Outstanding Making an Impact Lightning Talks: Honored to Speak on Tariffs, Trade, and OR

This post is the third in a series on the EURO Conference, which took place in Leeds, UK, June 22-25, 2025.

I was honored and delighted to have been invited by Ruth Kaufman to deliver a lighting talk in the Making an Impact session on Monday morning, June 23, of the conference at 8:30AM. All 13 speakers, from several different continents, showed up. The full list of speakers, their presentation titles, and abstracts can be found here: https://euro2025leeds.uk/making-an-impact/. The breadth of topics was fantastic and included algorithms for fighting crime, reducing food waste on airplane flights, and emergency ambulance service planning. 

My presentation was on Tariffs, Trade, and OR.

This session was a truly outstanding beginning to this scientific conference.

Below is photo of the speakers with Ruth Kaufman and Jane Parkin, followed by a photo of the audience.

I have been publishing on tariffs (of different types) for quite a few years now, so I very much enjoyed preparing and delivering my presentation, which is now posted on the Supernetwork Center website: https://supernet.isenberg.umass.edu/visuals/EURO2025_MakinganImpact-Tariffs,%20Trade,%20and%20OR.pdf

My Agricultural Supply Chain Networks Under Uncertainty Seminar is Now Online, Thanks to CORS (Canadian Operational Research Society)

I am grateful to Dr. Anjali Aswathi for inviting me to present on April 11, 2025 in a CORS event. Dr. Aswathi is the President of the Canadian Operational Research Society,

The title of my presentation was, "Agricultural Supply Chain Networks Under Uncertainty."

The link to my slide deck for the lecture is here: https://supernet.isenberg.umass.edu/visuals/CORS-Nagurney-2025.pdf

The link to the video recording on Youtube is here: https://youtu.be/AIbWpVPM4uU

The above video recording also includes the presentation by Dr. Emma Freninger, which followed my presentation.

It was also very thoughtful of the CORS President to provide the above certificate. 

Thanks to my PhD students and all others who attended our virtual presentations with special thanks to Ismael Pour for writing up some of the highlights on the UMass Amherst INFORMS Student Chapter blog: https://websites.umass.edu/umassinf/2025/04/13/two-talks-in-one-day/

Our research on agricultural supply chain networks continues!

Our In Memoriam for Dr. Marguerite Frank Is Now Published and Open Access!

The daughters of Dr. Marguerite Straus Frank informed me over the recent holiday season that she had passed away at the age of 97 on December 11, 2024 in Palo Alto.

I quickly notified Professor Immanuel M. Bomze, the Editor in Chief of the EURO Journal on Computational Optimization (EJCO), of this sad news and he then asked me to partner with him in composing an In Memoriam for Marguerite for EJCO.

Marguerite had been a friend and I even had a photo of her in my presentation on the panel, "What Our Past Can Tell Us About Our Future," that took place at the INFORMS Seattle meeting in October, and that I had written about; see https://annanagurney.blogspot.com/2024/11/many-thanks-to-informs-history.html

Despite it being the holiday period, Immanuel and I managed to write the In Memoriam and it did take a lot of research to ensure accuracy. We were in communications with her daughters: Dr. Claudine Frank and Dr. Isabelle Frank. Since Marguerite and I shared some common research interests, writing the In Memoriam brought back many memories, including when she visited me at the Isenberg School and when I hosted her talk at MIT, when I held an NSF Visiting Professorship for Women there. 

We completed the In Memoriam, but the publisher had "technical difficulty," and it took almost 3 weeks to receive the galleys.  Luckily, it was quickly published online. Plus, the In Memoriam is open access.

You may read and download it here: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2192440625000012?via%3Dihub

We shared the In Memoriam with the daughters and they were very appreciative.

Marguerite is best known for being the co-developer of the Frank-Wolfe (1956) algorithm. She faced challenges as a female in STEM but left a lasting legacy. I enjoyed our discussions on the Braess Paradox, which was even a theme in my doctoral dissertation at Brown University.

I am also very grateful to Immanuel Bomze for spearheading an annual paper prize in his journal named after Marguerite. As he wrote to her daughters: "We will keep the memory alive, also with the help of the annual EJCO Award."  More info can be found in the In Memoriam.

Congratulations and Kudos for 2024

2024  was truly a remarkable year, despite challenges.

