Tomorrow morning, one of my Operations & Information Management students, who is in my Humanitarian Logistics and Healthcare class that I am teaching this semester, will be attending with me the Hometown Heroes event at the Mass Mutual Center in Springfield, MA.
We will be the guests of Mr. Rick Lee, the Executive Director of the Pioneer Valley Chapter of the American Red Cross, who spoke in my class in February.
The Pioneer Valley Chapter of the American Red Cross provides emergency response in Hampden, Hampshire and Franklin counties in western Massachusetts and is also behind a model call center for servicemen.
According to a lovely article in The Springfield Republican: The chapter created the Hometown Heroes program in the wake of the
terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Lee said. The idea was partially to
help bridge gaps in funding left when so much charitable giving went to
causes related to those attacks.
But the larger reason was, and remains, giving the community a way to honor people who go above and beyond to help others.
And in the beautiful words of Mr. Rick Lee:
"We are celebrating one of the most beautiful aspects of the human heart, which is kindness," Lee said.
This year 9 Hometown Heroes will be honored.
In addition to Mr. Rick Lee, this semester, we have hosted Mr. Jeff Hescock of UMass Amherst, Dr. Pierre Rouzier of UHS at UMass Amherst, Mr. Dave Madsen of WGGB, and even the other Dr. Nagurney, my husband, who gave a guest lecture on Disaster Communications. The students and I were so inspired by these remarkable individuals that I wrote a Guest Editorial, Community Experts Enhance Disaster Management Education as Guest Speakers at the Isenberg School of Management at UMass, about their talks (with the exception of my husband's since he was guest lecturing when I was out of town), which was published the other day on masslive.com.
I had to thank these very special people in a public way and that is why I wrote the Guest Editorial, which also features a photo of Mr. Rick Lee with the students in my class.
In addition, the Isenberg School of Management posted a two-part series on this course focusing on the presentation of Dr. Rouzier and also that of Mr. Madsen. Many thanks to the Communications Department and especially to Mr. Lou Wigdor who attended these lectures and wrote them up so eloquently.
We have amazing people in our midst, which deserve special honors and recognition and among those I include the above individuals.
We look forward to seeing Mr. Lee of the Red Cross again tomorrow and honoring this year's Hometown Heroes for their exceptional courage! Even two UPS drivers will be honored (perfect humanitarian logistics example!)
Wednesday, March 26, 2014
Monday, March 24, 2014
Save the Dates - Two Upcoming Techie Talks at the Isenberg School Thanks to the UMass Amherst INFORMS Student Chapter
Spring break is over and we have only about 6 weeks of the spring semester left.
The UMass Amherst INFORMS Student Chapter and I, as the Chapter's Faculty Advisor, are quite excited about our upcoming speakers.
This Friday, March 28, we will be hosting Dr. Eric Gonzales of the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department at UMass Amherst. He will be speaking on Coordinating Traffic and Transit Systems: Linking Transportation Science and Economics. Dr. Gonzales received his PhD from UC Berkeley and his dissertation advisor was Professor Carlos Daganzo, who is the most recent recipient of the Robert Herman Lifetime Achievement Award in Transportation Science announced at the INFORMS Minneapolis meeting last Fall. Dr. Daganzo was also elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2014. Professor Gonzales was previously at Rutgers University and we are very happy that he is now, as of this semester, at UMass Amherst.
Also, on Friday, April 18, we will be hosting my colleague, Professor Ryan Wright of the Operations & Information Management Department. Professor Wright will be speaking on Towards a Behavioral Model of Online Deception Detection. This topic is also fascinating. Dr. Wright is a fellow Canadian and he and I spoke at the UMass Amherst TEDx event last November and were nominated by students, which was such a nice and pleasant surprise. He instructs the required information management course at the Isenberg School to an audience of hundreds.
The UMass Amherst INFORMS Student Chapter and I, as the Chapter's Faculty Advisor, are quite excited about our upcoming speakers.
