parts: the first focused on Twitter and the kind of analyses that he has been doing of rare events - messages that go viral. It was fascinating to learn that about 93% of Twitter posts never get retweeted even once. Those who get retweeted 100 times or more are a small fraction of tweets. He analyzed the network structure of such tweets, which are rare events, and require a huge sample for statistical purposes. He found that some viral tweets have a broadcast structure with the media playing a very important role. He said that if you want your message to spread write an OpEd and get it published in The New York Times. Of course, he noted that Justin Bieber and Katy Perry have 15 million followers so, in effect, that act as broadcasters, very often of images and videos (some of themselves).

In the second part of his presentation he spoke on Crisis Mapping, a project that he has worked on with the United Nations and also using Mechanical Turk.  This really interested me since I am teaching a course on Humanitarian Logistics and Healthcare. He was conducting research to map tweets during a disaster for the United Nations to get information about the disaster. He compared the information gleaned during a disaster versus using the same data but having individuals working in groups using Mechanical Turk. He found some unexpected results in that the larger the group the answers were not necessarily better.

Many of the researchers at this conference are interested in socio-economic phenomena and associated problems. I appreciate the methodologies that are being used and the scope of issues that physicists and the like are tackling.

Tomorrow morning I have the pleasure of introducing Dr. Luis Bettencourt of the Santa Fe Institute when he gives his invited talk on cities.

I will be speaking Wednesday morning.

It has been wonderful spending my spring break at this great conference in stately Berlin!

Networks: Energy, Cities and the Control of Complex Systems

Last May, I had the pleasure of speaking in warm and beautiful Erice, Sicily on Sustainable Supply Chain Networks for Sustainable Cities, as part of the Workshop on Energy, Cities, and Control of Complex Systems organized by Drs. Adilson Motter and Robert Schock.

The workshop was the 47th Session of the International Seminars on Planetary Emergencies Energy, Cities, and the Control of Complex Systems,

I posted some photos of the venue at the Ettore Majorana Scientific Centre, the workshop participants, and the sights (and even food)  along with some reflections on this blog.

Now, I am very pleased to share with you that, through the efforts of Dr. Schock and Dr. Motter, the report on the workshop findings is now posted. Also, all the presentations are also posted. Thanks to the organizers of this great workshop as well as to the Energy Permanent Monitoring Panel, which is part of the  World Federation of Scientists, for providing a homebase for our report and all the presentations.

A direct link to my presentation is here.

I guess the audience enjoyed my presentation (and I certainly did theirs) since I was invited to speak on the topic again in Berlin, Germany next month.

We are having discussions on a possible follow on workshop, which is certainly needed, so stayed tuned and stay warm! 

So Honored to be Speaking in Berlin on Design of Sustainable Supply Chains Networks for Sustainable Cities

When the invitation came to speak in Berlin, Germany, I was very intrigued especially when I heard that the conference would be interdisciplinary.

I was specifically invited to speak at the Symposium on Physics of Sustainability and Human-Nature-Interactions, which is part of the DPG (the Deutsche Physikalische Geseltschaft) Spring meeting, which will take place March 15-20, 2015 and what a program! I just received the lovely poster announcing this event, which I have posted below. I expect that the attendance will be fabulous.

Many thanks to the organizer:  Professors Jens Christian Claussen, Marc Timme, and Dirk Helbing! Coincidentally, the last time that I saw Dirk was precisely at this time in Zurich, Switzerland at the fabulous ETH Risk Workshop that I blogged about.

In the meantime, I will be practicing my German.

Soccer Won - the 2014 World Cup

After Germany beat Argentina in the 2014 FIFA World Cup final today with Germany being crowned the champion of this monthlong competition in which 32 countries competed with their soccer teams, I took a walk.

I needed to process this World Cup, which I think was the best ever in terms of the drama, athleticism, surprises, and outcome. I have written two previous posts on this World Cup.

Seeing Gotze score with an amazing goal for Germany with the result that Germany won 1-0 against Argentina in overtime was quite special. The ball he bounced off his chest and then kicked it into the net.

During my walk I ran into one of my wonderful colleagues at the Isenberg School of Management, Professor Mzamo Mangaliso, with whom I always enjoy conversing. After discussing the game and the outcome he said to me: "Anna, soccer won!"

I thought that was such an astute comment that it inspired me to write my third and final post on this World Cup.

It kept us mesmerized and in suspense for a month. I watched games while in Europe - in Sweden, Italy, and Greece, and then many more upon my return to the US.

What also impressed me today was realizing that the three heads of governments of countries who were so visible today - Germany, Argentina, and Brazil, the wonderfuul host of this World Cup, are all women. Now, isn't that terrific?!

It was great to see Angela Merkel, the Chancellor of Germany,  supporting the German team from the stands in her bright red suit jacket with gold buttons and then congratulating the players and the coach when they received the 18 karat gold trophy and individual gold medals. Also, the President of Brazil, Dilma Rousseff, was present at the award ceremony today, and Brazil deserves congratulations on the success of this World Cup. Finally, the President of Argentina is Cristina Fernández de Kirchner and although Argentina did not win, its team captain, Lionel Messi, received the Golden Ball award and others were honored as well.

The fireworks following the final game were magical in Rio.

The World Cup brought the world together for a month and kept us entertained and surprised.

That is the power of sport and of soccer.

Until the next World Cup.

We Still Love you, Brazil!

Today's semifinal 2014 World Cup match of Germany vs Brazil, will go down in sports and soccer history  and I suspect it also congested the Twittersphere.