On December 5, 2024, I was deeply honored to present the Blackett Lecture at The Royal Society in London, England, thanks to the OR Society. It was an incredible event and I thank the OR Society President Dr. Gilbert Owusu for the warm introduction and for his great moderation of the Q&A following my lecture. It was extra special to have my husband, Professor Ladimer S. Nagurney, Isenberg School Dean Anne P. Massey and Associate Dean Bill Brown in attendance, as well as Diane Isenberg and Center Associate Dr. Stavros Siokos. Thanks to all who attended. The reception and dinner were fabulous and the OR Society has kindly posted a recoding of my Blackett Lecture on youtube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-LsIEsi-m0

And, in late December 2024, our latest Dynamics of Disasters: From Natural Phenomena to Human Activity volume was published by Springer Nature!  The book is a collection of 10 refereed chapters. I was delighted to work with my fellow Co-Editors: Ilias S. Kotsireas, Panos M. Pardalos, Stefan Pickl, and Chrys Vogiatzis on this volume. It is based on papers, and, also, invited ones, that were presented at our Dynamics of Disasters conference in Piraeus, Greece, in July 2023. Full information about the book can be found here: https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-74006-0 I'd like to take the opportunity to also thank the reviewers of the chapters. It was special to have a paper, co-authored with my Isenberg School PhD student Dana Hassani and with colleagues at the Kyiv School of Economics (KSE) in Ukraine: Oleg Nivievskyi and Pavlo Martyshev published in this volume:  https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-031-74006-0_7.

And, speaking of Ukraine, I continued to serve as the Co-Chair of the Board of Directors of KSE and on its International Academic Board, with many meetings, and important issues requiring thoughtful and intense decision-making. I was thrilled to have the University of Massachusetts Amherst announce the second cohort of Virtual Scholars, based in Ukraine, thanks to our great partnership. All ten of the Virtual Scholars have been matched with faculty at the Isenberg School of Management.  I am honored to be working with three of them - Professor Myroslava Kushnir at the Ukrainian Catholic University in Lviv,  Professor Borys Kormych at the Odesa Law Academy, and with Dr. Pavlo Martyshev of KSE, who was also part of our first cohort, as were Myroslava and Borys.  The Office of Global Affairs, led by Dr. Kalpen Trivedi, issued this nice press release: https://www.umass.edu/global-affairs/news/kyiv-school-economics-and-university-massachusetts-amherst-launch-second-round-virtual-scholar. Also, as part of this partnership, in Fall 2024, we had 5 exchange students from KSE studying at UMass Amherst and in the Spring 2025 semester we will have 4 staying on.

This was an amazing year for conferences with the 70th birthday conference in honor of Professor Panos Pardalos taking place in mid June in beautiful Halkidiki, Greece, with presentations by Center Associate Professor Dmytro Matsypura of the University of Sydney and me on joint work with Professor Ladimer S. Nagurney of the University of Hartford and my PhD student Ismael Pour. Both the EURO conference in Copenhagen this summer and the INFORMS conference in Seattle this past fall served as outstanding venues for many Center Associates to present their research. At the EURO conference, Center Associates: Professor Tina Wakolbinger of the Vienna University of Economic and Business, Professor Deniz Besik of the University of Richmond, and Professor Sara Saberi of WPI as well as Professor Ladimer S. Nagurney, and I, all took part. At the INFORMS conference, Center Associate Dmytro Matyspura, who had traveled all the way from the University of Sydney, was busy with editorial board meetings and recruiting, and we got together also with Center Associates Professor Pritha Dutta of Willamette University and Professor Ke "Grace" Ke of Central Washington University. Another highlight was to have two of my PhD students, Ismael Pour and Samira Samadi, who joined us as new Doctoral Student Center Associates, present for the first time at an INFORMS conference in Seattle. Dana Hassani also presented. And, our UMass Amherst INFORMS Student Chapter received the Magna Cum Laude award from INFORMS in Seattle. Hard to believe that I have served as the Chapter's Faculty Advisor since 2004. Many of the officers and members celebrated with us at the award ceremony.  Info on the chapter and its activities can be found here: https://websites.umass.edu/umassinf/. Ismael Pour is this year's Chapter President and Dana Hassani was last year's Chapter President.