This Friday, March 28, we will be hosting Dr. Eric Gonzales of the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department at UMass Amherst. He will be speaking on Coordinating Traffic and Transit Systems: Linking Transportation Science and Economics. Dr. Gonzales received his PhD from UC Berkeley and his dissertation advisor was Professor Carlos Daganzo, who is the most recent recipient of the Robert Herman Lifetime Achievement Award in Transportation Science announced at the INFORMS Minneapolis meeting last Fall. Dr. Daganzo was also elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2014. Professor Gonzales was previously at Rutgers University and we are very happy that he is now, as of this semester, at UMass Amherst.
I hope that you can join us for these talks. We have also invited another speaker so stay tuned!
For more information about the UMass Amherst INFORMS Student Chapter, please visit its website.
Photos of Spring in Beautiful Sweden
As promised in my previous blogpost, in this post I am including photos that I took this past week in Gothenburg, Sweden, where I spent 10 days, as part of my contract as a Visiting Professor at the School of Business, Economics and Law at the University of Gothenburg. This visit overlapped with spring break at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where I am a professor at its Isenberg School of Management.
Given that there is more cold and snow in the forecast for Massachusetts this week even though spring has arrived, at least on the calendar, the below photos, taken in central Gothenburg and in Haga, which borders the Business School, will remind us that, hopefully, we will eventually see some flowers and milder temperatures in New England!
Welcome back from spring break!
With best wishes for a great rest of the spring semester!
Given that there is more cold and snow in the forecast for Massachusetts this week even though spring has arrived, at least on the calendar, the below photos, taken in central Gothenburg and in Haga, which borders the Business School, will remind us that, hopefully, we will eventually see some flowers and milder temperatures in New England!
With best wishes for a great rest of the spring semester!
Sunday, March 23, 2014
Great Flight on Delta - KLM from Amsterdam to Boston
Yesterday I got up at 3AM (Swedish time) since I had an early flight from the Landvetter Airport in Gothenburg, Sweden and wanted to make sure that I would not miss my taxi to the airport that was graciously arranged for me through Gothenburg University's Visiting Professorship Program.
I had been in Sweden for ten days and will be posting some photos in the next blogspot.
The flight from Gothenburg to Amsterdam Schiphol was smooth although I sympathized with the crying baby behind me (thanks for my noise blocking headseats purchased in Sweden).
After a several hour layover in Amsterdam, during which I managed to purchase lots of chocolates and have a nice coffee break, we boarded the flight to Boston. Security was thorough with every passenger being personally interviewed.
My seatmate with the window seat was a tall Dutchman who has a PhD and an MD, and who is also a professor at the University of Amsterdam, where I have several friends. He was traveling to a conference in Boston (at the Sheraton hotel) of world burn specialists and surgeons. I could not have had a more interesting seatmate and we have exchanged messages since we landed. Truly inspiring the work that he does to save lives and he will be flying back to do surgeries scheduled for this Tuesday!
The food was great on the flight - one of my favorite airplane meals is the cold chicken salad that Delta serves on this flight and I got the last one (did talk with the stewards before the flight to tell them about how much I liked this meal). It was accompanied by cantaloupe and pink grapefruit and was so fresh and delicious. Dessert consisted of chocolate biscuits and our snack just before landing was a type of calzone with veggies and a small ice cream sundae.
Also, during the flight, while standing and doing stretches, I met a female chemistry professor from the University of Utrecht in The Netherlands who was going to another conference in Boston on nuclear magnetic resonance, which is taking place at the new Westin Waterfront hotel where, coincidentally, I will be next Sunday through Tuesday for the INFORMS Analytics conference. She is expecting her third child in July and we had a nice conversation on work-life balance and parental leaves in Sweden, Holland, and the U.S.
My burn specialist colleague told me that there were at least 3 of his colleagues going to his conference in Boston including an intensive care physician. Luckily, however, there was no call needed for a doctor on the plane! He told me that it can be very tricky to respond to such a request.
There were a lot of brains on that flight but not so unusual given that Boston and Massachusetts, in general, are quite centers of the academic universe!
Thank you, Delta and KLM, for such an enjoyable flight. Some of my fellow travellers hope that we encounter one another on a future flight of yours.