As the announcer stated, we watched with morbid fascination, with Germany scoring goal after goal, effortlessly, until the score reached 7-0 in Germany's favor.

Gratefully, and with a relief to all spectators (even my German friends), Brazil finally managed a goal with the result that today's final score was 7-1. Germany moves on to the final game which will be played on Sunday. As for who it will play against, we will find out tomorrow whether it will be Argentina or The Netherlands. A Dutch vs. Germany final would be a bit strange on Brazilian soil but we will see!

I liked the above graphic featuring the results for the most recent games with 16 teams remaining from the Bleacher Report and article.

I am sure Brazilians are in mourning, "or worse," as my colleague Professor David E. Boyce emailed me.

Many of us were glued to our TV sets watching the game and are shocked by the outcome. I have several Brazilian friends who were at that game and I do not have the heart to email them my condolences and sympathies (yet).

I would like to take this opportunity to thank Brazil for being such a fabulous host of this 2014 World Cup, which has kept many soccer fans around the globe transfixed over the past almost 4 weeks with the extraordinary athleticism, drama, and surprising outcomes. Of course, we also feel for the injured players, especially Brazil's Neymar and I suspect the fact that two of their players were out for the semifinal game played a role in Brazil's loss - it certainly did not help psychologically. It seemed as though the Brazilian players had lost the pep and energy they had in the previous game at which Neymar towards the end of the game got kneed in his back and suffered a fractured vertebra.

Brazil, despite your team's loss today, we thank you for this World Cup and don't lose the spirit!

Best of luck in the consolation match and perhaps you will medal!

Tomorrow we will be watching Argentina play against The Netherlands.

I have been to Argentina, The Netherlands, and Germany, but have yet to make it to Brazil.

World Cup Fever and Operations Research

The 2014 World Cup has been thrilling, dramatic, and awe-inspiring with the marvelous athleticism of the globe's top soccer players engaged in games that are simply riveting.

Brazil deserves our congratulations for uniting the world as we watch the beautiful game being played at its venues.

I know of two colleagues in Operations Research who have tickets to several of the games in Brazil and I hope to catch their faces on TV at upcoming matches, Dr. Celso Ribeiro, the Editor of the journal, International Transactions in Operational Research (ITOR), and Dr. Mauricio Resende, of AT&T.

This year, as in 2010, 2006, and even 2002, I have been spending weeks during the spring and summer out of the USA, and those have also been World Cup years.

In 2002, I was living with my family in Innsbruck, Austria, where I held a Distinguished Fulbright at the SOWI Business School at the University of Innsbruck.  Brazil won the tournament that year, beating Germany.

In 2006, which was my sabbatical year at Harvard, I traveled to Limassol. Cyprus,  to speak  at the 12th International Conference on Computing in Economics and Finance, June 22 - 24, 2006 and then to Iceland, for the 21st European Conference on Operational Research, Iceland, July 2-5, 2006, and, finally, to  Erice, Sicily, to give an invited talk at the INTERNATIONAL SCHOOL OF MATHEMATICS  G. STAMPACCHIA 44th Workshop: VARIATIONAL ANALYSIS AND PARTIAL DIFFERENTIAL EQUATIONS, Erice, Sicily, July 5-14.

I was with many operations researchers in Erice, when Italy beat France in the 2006 World Cup, an experience we will never forget because of the celebrations that followed and somehow I made it back the next day via Alitalia to Boston and with my hearty congratulations to the staff got upgraded to Business Class!

The below photo is of several of the Erice workshop participants, including Professor Panos Pardalos of the University of Florida, watching the final game!

In 2010, we were in Buenos Aires, Argentina,  for the great ALIO-INFORMS Conference. The World Cup that year was taking place in South Africa. Buenos Aires was replendant in celebrating its team.   Spain won that year (and got eliminated early in 2014). Coincidentally, Dr. Celso Ribeiro gave a tutorial on sports scheduling at this conference, with a focus on soccer, which I enjoyed very much. A special issue of ITOR  was edited on the tutorials and I also had one with Q. Qiang.

I have spent almost 2 of the past several months in Europe, being based primarily in Sweden (which did not, however,  qualify for the 2014 World Cup). I have also been going to conferences in Erice (deja vu), in Taormina, also in Sicily, and in Greece. I have met up with may operations researchers at these venues and together we have cheered on many teams. I enjoy listening to the announcers in different languages.

The photo below was taken in Italy about 2 weeks ago, shortly before Italy was eliminated from the 2014 World Cup, and we commiserated with our many Italian friends.

 

I was disappointed that Greece lost last night especially since Greece was the most recent country at which I was at an operations research conference and it was a truly special one - as readers of my blog know. We recently celebrated Professor Pardalos' 60th birthday with a conference in Chalkidiki, Greece, at which I took the photo below, from the ferry. Many more photos are here.

The Costa Rican goalie, Keylor Navas, who was instrumental in Costa Rica beating Greece in last night's game,  has made headlines with his amazing plays. Afterwards, I enjoyed his quotes, in which he emphasizes his family (and how he kept on thinking of them during last night's game against Greece): I try to be a good father. I tried to be a good friend and in such a beautiful sport as football, I always try to have my kids happy so when they grow up, they can look back and they can see a father who did important things for their country.

It is great that the USA has made the round of 16, although it lost to Germany in its latest match,  and tomorrow it will be very exciting to watch the USA team play against Belgium.

Congratulations to all of the teams that qualified for this terrific 2014 World Cup in Brazil!