This was a very busy year for seminar presentations, including at MIT and at the University of Maryland, and other presentations. I very much enjoyed giving a keynote at the Supply Chain Resilience SCRIPS Workshop in Washington DC in early October: https://annanagurney.blogspot.com/2024/10/the-supply-chain-resilience-scrips.html

We have been busy responding to numerous interview requests, including from Reuters, The New York Times, The Washington Post, AlJazeera, because of our expertise on supply chain networks. For some of the coverage by the media, see: https://supernet.isenberg.umass.edu/media/media.htm

For our recent journal articles, please visit the Supernetwork Center website:

https://supernet.isenberg.umass.edu/dart.html

For photos of many events that we were engaged in, please, see:

https://supernet.isenberg.umass.edu/cfoto/centerphotos.html

For additional news and updates, please, see the Spring 2024 and Fall 2024 Supernetwork Sentinel 

https://supernet.isenberg.umass.edu/newsletters/sentinel.html

Hoping for a 2025 New Year filled with peace, great research, conferences, and professional activities, robust health, and prosperity. Thank you for the support!

Suitcase Packing Optimization - 3 Weeks in Europe in 5 Countries and 1 Carry On Suitcase

I recently returned from 3 weeks in Europe and managed with just 1 carry on suitcase, despite beginning the trip with a conference in hot Halkidiki, Greece and ending the travel with a conference in cool and rainy Copenhagen.

After United lost my suitcase (never found) after a 2 week business trip to Japan, I will (almost) never check in a suitcase. Below is a photo of my carry on.

I heard from several conferees at the EURO Conference in Copenhagen that their luggage had not arrived, including the suitcase of a child of a conferee.

The 3 weeks in Europe entailed, besides the two conferences that I had blogged about and included photos of; see  https://annanagurney.blogspot.com/2024/06/the-outstanding-pardalos-70-conference.html for info on the Halkidiki conference in honor of Panos M. Pardalos and here: https://annanagurney.blogspot.com/2024/07/complex-societal-problems-and.html for highlights of the EURO conference in Copenhagen.

In the 3 weeks of travel, not only were there multiple flights (and in southern Europe one usually gets bussed to the plane and then has to march up a flight of stairs to board the plane and then back down again after landing), but also multiple train trips plus some travel on busses.

Along with my spouse, who was marvelous at helping me to haul my carry on up and down flights of stairs, we traveled from Halkidiki to Thessaloniki, onwards to Vienna, where I met with my former PhD student Tina Wakolbinger (whom I also saw in Copenhagen), and then off to Brno in Czechia, where we visited the university where my father had studied electrical engineering.  Also, in Brno, I had a virtual Co-Chairs Board of Directors of the Kyiv School of Economics meeting. It was interesting to hold it in a hotel room, but everything worked out splendidly and it was exciting to reconnect and also meet with KSE President Tymofii Mylovanov and on European time! Then we were off to Prague (it was our first time in Czechia) and, subsequently, we flew to Gothenburg, Sweden where I visited the University of Gothenburg, where I had a multiyear appointment. We took the train from there through Malmo to Copenhagen, a lovely trip, during which I wrote an invited essay.

OK, so what did I pack - this took a lot of thought but optimization is in my DNA and I used each and every item. I packed a navy pant suit, a navy skirt suit, a warmer navy sweater, 3 poplin long-sleeved shirts (white, black, and blue), two polo shirts (I wore one on the plane, along with khaki pants and a navy sporty blazer with an emblem), two long sleeved elegant dresses, and 3 short sleeved ones, two pairs of Bermuda shorts, 1 colorful sweater vest, 2 colorful skirts, socks, stockings, 3 pairs of shoes (1 dressy plus the ones I wore on the flight over) and the usual undergarments and pjs.

Below are a few photos as proof that what I packed was put to good use!

It was great that both in Halkidiki and in Gothenburg we could avail ourselves of a laundry service!

My Panama hat that I had bought in Greece several years ago wore out, but I managed to replace it with a similar one in Vienna.

I also had my made in Ukraine blue and yellow scarf and purchased another scarf in Gothenburg. These were quite useful in chilly Copenhagen.

Thanks to all who made our conferencing and travel in Europe such a pleasure both professionally as well as culturally and socially.

Complex Societal Problems and the Serendipity of Conferences

This week I am taking part in the EURO 2024 Conference in Copenhagen, Denmark, and, yesterday, I chaired the invited session: Complex Societal Problems, and also delivered a presentation on our latest research with my Isenberg School PhD student Dana Hassani and two Kyiv School of Economics colleagues: Oleg Nivievskyi and Pavlo Martyshev.

The session was excellent and papers were presented on refugee resettlement, impacts of climate change of refugee flows, healthcare entrepreneurship in rural areas of Kenya, and our work on international trade network performance under various disruptions with examples drawn from Russia's war on Ukraine.

