Fabulous Operations Research Conference - EURO 2016 in Poznan, Poland

I would like to thank the organizers of the 28th European Operational Research (Operations Research) Conference in Poznan, Poland, taking place July 3-6, 2016, for the great organization, high quality scientific papers, venue, hospitality, and warmth extended to all the conferees.

It has been a wonderful experience since we arrived late on Saturday evening, having flown WizzAir from Luton London Airport to Poznan.

The venue is the Poznan University of Technology, which had big banners welcoming us on Sunday afternoon.

 The registration was also very smooth and friendly.

The opening ceremony was grand with even the university choir entertaining us and with both the EURO Gold Medal awarded to Professor Nesterov and Professor Queyranne with Professor Sisko receiving the Service Award.

Poznan is filled with operations researchers and just upon arriving we saw INFORMS Fellow Bob Fourer and Graham Rand, who was one of my hosts just last week at Lancaster University. The Old Town of Poznan is especially beautiful.

And when we are not being served delicious luncheons at the conference venue we have managed to sample a variet of peirogies as well as schnitzels in Old Town.

The coffee breaks are also spectacular with the conference organizers treating us to delicious pastries.

Another reason that this conference is extra special to me is that I can figure out alot of the Polish since my first language is Ukrainian, plus Springer has my new book, written with my former Isenberg PhD student, Dong "Michelle" Li, "Competing on Supply Chain Quality: A Network Economics Perspective," on display at its booth.

 I was honored that yesterday I had the chance to present our European Journal of Operational Research paper on food supply chains, that was published in 2013 and that was written with Professor Min Yu, also a former doctoral student of mine. I had been invited (one of two presenters) to speak on this work by the Editors of the journal, along with outgrowths of this research. Professor Roman Slowinski had earlier in the same session given a wonderful presentation on the success of this journal, which is one of my favorites, with over 3,000 paper submissions now per year! Professor Slowinski noted that our paper was selected because of the high citations that it has received and its impact.

Today was another very busy day, since I had two talks in a session organized by Professor Patrizia Daniele, a great collaborator of mine from the University of Catania in Italy. As for scheduling, my first talk this morning took place at the same time as a co-authored talk with my husband on the Braess paradox. My first presentation today was on cybersecurity with co-authors Professor Daniele and my doctoral student Shivani Shukla and my second presentation was on a game theory model for freight services in humanitarian/disaster relief. All these presentations are available for download on the Supernetwork Cemter website at the Isenberg School of Management.

Plus, I got to see two of my very successful former doctoral students, Professor Tina Wakolbinger and Professor Dmytro Matsypura and I took the photo of them with Professor Daniele below. Tina organized a very interesting session on humanitarian logistics, which we attended this afternoon after a yummy lunch that we ate outside.

It was also fabulous to see Professor Ariela Sofer who seems to have the same fashion sense as I do.

Another wonderful meeting was with Dr. Mauricio Resende of Amazon, who gave a keynote talk, and then hosted a tour of Amazon's fulfillment center in Poland.

And later today we will be hearing the Nobel Laureate n Economic Sciences Robert Aumann speak. This has been a conference that raises new standards for organization, attention to detail, and also scientific contributions. Many, man thanks to the organizers for such a wonderful conference!

It is great to be part of the Operations Research community and I even exchanged a few words with Melissa Moore, the Executive Director of INFORMS, who is also here.

Excited About Our 4 Talks on Food Supply Chains, Disaster Relief, Cybersecurity, and Even the Braess Paradox at EURO in Poland

While a Visiting Fellow at All Souls College during this Trinity term I have been very busy and have been having a fabulous time, making new friends, dining at delicious meals with Fellows, exploring Oxford and its beautiful university, doing research, giving invited talks, and now preparing presentations for the 28th European Conference on Operational Research (Euro 2016) to be held in Poznan, Poland, July 3-6, 2016.

Tis will be my first time in Poland and since I am of Ukrainian heritage this conference will be extra special.

Technically, one is only supposed to present no more than one paper at this conference but I have been very lucky in that I will be presenting three and a co-author will present another paper of ours.

The topics of our presentations are very exciting, I believe, and the talks are almost completed.

The first paper that I will present is, "Competitive Food Supply Chain Networks with Application to Fresh Produce," which was co-authored with Professor Min Yu, a former doctoral student of mine at the Isenberg School, and a wonderful collaborator.  This paper is an invited paper in a special session: Meet the Editors of EJOR. The Editors of the European Journal of Operational Research (EJOR) will discuss the journal and our paper was one of two selected as being impactful and highly cited. The paper can be accessed at: Competitive Food Supply Chain Networks with Application to Fresh Produce, Min Yu and Anna Nagurney, European Journal of Operational Research 224(2): (2013) pp 273-282. I will also discuss how our model is related to several other perishable product (and other) supply chain network models.

 On Tuesday,  which is July 4, I was to chair a session and have two papers in parallel sessions! The latter has also happened to me at INFORMS conferences but we will manage, since my collaborator and husband, Professor Ladimer S. Nagurney, will take my place and give the presentation below, while I am speaking on cybersecurity in another session. Our Braess paradox paper will be presented in a Graphs and Networks session.  As we state in the abstract for our paper, "Physical Proof of the Occurrence of the Braess Paradox in Electrical Circuits:" While primarily identified with tra ffic networks, the Braess Paradox has also been observed in telecommunications networks and in mechanical spring, fluid flow and nanoscale networks. The purpose of this work is to show that the Braess Paradox can be observed in macroscopic electric networks consisting of resistors and diodes. We first identify the electrical quantities that correspond to the flow and the cost on the network and illustrate the mapping of the cost functions to ideal electrical components. By writing Kirchoff's Law nodal equations for the electrical network, we illustrate how, by appropriate choice of component values, the Braess Paradox can be observed in the network. We show how the classic Braess Paradox examples can be cast into a form where they can be implemented as real electric circuits.

While my husband is speaking on our work on the Braess Paradox, I will be presenting the paper, "A Supply Chain Network Game Theory Model of Cybersecurity Investments with Nonlinear Budget Constraints," co-authored with Professor Patrizia Daniele and my doctoral student, Shivani Shukls. Professor Patrizia Daniele of the University of Catania in Italy organized the session: Recent Advances in Dynamics of Variational Inequalities and Equilibrium Problems 1. She is also a Center Associate of the Virtual Center for Supernetworks at the Isenberg School of Management, that I founded almost 15 years ago! This paper, we are thrilled to announce has been accepted for publication and it can be downloaded from: A Supply Chain Network Game Theory Model of Cybersecurity Investments with Nonlinear Budget Constraints, Anna Nagurney, Patrizia Daniele, and Shivani Shukla, in press in Annals of Operations Research.

Professor Daniele also organized the session Recent Advances in Dynamics of Variational Inequalities and Equilibrium Problems 2. Although I was not originally scheduled to present in this session, a speaker cancelled and I was asked by Professor Daniele and the conference organizers whether I could present another paper. Of course, I responded positively. I will be presenting the following paper, which is now in press with Springer in the Dynamics of Disasters volume that I co-edited with Professors Ilias Kotsireas and Panos M. Pardalos. The volume contains 18 rigorously refereed papers and we are very pleased with the volume.  My paper can be accessed at: Freight Service Provision for Disaster Relief: A Competitive Network Model with Computations, Anna Nagurney, to appear in Dynamics of Disasters, I.S. Kotsireas, A. Nagurney, and P.M. Pardalos, Eds., Springer International Publishing Switzerland.

Looking forward to seeing many operations research colleagues from around the globe at EURO in Poznan, Poland, soon!