Isaac Newton's Tree Lives On as Does the Academic Family Tree

My husband, who has a PhD in physics from Brown University, shared with me today that department's annual 2011 newsletter and, in particular, a fabulous article on Isaac Newton, his discovery of gravity, falling apples, and even the bubonic plaque and the role that it played (or legend has it) .

The article is featured above with the photos, compliments of the newsletter.

What is truly amazing, is that there is an apple tree outside of the Barus and Holley (B&H) building at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, that has a graft of a tree that was a descendant of a tree from Newton's orchard! I had my office in B&H when I was a graduate student in Applied Math at Brown, specializing in Operations Research.

Every year, Professor Humphrey Maris distributes the fruit from this apple tree to his physics students in order to inspire them.

According to the article: On October 7, the Physics Department gathered to commemorate the legendary fall of an apple. A dozen years ago, Humphrey Maris planted a graft of a descendant of the apple tree believed to have inspired Sir Isaac Newton’s universal law of gravitation. The tree, located near the steps of Barus & Holley, is an antique strain called “Flower of Kent.” Each fall, Professor Maris harvests the fruit it bears to share with his students.

Legend has it that the bubonic plague played a peripheral role in Newton’s seminal moment. Newton was a student at Trinity College in Cambridge when the plague swept across Europe, reaching Cambridge in 1665 and forcing the university to close. He returned to Woolsthorpe Manor, his family’s home in Lincolnshire,
England, where he observed apples falling in the garden.

I had earlier written that I could trace my academic genealogy back to Newton, with the help of Professor Mike Trick's great research.

Nice to know that we can not only go back to Newton in terms of our academic lineage and academic family tree but also forward in terms of Newton's apples!

Choices and Decision-Making -- What I Decided to Do

For some reason, good news tends to arrive (at least for me) in bunches.

Today, I was faced with having three choices and having to decide among them.

They all fell on the same date, May 11, 2011, and each required my being in a different country -- in Sweden, in Russia, and in the US. One day this may be feasible, but not yet.

The first invitation, came from the Vice Chancellor at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden, requesting my presence at the Inauguration of New Professors at the University of Gothenburg, where I have been appointed a Visiting Professor. The invitation stated: Traditions are important in a time of rapid change. They create continuity and hopefully also fellowship within the University of Gothenburg. The Inauguration of New Professors, which takes place on 11 May at 14.00 in Gothenburg Concert Hall, is one of two important traditional ceremonies at our University. The other one is the Conferment of Doctoral Degrees that is held in the autumn. The Inauguration fulfils two functions. The first is to honour and welcome new professors. The second is to publicly display the University’s renewal and competence.

At the ceremony we also welcome visiting professors and adjunct professors in order to show our appreciation of being able to associate ourselves with your expertise. I hope that you feel welcome as colleagues among the other professors at the University of Gothenburg.

The second invitation was to give a plenary talk at the 2nd International Conference on Network Analysis, which takes place on May 7 – 9, 2012 in Nizhny Novgorod, Russia. I have been to St. Petersburg, Russia, but never as far east as exotic Nizhny Novgorod. The flights to/from this location do not operate on a regular, even, daily, basis, making travel to and from, a time-consuming process.

Plus, the UMass Amherst undergraduate AND graduate graduations are on May 11, 2012! I have a doctoral student that I expect to be receiving her PhD in Management Science that day and many undergraduates majoring in Operations Management that I would love to send off appropriately. The students I have been with for several years as their professor and mentor.

Given the above choices, I proceeded to ask students, faculty, as well as, family members and staff as to what I should do.

There was no consensus and the responses were quite interesting -- and, in a sense, the utility maximizing solution (at least for someone) may actually be to try to attend 2 out of the 3 events (perhaps Russia followed by Sweden, for example, or maybe even videotaping my plenary for Russia and then going to Sweden or staying back in Amherst).

A few minutes ago I made my decision.

I plan on being at the UMass Amherst graduations, which, this year, because of our readjusted academic year calendar, fall earlier than in previous years.

I have notified both my Russian and Swedish contacts (I will be in the Swedish inauguration brochure although not physically there). As for going back to Russia, my hosts hope that there will be another opportunity -- as do I! I am on the Advisory Council of the Laboratory of Algorithms and Technologies for Network Analysis at the Higher School of Economics in Nizhny Novgorod, which is directed by Professor Panos Pardalos through a major award that he received. I am sure that their Network Analysis conference will be a great success -- sorry to have to miss it!