Full information on our session can be found here.

The audience was terrific, asking many questions, and this also demonstrates the interest in the topics and the research that was presented. I am grateful to Tina Wakolbinger, a member of the conference program committee (and a former PhD student of mine) for the invitation to chair this invited session, which was part of the Humanitarian Operations track. I am very thankful to all the speakers. It was exciting to see Kash Barker, whose work with Andres Gonzales and Buket Ci, was presented by Andres.

This conference is taking place at the Danish Technical University (DTU). For many of us, who are staying in hotels in central Copenhagen,  getting there requires a commute via train and bus. The DTU campus is big and sessions are spread out across multiple buildings, which can require a trek. Lunches, coffee breaks, and snacks are provided, and there are nice exhibits. I especially enjoyed the Springer exhibit where my latest book is on display!

It is the serendipity associated with conferences that I especially love and seeing various conferees from around the globe while one is in transit, or having coffee, etc. It was such a delight to meet, on the first full day of the conference my former Isenberg School PhD students: Tina Wakolbinger, Sara Saberi, and Deniz Besik, all of whom are successful professors and Pritha Dutta arrived yesterday and came to our session. I have had the opportunity to enjoy the EJOR (European Journal of Operational Research) Editorial Board meeting, led by Roman Slowinski, with lunch provided, and to attend various sessions, including on food supply chains. Deniz Besik presented some of our latest work on  the impacts of supply chain disruptions on food quality. Semih Boz, one of our Isenberg School PhD students,  also met with us, which was great and presented a paper.

It has been lovely to encounter Anand Subramanian, Christina Phillips, Grazia Speranza, who I heartily congratulated on her receipt of the EURO Gold Medal (only the second female so honored), as well as many of the Associate Editors at the EJOR meeting, including Paolo Toth and Immanuel Bomze.

Also, what a small world. My three weeks in Europe began with the Pardalos conference in Halkidiki, Greece, and there I met two Ukrainians from Kharkiv, Tetyana and Petro, who are also at the EURO conference, which is very special. 

And we have made new friends from Athens, who are at this conference, and have been enjoying breakfasts with them.

I could not capture photographs with all the wonderful conferees - lots of discussions and chatting and hugs taking place. Super to see collaborators from Italy (but not all) including Laura Scrimali and Gabriella Colajanni plus even Annamaria Barbagallo. Coincidentally, the next conference that I will be speaking at will be the VINEPA conference in Catania, Italy in mid July. I even saw the immediate past President of INFORMS Laura Albert, but only for a brief time. I hope to meet many other conferees today.

And for my post on tips for networking, based on the panel I was on this past Sunday, click here. This panel was part of the WISDOM organized events and kicked off the conference for me in a marvelous warm way (unlike the weather).

The Outstanding Pardalos 70 Conference in Greece

It has been only a few days since the outstanding Pardalos 70 conference in Halkidiki, Greece and the aura continues.

Conferees gathered from 5 continents to celebrate Professor Panos M. Pardalos on his 70th birthday. The talks were excellent (clearly, everyone worked very hard to present their best work) with many including photos and comments on what Pardalos has meant to them as scholars and as a mentor and even a friend.

Panos has supervised the dissertations of over 60 PhD students and has received numerous well-deserved honors and recognitions, including election as INFORMS Fellow and the EURO Gold Medal plus the Constantin Caratheodory Prize. His impact on global optimization, operations research, and numerous applications is profound. The organizers of this conference: Sergiy Butenko, Athanasios (Sakis) Migdalas, and Oleg Prokopyev did an incredible job in site selection, banquet and activity organization, and overall theme selection plus logistics. 

Thanks also to the Program Committee: Vladimir Boginskii, Altannar Chinchuluun, Dalila Martins Fontes, Faruque Hasan, Pavlo Krokhmal, Foad Mahdavi Pajouh, Dmytro Matsypura, Leonidas Pitsoulis, Themistocles Rassias, Mauricio G. C. Resende, and Petros Xanthopoulos for putting together such a fascinating set of single track sessions on the conference theme of "Optimization, Analytics, and Decisions in the Big Data Era." I very much enjoyed also serving on the Program Committee.  The presentations were on topics ranging from sports analytics (quite relevant with the EURO Cup now) to machine learning, complex networks, various aspects of game theory, energy and supply chain applications, and so much more! It was heartwarming to hear in many of the talks how the presenters met Professor Panos Pardalos and his impact on their lives. 

