Scenes from Vienna, Austria Before the Humanitarian Operations Conference

We arrived yesterday in Vienna, Austria, after flying from Boston Logan through Frankfurt. Thanks to both Lufthansa and Austrian Airlines for great flights.

I am in Vienna for the EURO HOpe conference, which begins today at the Vienna University of Economics and Business. I will be speaking at the conference later today and look forward to seeing operations researchers involved in humanitarian logistics.

Last time I was in Vienna was two years ago, just before the 2nd Dynamics of Disasters conference. Next week I will be off to the 3rd Dynamics of Disasters conference, which I helped to co-organize and is taking place in Kalamata, Greece.

Since I never have time for jet lag when arriving on a new continent I always try to walk for hours and then just switch to the new time zone.

Yesterday, I did precisely that as well as this morning and enjoyed rediscovering some favorite spots, from parks to cafes in lovely, cultural Vienna. My mother and uncle had spent time in Vienna during World War II, after leaving Ukraine, so I always feel very comfortable in this beautiful and very elegant city.

Below is the view of Vienna from our hotel.

The pastry shops and cafes are stunning.

And we indulged in some chocolate and cappuccinos yesterday afternoon.

I enjoy walking through the parks.

Of course, the architecture is also stunning and the trams are a terrific mode of transportation.

The EURO HOpe conference was organized by Professor Tina Wakolbinger, who was my PhD student in Management Science at the Isenberg School of Management. It should be a fabulous, focused conference. The full program can be downloaded in pdf format here.

Preparing for the Blizzard While Preparing My Humanitarian Logistics Course for Vienna

The news and associated warnings about the blizzard that is supposed to wallop New England, beginning tomorrow morning and lasting through Saturday is being described as "epic" and "historic." We just received a phone message from the Amherst Town Manager, who is also a neighbor of ours, to prepare accordingly  and even our Massachusetts Governor has issued warnings. The weather reports are noting that parts of Massachusetts and Connecticut may receive over 2 feet of snow with the Boston area forecasted to be especially heavily hit. Winds up to 60 miles an hour are also being predicted.

I have been receiving messages of concern from collaborators outside of the Northeast -- thank you!

There are also comparisons (we will see) being made to the blizzard of 1978, with the 35th anniversary falling yesterday.

I have been working on my lectures for an intensive short course that I will be giving at the Vienna University of Economics and Business in Austria  in mid-March. The topic of the course is Humanitarian Logistics and Healthcare. I taught a full semester course on the topic in the Spring of 2012 at the Isenberg School of Management. When I was invited to be a Guest Professor in Vienna (I am on sabbatical this year and am  spending a lot of time at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden) I was asked to suggest a few course titles and the above one was the one selected.

The audience will be international, I have been told, but since the setting is Europe, I have been updating my lecture notes and slides. A lot has happened this past year, Superstorm Sandy, to start, and it is always interesting to put a fresh spin on course lectures for different audiences.

Coincidentally, late next week,  the AAAS meeting in Boston is taking place, and at the symposium that I organized entitled, Dynamics of Disasters, the audience will get to hear some fabulous researchers and speakers: Dr. David McLaughlin, Dr. Laura McLay, Dr. Panos Pardalos with Dr. Tina Wakolbinger and Dr. Jose Holquin-Veras as discussants.  More information is on the AAAS website.  Let's hope that there won't be any travel travails!

Stay safe, everyone, and pray that the power stays on and that there is no major damage or flooding! Also, check on your neighbors -- WebMD has some useful tips.

Many universities and colleges have already announced that they will be closed tomorrow -- the same holds for many school systems.

Another Female Full Professor!

Attaining the rank of Full Professor in academia is quite the achievement and, typically, to reach this rank, one, after receiving a PhD, becomes an Assistant Professor, then gets promoted with tenure (if all goes well) to Associate Professor, and, after a few more years (and, hopefully, no politics to interfere), attains the rank of Full Professor.

There are also chaired/named professorships, which are honorific-type of appointments that usually come with expanded resources and are, most often, given to Full Professors that merit special recognition.

As a named professor, who has graduated 15 PhD students, I follow the careers of my former students closely and am thrilled by their professional successes.

One of my former doctoral students, Tina Wakolbinger, who received her PhD from UMass Amherst in 2007, with a concentration in Management Science, and who was until recently an Assistant Professor at the Fogelman College of Economics and Business at the University of Memphis, has, as of May 15, assumed her new faculty appointment.

Dr. Wakolbinger is now a Full Professor of Supply Chain Services and Networks at the Institute for Transport and Logistics Management at the Vienna University of Economics and Business in Vienna, Austria! She began teaching a course on Global Supply Chain Management there in English this past week.

Tina, along with Professor Dietrich Braess, and me, translated the famous Braess (1968) article, which included the paradox named after him, from German to English. Together, we also wrote several research articles that have appeared in such journals as Naval Research Logistics and Computational Economics. Her doctoral dissertation title was: A Dynamic Theory for the Integration of Social and Economic Networks with Application to Supply Chain and Financial Networks.

To achieve the rank of Full Professor in only a few years after attaining a PhD is quite the achievement and to get such a position in one of the most glorious cities in the world and in the largest public business university in Europe deserves accolades!

Dr. Wakolbinger actually received the offer last summer shortly after we were at the Computational Management Science conference in Vienna.

For more information on Dr. Wakolbinger's dissertation, and that of my other students, click here. The official announcement of her Professorship is here.

Congratulations to another female Full Professor!