What Was in the Heavy Package from China?

Virtual communications are terrific but receiving a heavy package at your door that has traveled thousands of miles and comes as a complete surprise is something special.

Such an experience happened to me yesterday and above is a photograph of the contents of the padded package from China. The inscription reads: PAKDD 2011 With gratitude to Professor Anna Nagurney for her keynote speech at the conference.

How extremely thoughtful of the organizers of the PAKDD2011 Conference in Shenzhen, China to thank a keynote speaker in this way and to take the time and effort to have such a gift produced and mailed!

My keynote speech on Supernetworks: Opportunities and Challenges for Decision-Making in the 21st Century can be viewed (and heard) using different media here and the presentation, in pdf format, can be downloaded here.

As a Finance colleague of mine at the Isenberg School said, before I brought the beautiful engraved crystal creation (see photo above) to my office yesterday, we, in the Western world, should learn how to thank and recognize our speakers as the Chinese do!

Starting to Pack for China and Preparing Keynote Talks

Now that the academic year has come to a close with celebratory graduations and associated events in the past, I have begun to pack for my trip to China later this week.

I will be giving two keynote talks at conferences, at the 2011 PAKDD conference in Shenzen, and at the 2011 IEEE Conference on Supernetworks and System Management in Shanghai.

At the PAKDD 2011 conference, I will speak on "Supernetworks: Opportunities and challenges for decision-making in the 21st century," and at the IEEE conference, I will speak on "Supernetworks in healthcare and humanitarian operations." Joining me at the latter conference will be a former doctoral student of mine, Professor June Dong of the School of Business at SUNY Oswego, who is helping with the organization of that conference, and a present doctoral student of mine, Min Yu, who will present our paper, Sustainable Fashion Supply Chain Management Under Oligopolistic Competition and Brand Differentiation, to appear in the International Journal of Production Economics, Special Issue on Green Manufacturing and Distribution in the Fashion and Apparel Industries. Our conference presentation can be downloaded here.

In addition to my keynote in Shanghai, I will deliver the paper, "Spatial price equilibrium and food webs: The economics of predator-prey networks," which was co-authored with my husband, Professor Ladimer Nagurney. This paper will appear in the conference proceedings and the presentation I have made available because it should be of interest to not only the ecology community but also to economists and operations researchers.

For those who think that once the teaching is over, faculty just go on vacation, I beg to differ.