A theme that permeated the conference is that of wonderful friendships, great collaborations, and experiences. Special thanks to Mauricio G. C. Resende for kicking off the conference with his talk on his 30+ years of collaboration with Professor Pardalos. I have been proud to collaborate with Panos for over three decades and we have a new edited Dynamics of Disasters volume going to press shortly with Co-Editors also Ilias Kotsireas, Stefan Pickl, and Chrysafis Vogiatzis. Warm acknowledgments to Professor Stefan Pickl for the presentation of lovely gifts to Panos at the banquet. A very moving part of this conference was seeing a proclamation from the Ukrainian National Academy of Sciences in honor of Panos in the presentation given by Tetyana Romanova on work with Petro Stetsyuk and Andreas Fischer.

Below is a collage of photos from the conference.

More information on the conference: https://sites.google.com/view/panos-70/home

And it was quite remarkable to have so many Ukrainians in attendance and as speakers. Although Ukraine lost its first Euro Cup match, it did win its second one against Slovakia and Sergiy Butenko was at the match in Germany with his family.

Below is a photo of the Ukrainians at the Pardalos conference.

Wishing Professor Panos M. Pardalos wonderful experiences on his new journeys!

Thanks to All Those Who Organize Conferences

This is going to be a very busy but exciting summer with many conferences to present at.

It takes a lot of time and effort to organize a successful conference from the venue selection to the invitation of keynote and other speakers, the organization of exciting sessions, and, of course, the various social and networking events and even panels. 

Conferences allow for the formal exchange of the latest research and also for many encounters, often occurring with serendipity. Friendships can even be made and wonderful memories established. It is great that, after a multiyear hiatus due to COVID-19, conferences are now taking place in person and with great enthusiasm!

Conferences can be huge or smaller and more focused and all play important roles.

In the next month alone, I will be giving talks at conferences in Greece (at the conference in honor of Pardalos with many friends in attendance), Denmark (at the Euro Conference, at which I will see quite a few of my former PhD students, who are now successful professors), and Italy (at the VINEPA Conference).

Thankful to be an invited speaker at the VINEPA (Variational Inequalities, Nash Equilibrium Problems and Applications) Conference in Catania, Italy. This conference will focus on some of my favorite methodological tools. 

Many thanks to the organizers of this conference. I have published journal articles with all the organizers, except for one!

Talks that I will present at the first 3 conferences have now been prepared. Deniz Besik of the University of Richmond will deliver a paper on our latest work at the Euro Conference in Copenhagen and is finalizing that presentation. I am thankful to my excellent collaborators, including colleagues at the Kyiv School of Economics (KSE) in Ukraine as well as my Isenberg School of Management PhD students.

Additional information on conferences, can be found on the Supernetwork Center website.

Some Highlights of the 2023 INFORMS Conference in Phoenix

It is truly extraordinary that this year's INFORMS Annual Meeting attracted over 6,000 delegates to Phoenix. The conference took place October 15-28, 2023 and convened operations researchers and analytics professionals from academia, practice and government. All continents except for Antarctica were represented and the INFORMS President Laura Albert remarked that, next year, perhaps even someone from that continent will join us.

To me, INFORMS is about the people/members, and I especially delighted in seeing several of my former PhD students, who are now thriving as professors at various universities (Dmytro Matsypura at the University of Sydney in Australia, Deniz Besik at the University of Richmond, Shivani Shukla at the University of San Francisco and Sara Saberi at WPI) and having one of my PhD students (Dana Hassani) present at his first such conference the paper that we co-authored with Kyiv School of Economics (KSE) colleagues in Ukraine. It was published in the Journal of Global Optimization as the lead article in an issue and was on display at the Springer booth in the Exhibit Hall. We got to keep the stunning Journal of Global Optimization issue. It was also very special to see both my Labor and Supply Chain Networks book, published in 2023, and the Dynamics of Disasters book that I co-edited with Ilias S. Kotsireas, Panos M. Pardalos and Arsenios Tsokas on display at the Springer booth. Lovely to chat with Pardalos, his wife and son in Phoenix!

Seeing colleagues for the first time in person was also extra special since, in the pandemic, new connections were made virtually but only recently have the travel and the face to face exchanges become possible (and are so very welcome). The technical sessions and plenary and keynote talks were excellent and not all could be attended because quite a few took place "in parallel."