Nice when it's not just about the destination but the journey itself is such a pleasure!
However, the shuttle ride from Logan to Amherst was not very smooth since as we left Logan we saw the tunnel under the Prudential Center stuffed with cars with red backlights and my driver did a quick maneuver.
We had to take the Mystic Parkway through Arlington (rather than the MA turnpike) and then ended up taking Route 2 back to Amherst (a journey that took about 40 minutes longer than expected).
Upon arriving in Amherst my husband told us that there was construction in the tunnel with the ceiling being replaced. Hence, the congestion!
I had been in Sweden for ten days and will be posting some photos in the next blogspot.
The flight from Gothenburg to Amsterdam Schiphol was smooth although I sympathized with the crying baby behind me (thanks for my noise blocking headseats purchased in Sweden).
After a several hour layover in Amsterdam, during which I managed to purchase lots of chocolates and have a nice coffee break, we boarded the flight to Boston. Security was thorough with every passenger being personally interviewed.
My seatmate with the window seat was a tall Dutchman who has a PhD and an MD, and who is also a professor at the University of Amsterdam, where I have several friends. He was traveling to a conference in Boston (at the Sheraton hotel) of world burn specialists and surgeons. I could not have had a more interesting seatmate and we have exchanged messages since we landed. Truly inspiring the work that he does to save lives and he will be flying back to do surgeries scheduled for this Tuesday!
The food was great on the flight - one of my favorite airplane meals is the cold chicken salad that Delta serves on this flight and I got the last one (did talk with the stewards before the flight to tell them about how much I liked this meal). It was accompanied by cantaloupe and pink grapefruit and was so fresh and delicious. Dessert consisted of chocolate biscuits and our snack just before landing was a type of calzone with veggies and a small ice cream sundae.
Also, during the flight, while standing and doing stretches, I met a female chemistry professor from the University of Utrecht in The Netherlands who was going to another conference in Boston on nuclear magnetic resonance, which is taking place at the new Westin Waterfront hotel where, coincidentally, I will be next Sunday through Tuesday for the INFORMS Analytics conference. She is expecting her third child in July and we had a nice conversation on work-life balance and parental leaves in Sweden, Holland, and the U.S.
My burn specialist colleague told me that there were at least 3 of his colleagues going to his conference in Boston including an intensive care physician. Luckily, however, there was no call needed for a doctor on the plane! He told me that it can be very tricky to respond to such a request.
There were a lot of brains on that flight but not so unusual given that Boston and Massachusetts, in general, are quite centers of the academic universe!
Thank you, Delta and KLM, for such an enjoyable flight. Some of my fellow travellers hope that we encounter one another on a future flight of yours.
Nice when it's not just about the destination but the journey itself is such a pleasure!
However, the shuttle ride from Logan to Amherst was not very smooth since as we left Logan we saw the tunnel under the Prudential Center stuffed with cars with red backlights and my driver did a quick maneuver.
We had to take the Mystic Parkway through Arlington (rather than the MA turnpike) and then ended up taking Route 2 back to Amherst (a journey that took about 40 minutes longer than expected).
Upon arriving in Amherst my husband told us that there was construction in the tunnel with the ceiling being replaced. Hence, the congestion!
Friday, March 21, 2014
What a Spring Break in Sweden
Tomorrow morning I am headed at 4:30 AM to the airport in Gothenburg,
Sweden and then off to Amsterdam Schiphol, which was recently selected
as one of ten top airports in the world (and I agree), and then onwards
to good old Boston Logan.
The past ten days here in Gothenburg, Sweden have been filled with many impressions from the crocuses blooming, to the flower displays outside many shops, to the seagulls flying outside my office window and chirping away, and to terrific conversations with colleagues, an editor, and friends that I have made in this very special community.
This is the third year that I have been appointed a Visiting Professor at the School of Business, Economics and Law at the University of Gothenburg and I am so grateful for this very special program! I spend about 44 days here each year.