Driving Nobel Laureates From Massachusetts

The Boston Globe has a delightful article by Brock Parker, A course in driver's ed, about Dan Mosher, who is a chauffeur, but to a very exclusive clientele. Mosher is driver for a local nonprofit program called Nobel Laureate School Visits and works for Lexington Luxury Sedans. The program accesses Nobel Prize winners at institutions in the Boston area and sets up visits with top students at area high schools.

I was delighted to read that he has even chauffered the Nobel Laureate, Dr. Craig Mello, who is a fellow Brown University alum, and works for the UMass Medical Center in Worcester.

Mosher, as part of his contract, asked for the opportunity to also attend the lectures given by the Nobel laureates at the various high schools that he drives them to.

I was impressed that, according to The Globe, at approximately 7:45 a.m. last Wednesday, Mosher took his black Cadillac to the Back Bay to pick up Nobel laureate Dr. Jack Szostak and drove him to Chicopee High School for a talk with about 40 students. Chicopee is in western Massachusetts. On the way, Mosher asked Szostak about his experience going to Stockholm in 2009 to receive the Nobel Prize in the category of physiology or medicine. (By the way, my most recent post spoke about Sweden.)

Congrats to Dr. Edward Shapiro, the founder of the School Visits Program, who is a Quincy scientist. He, with the help of Dan Fenn, an adjunct professor at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, started this exceptional program in 2009 .

“The idea was that the best and the brightest in these schools need to benefit from recognition, from encouragement, from nurturing,’’ said Fenn.

And for another fascinating fact, according to the article: of about 200 Nobel laureates living in the United States, 31 live in Massachusetts, and 28 are affiliated in some way with MIT or Harvard University.

I always knew that Massachusetts was special.

The Nobel Laureates are in good hands with their driver, Mr. Dan Mosher, who even does his homework before his chauffering assignments so that he can converse with his esteemed passenger(s).

Clearly, this is not Driving Miss Daisy.

And What Will You Be Doing Over the Spring Break?

Although the forecast is calling for one of the coldest days of this relatively mild winter and it is now only 14 degrees in Amherst, Massachusetts, I hear the woodpeckers outside my window and the rest of the week is supposed to be quite mild.

This past week, in addition to getting ready for a risk management and optimization workshop that will take place this Friday at UMass Amherst, working on my two courses, helping a student with a dissertation, and many other activities, I have been preparing a set of talks that I will be giving in Sweden.

Indeed, I will be spending my spring break in the north, rather than in the balmy south. I will be in the city of Gothenburg, which, by Swedish standards, is quite mild. I am very much looking forward to my first trip there as a Visiting Professor at the School of Business, Economics, and Law at the University of Gothenburg.

I have prepared 4 lectures, 3 of which I will be giving at the University of Gothenburg, and the other at the Chalmers University of Technology, also in Gothenburg. The Gothenburg lectures are on: Financial Networks, Financial Networks and Disruption Management, and Grand Challenges in Supply Chain Network Analysis to Design. The title of my Chalmers talk is: Perishable Product Supply Chains in Health Care. I am looking forward to meeting new colleagues across the Atlantic!

I have lived in Sweden (in Stockholm) and am enamored of the people and culture.

Being Ukrainian, I probably have some Swedish blood in me.

I always enjoy hearing about what the students are doing on their spring break and, over the years, have noticed how the spring migrations have changed from Florida to Mexico and, now, to even community service trips in the US and beyond.

My daughter, who is a student at Deerfield Academy, has chosen, for the third year in a row, to spend part of her spring break helping out in a boys orphanage in the Dominican Republic. She has collected school materials and small gifts to bring to the children. Along with a friend, and with the support of the elementary school that she graduated from -- The Bement School -- she has raised money through the sales of bracelets to support the library and the librarian at the orphanage. The library had been locked up. My daughter is going back to see, how through the efforts of many, the situation for the children there has, hopefully, improved. The conditions are difficult but love and caring speak eloquently in any and every language and which child doesn't cherish seeing and holding a book?!