I thoroughly enjoyed various board meetings, including that of the INFORMS Magazine Editorial Advisory Board with Kara Tucker and committee members at 8AM on Sunday morning, as well as the Editorial Board meeting of the International Transactions in Operational Research (ITOR), led by its Editor, Celso C. Ribeiro. The Editorial Board meeting of the Journal of Global Optimization, whose Editor is Sergiy Butenko, was also very enjoyable and the food was excellent - thank you, Springer, the publisher!

It was an honor to present an invited paper and also to speak on two panels: one on optimization and community resilience and the other one - Meet the ITOR Editors! Thanks to Professor Nazanin Tajik of Mississippi State University for inviting me to speak in her session. I was so honored to even receive a gift and special note from her in appreciation. My presentation on defense critical supply chains and risk management can be viewed here. Our other presentations are posted also on the Supernetworks Center site. The resilience panel did not have panelists' slides but it was so good that it went way over and I missed the WORMS (Women in Operations Research and the Management Sciences) lunch! Thanks to Himadri Sen Gupta of the University of Oklahoma for organizing this panel and to his PhD advisor - Andres Gonzalez!

The business meetings were very well-attended and I especially enjoyed the Transportation Science & Logistics Society business meeting at which Hani S. Mahmassani received the Robert Herman Lifetime Achievement Award in Transportation Science.

The INFORMS Fellows luncheon at which the newly inducted Fellows were recognized was deeply engaging and pleasant. It was an honor to share a table with Roman Slowinski, who traveled with his wife from Poznan, Poland, and well as other colleagues, including Ben Lev and Candi Yano!

It was delightful to meet new colleagues and to reconnect with many others. I wish that I could list everyone that made this conference so memorable for me - you remain in my pleasant memories - thank you.

Congratulations to all who received awards! Extra proud that our UMass Amherst INFORMS Student Chapter was recognized with the INFORMS Magna Cum Laude Award.

Below is a collage constructed as a remembrance of some of the highlights. Many thanks to the organizers and to all those who took part.

The Amazing IFORS Conference in Santiago, Chile

I hope that everyone who took part in the amazing IFORS Conference in Santiago, Chile, which took place July 10-14, 2023, has safely and comfortably returned to their home destinations.

The conference, which is a triennial one, was face to face and attracted over 700 presentations and 900 registrants from around the globe.

Kudos to the Co-Chairs of the Local Organizing Committee: Professors Rafael Epstein and Jorge Vera, and to the Chair of the Scientific Program - Professor Alice Smith and to their teams for putting together such an informative and rich scientific as well as social program. And even the weather cooperated - the winter while we were in Santiago was quite mild.

It has been an incredibly busy several weeks, since, shortly before the IFORS Conference, I had co-organized the Dynamics of Disasters Conference in Greece. 

It was so inspiring to see the great attendance and enthusiasm of the conferees and, I must add that, on my direct flight from Madrid to Santiago on Iberia, there were several conferees from Italy (Paolo Toth, Grazia Speranza, and Claudia Archetti) and, just after passport control, I had the pleasure of seeing the INFORMS President Laura Albert. It was wonderful to stroll to the conference venues and to be greeted and to share greetings with conferees. It was truly special to have exchanges with both Professors Tom Magnanti and Fred Hillier, luminaries in Operations Research.

The below collage was prepared as a memento of the conference.

I was thrilled to see my latest book, "Labor and Supply Chain Networks," on display at the Springer book at the exhibition hall at the conference and very much enjoyed speaking to the Springer Editors: Matt Amboy, Razia Amzad, and Jialin Yan. 

I also very much enjoyed the plenary and keynote sessions as well other sessions plus Editorial Board meetings of both the International Transactions in Operational Research (ITOR) and the European Journal of Operational Research (EJOR).

Many thanks to Celso C. Ribeiro, the Editor of ITOR, and to Roman Slowinski, the Editor of EJOR, for such informative meetings!

With the size of the conference and the two venues, I regret that I did not have a chance to speak with as many conferees as I would have liked to. Additional highlights included meeting colleagues that one had interacted with virtually in the pandemic and finally got to meet in person, including the amazing Anand Subramanian, the developer and interviewer behind the outstanding youtube series Subjectto_

And Professor Subrmanian, with some assistance, brought 16 of his special mugs, to present those who were at the conference and had had the pleasure and honor of being interviewed by him! I will treasure my mug. He has, to-date conducted 72 interviews - an extraordinary effort of historical scientific value.

I'd like to thank Professor Margaret Brandeau for her warm introduction to my keynote talk and I am grateful to all those who came to my presentation. I am grateful to my UMass Amherst engineering colleague Professor Chaitra Gopalappa for taking the photo below.

It was wonderful to also see my UMass Amherst engineering colleague Professor Hari Balasubramanian, who, with his wife, were at the same hotel as I in Santiago - the Ismael Hotel.

Some resilience on my part was required, since as I was shampooing my hair, with a head full of lather, the hotel had a pipe break, and there was no water. This happened about 2 hours before my keynote. Resilience comes with being Ukrainian.

I have posted the slide deck of my keynote on the Virtual Center for Supernetworks website. In my keynote, I spoke about, among other work, recent research done with my Isenberg School of Management PhD student Dana Hassani and colleagues at the Kyiv School of Economics in Ukraine Oleg Nivievskyi and Pavlo Martyshev, which was published in the Journal of Global Optimization.

It was truly special to have my former Isenberg School of Management PhD student, Dmytro Matsypura, who is head of the Business Analytics Department at the University of Sydney in Australia come to my keynote as well as Professor Renata Konrad on WPI and Professor Moldovan of Romania.

Many thanks to IFORS for the incredible work on this conference! The conference website can be accessed here.

We Celebrated the Distinguished Career of Panos Pardalos at the PanOptiC Conference on Global Optimization at the University of Florida

On March 9 and 10, 2023, the PanOptiC Conference on Global Optimization took place at the University of Florida Gainesville. The conference was organized to celebrate the distinguished career of Professor Panos M. Pardalos.

The conference was excellent and brought speakers together from many countries. The full program can be downloaded here.

Panos (if I may) has chaired the PhD dissertations of 71 students, which is an incredible accomplishment and has an h-index of 105! His nurturing of students, colleagues, both junior and senior, and his warmth and entrepreneurial spirit in the founding of journals and book series are truly laudable. He has co-directed the Center for Applied Optimization at the U. of Florida for many years and Bill Hager presented him with an award at the banquet this past Thursday,  along with a testimonial. Many of his former PhD students and friends were in attendance. Panos also spoke as did his former PhD students Vladimir Boginskii and Clayton Commander (who has both a PhD and an MD).

It was exciting to have John Birge and Nick Sahinidis (both members of the National Academy of Engineering) give the keynote talks.

It was extra exciting for me to be at this conference since my PhD student Dana Hassani and I were presenting our work with colleagues at the Kyiv School of Economics (KSE) - Oleg Nivievskyi and Pavlo Martyshev through the partnership that UMass Amherst established with KSE.

In our presentation, I had included two collages of events with Pardalos from Greece to Bellagio in Italy as examples with many colleagues and even students in the images.

All those involved in the organization of this conference deserve a big congratulations and thank you!

It was great to see the display of books by Springer at the conference. The display included my new Labor and Supply Chain Networks book as well as the latest Dynamics of Disasters book that I co-edited with Ilias Kotsireas, Panos Pardalos, and Arsenios Tsokas. It was wonderful to see our Editor Elizabeth Loew of Springer!

I leave you with some additional photos of wonderful colleagues including Dionne Aleman from the University of Toronto and Sandra Eksioglu from the University of Arkansas!

And, since Florida is know for its gators, I include some images of the campus.

We are lucky to have such an amazing scientific scholar and human being in our discipline. Thank you, Professor Panos M. Pardalos!

My "Labor and Supply Chain Networks" Book is Published!

I was delighted to receive a shipment of my new book, "Labor and Supply Chain Networks," yesterday. The book was published by Springer Nature and contains 12 chapters, with Acknowledgments, Preface, and an Appendix.

Writing this book was a true labor of love. The book is dedicated to: essential workers and to those fighting for freedom in Ukraine, with gratitude for your heroism. It is the result of many years of  research and writing, accompanied by adrenaline during the COVID-19 pandemic and now the war on Ukraine. 

Springer has produced both hardcopy and online versions, with more information available on the Springer website for the book. I am indebted to Elizabeth Loew of Springer for her outstanding shepherding of this book project with publication even ahead of schedule!

The front matter for the book, with the Preface and the Acknowledgments, is available for free download. In the Acknowledgments, I thank the great Isenberg School Dean Anne P. Massey, the two Operations and Information Management Department Chairs: Professors Bob Nakosteen and Senay Solak, over the period that this book was written, as well as the Vice Provost for Global Affairs at UMass Amherst Kalpen Trivedi, for his leadership of international programs. With the war in Ukraine still raging, and with my service for the Kyiv School of Economics (KSE) in Ukraine a very important part of my life, both professionally and personally, I also thank the President of KSE Tymofiy Mylovanov and Rector Tymofii Brik plus KSE colleagues Oleg Nivievskyi and Nataliia Shapoval, who have done extraordinary work on documenting the impacts of the war. 