UMass Amherst Goes Green with a Permaculture Garden and Gets Top Votes in White House Campus Champions of Change Challenge

The post below is being updated on Monday, March 5, with the link on the good news noted in The Chronicle of Higher Education.
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The votes are in and it looks as though UMass Amherst, which reached the finals of the White House College Campus Champions of Change, has garnered the greatest number of votes for a total of 59, 850 with the voting ending yesterday.

The results are in and the UMass Amherst Permaculture Initiative, led by Ryan Harb, should be congratulated.

The UMass Permaculture Initiative is a unique and cutting edge sustainability program that converts unproductive grass lawns on campus into ecological, socially responsible, and financially sustainable permaculture landscapes that are easy to replicate.

The top five vote getters will be invited to an event at the White House. They will also be featured by mtvU and MTV Act and be given the opportunity to host an episode of mtvU’s signature program, “The Dean’s List.”

UMass Amherst is in good company, followed by the University of Arkansas, Grinnell College, UCLA, and the University of Chicago.

UMass Amherst issued a nice press release on this challenge and even the Isenberg School highlighted some of its alums who were involved.

What also impressed me is that, among the student committee members, are several undergraduates who are majoring in my departmental majors of Finance and Operations Management!

Congrats to all involved -- wonderful to have such hard and important work recognized in such a significant way.

New President of Brown University Announced -- Dr. Christina Paxson

I tend to have uncanny intuition and, between working on lectures that I will later this month be delivering in Sweden, checked out the Brown University homepage. I have 4 degrees from Brown so I do have a great fondness for this university. Plus, my husband has two degrees from Brown and I met him there, freshman week, no less.

The new President of Brown University has been announced and it is a female (following in the footsteps of Dr. Ruth Simmons who is stepping down after her fabulous presidency later this term).

The new President of Brown University is Dr. Christina Hull Paxson, an economist. She is currently the Dean of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public Affairs at Princeton University. She will assume the Presidency of Brown on July 1, 2012.

According to the Brown University press release:

A 1982 honors graduate of Swarthmore College, Phi Beta Kappa, Paxson earned her graduate degrees in economics at Columbia University (M.A., 1985; Ph.D., 1987). She began her academic career at Princeton University in 1986, becoming assistant professor of economics and public affairs the next year. She became a full professor in 1997 and was named the Hughes-Rogers Professor of Economics and Public Affairs in 2007. Graduate students at the Woodrow Wilson School have given her five annual awards for teaching excellence.

Congratulations to Dr. Paxson -- I wish her well!

So, What Do You Think of the Academic Job Market this Year in Operations Management, Management Science, and Operations Research?

On this blog, I write about research, education, networks, and the world, which also includes topics such as life in academia and how to get a faculty position, in the first place.

I have chaired the dissertations of 15 doctoral students, who have since received their PhDs, and all, except for two (who are very successful in the high technology and financial services industries), are now professors (with 3 having attained the highest rank of Full Professor). Besides obtaining faculty appointments in the US, my former PhD students are now faculty in Canada, Europe, and in Australia, all at wonderful universities and in great locations.

This year, I have another doctoral student in Management Science who will be defending her dissertation and who has been on the job market.

My Department of Finance and Operations Management at the Isenberg School of Management has also been heavily involved in recruiting new faculty members, since we have several openings.

Having said the above, and with my perspective, I find that, this year, the academic job market has been very fast-moving, with many top candidates having secured offers (and having accepted them) already (and this is only March 2). Clearly, the first movers have an advantage as well as those students who prepared their curriculum vitae and other documentation in a timely manner. Of course, I am speaking about the job market in Management Science/Operations Management/Operations Research, which is quite dynamic and healthy.

Interestingly, I am also seeing additional "movement" or desire to relocate coming from those who have been at a university for a few years, so those who are just working on completing their PhDs are in competition with those who already have their PhDs and a few years of solid teaching experience.

My doctoral student has received an offer and has accepted it, as well, but she continues to receive inquiries from schools, who started their searches later in the academic season (this can happen for various reasons, including school funding and approval issues). She also continues to receive invitations for on-campus interviews. Obviously, she has to decline these (although a trip to Florida certainly beckons at this time of the year in New England) because she is thrilled with the offer that she has accepted. As an Academic Mom, I could not be prouder and happier for her.

Nice to see the academic genealogical tree flowering and growing. Newton and Galileo must be watching from above. Yes, believe me, we can trace our academic lineage that far back!