Collaborators throughout this challenging time have made work fascinating and enjoyable. I am indebted to Professor Ladimer S. Nagurney of the University of Hartford, Professor Patrizia Daniele of the University of Catania in Italy, Professor Tina Wakolbinger of the Vienna University of Economics and Business, Professor Deniz Besik of the University of Richmond, Professor Sara Saberi of WPI, Professor Pritha Dutta of Pace University, and Professor Mojtaba Salarpour of Texas A&M Commerce. All are Center Associates of the Virtual Center for Supernetworks that I founded in 2001 and continue to direct. Acknowledgments are also extended to my long-time collaborators on Dynamics of Disasters conferences and co-edited volumes: Professor Panos M. Pardalos of the University of Florida and Professor Ilias S. Kotsireas of Wilfrid Laurier University in Canada. I also thank my PhD student Dana Hassani.

Of course, writing a book requires a great deal of focus and time and dedication, and I am so thankful to my family for their support. And, in the pandemic, having a professional society such as INFORMS that helped us to stay connected and informed and also advocated our work to the media and government, was incredible supportive and sustaining.

Workers need to be valued, supported, recognized, and paid for their contributions. Supply chains would collapse without them, as we have seen. I hope that my book, which contains chapters on both profit-maximizing firms and non-profits, including blood service organizations and those in emergency response and disaster management, helps in decision-making as well as policy-making. I believe that students will also appreciate and gain value from the material therein.

I hope that this book will inspire further research as well as implementation in practice of results therein from wages that should be paid to laborers to the productivity investments that should be made for the benefit of workers, consumers, firms, and organizations.

After all, as I wrote in my ORMS Today invited essay (thank you, INFORMS): In the End,  It's All About People!

The Outstanding Optimization and Decision Science Conference in Beautiful Firenze, Italy

I would like to thank the organizers of the outstanding Optimization and Decision Science Conference that took place August 30-September 2, 2022 in the stunning city of Firenze, Italy.

It was a conference of great scientific value, with wonderful social activities, at the University of Firenze, which brought together researchers from many different countries for face to face exchanges. For many of us, it was the first international face to face conference since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. I very much enjoyed all the sessions on variational analysis and equilibrium problems!

I would also like to extend my deepest appreciation to the Conference Co-Chairs: Professors Fabio Schoen and Paola Cappanera, for the warmth and hospitality extended to all of us. The conference website can be found here. Thanks to the Local Organizing Committee and to the Program Committee for their outstanding work!

It was a great honor to give the opening keynote talk at the Museum of Innocents this past Tuesday, followed by a cocktail hour and tour of the museum.  The title of my keynote was: Labor and Supply Chain Networks: It's All About People. The slidedeck can be downloaded here.

Above I am with Drs. Alice Raffaele and Marti Fischetti, two incredibly talented OR researchers and very dynamic leaders of AIROYoung!

The energy and enthusiasm of the conferees was heartwarming to behold. New friendships were made and established relationships further cemented. The sessions were excellent and the University of Firenze a great venue.

It was fabulous that all 5 co-authors of our paper on UAVs, 5G, and Disaster Management showed up! Below are: Yours truly, Daniele Sciacca, Professor Patrizia Daniele, Professor Ladimer S. Nagurney, and Dr. Gabriela Colajanni.

I very much enjoyed listening to the other keynote talks of Professors Bertsimas (virtual presentation), Dick den Hertog, and Paola Scaparra. It was very cool that both the opening and closing keynoters were female!

Below is a photo of the female keynoters.

The social dinner was a banquet at a farm with majestic views of the landscapes in Tuscany. 

It was truly special to see Professor Ivana Ljubic and her postdoc Martina Cerulli at the banquet and to meet colleagues even from the Czech Republic!

I leave you with some views of beautiful Firenze, Italy! 

All the conferees had a fabulous time scientifically and socially.  The great discipline of Operations Research, because of the creativity and dedication of its researchers, educators, and practitioners, is making laudable positive impact globally. Working together we can achieve so much good.

Thanks to the organizers of the great Optimization and Decision Science 2022 conference for bringing many of us together again, in person!