I have enjoyed working at my standing desk, while sipping cappuccino from the new coffee machine in our office suite, sampling Swedish cream puff pastries with marzipan, which are traditional at this time of year, with students, staff, and colleagues, and brainstorming on various research projects.
Evenings, when the rain is falling and I am in my top level apartment that looks like a turret in a castle, I do more research with many beautiful math equations while I gaze at a watercolor painting, to the music of the rain.
Everywhere I walk - to the foodstores, to work, to downtown, and the gorgeous parks, especially Schlottskogen.
Plus, I discovered that, at the Press Stop close to the grand Central Train Station, I can get a New York Times, printed on demand - now how cool is that!
I will be leaving with a heavy heart because I really wish that the United States could be more like Sweden!
Also, this has been a difficult week in many respects, since our great benefactor, Mr. Eugene Isenberg, after whom the Isenberg School of Management is named, passed away on March 16.
In addition, the takeover of Crimea, such a beautiful part of Ukraine, that I have written about, since I was there a few years ago at a Network Science conference, has shocked us all.
I take some solace (see photos below) that here, in Gothenburg, many of the trams and trolleys fly the Ukrainian flag, so no wonder that I feel so at home here.
The past ten days here in Gothenburg, Sweden have been filled with many impressions from the crocuses blooming, to the flower displays outside many shops, to the seagulls flying outside my office window and chirping away, and to terrific conversations with colleagues, an editor, and friends that I have made in this very special community.
This is the third year that I have been appointed a Visiting Professor at the School of Business, Economics and Law at the University of Gothenburg and I am so grateful for this very special program! I spend about 44 days here each year.
I have enjoyed working at my standing desk, while sipping cappuccino from the new coffee machine in our office suite, sampling Swedish cream puff pastries with marzipan, which are traditional at this time of year, with students, staff, and colleagues, and brainstorming on various research projects.
Evenings, when the rain is falling and I am in my top level apartment that looks like a turret in a castle, I do more research with many beautiful math equations while I gaze at a watercolor painting, to the music of the rain.
Everywhere I walk - to the foodstores, to work, to downtown, and the gorgeous parks, especially Schlottskogen.
Plus, I discovered that, at the Press Stop close to the grand Central Train Station, I can get a New York Times, printed on demand - now how cool is that!
I will be leaving with a heavy heart because I really wish that the United States could be more like Sweden!
Also, this has been a difficult week in many respects, since our great benefactor, Mr. Eugene Isenberg, after whom the Isenberg School of Management is named, passed away on March 16.
In addition, the takeover of Crimea, such a beautiful part of Ukraine, that I have written about, since I was there a few years ago at a Network Science conference, has shocked us all.
I take some solace (see photos below) that here, in Gothenburg, many of the trams and trolleys fly the Ukrainian flag, so no wonder that I feel so at home here.
Wednesday, March 19, 2014
Very Sad News - Mr. Gene Isenberg, Nabors Industries Leader and Philanthropist, Has Passed Away
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Friday, March 14, 2014
Back in Sweden
Some head south for spring break and, no wonder, given the winter that we have had this year in Massachusetts!
I get my muse in Sweden, where I have written several books and where the natural beauty, architecture, people, and culture, plus food, I never get tired of!
I am now back in Gothenburg, Sweden where I have been reappointed a Visiting Professor at the School of Business, Economics and Law at the University of Gothenburg. This reappointment enables me to finish up some projects (and, of course, start some new ones) that have evolved from my time here while on my sabbatical.
It always feels wonderful to be back - to see my great colleagues here and to catch up with many friends.
The crocuses have been blooming here and there is green grass (unlike the snow back in Massachusetts)!
I am especially excited about some research on intermodal transportation and sustainability as well as different business models for freight which I believe also may be of relevance to the Future Internet Architecture NSF-funded project that we have been working on. Just last week our group submitted a revision of our paper to a special issue of a journal that will feature different such architectures.
The big news in my group here in Gothenburg is that we got a new coffee machine and the cappuccino I just had was delicious!
Plus, they have hired a new senior faculty member, Professor Kevin Cullinane, from Great Britain, who will be arriving on May 1. This is a fabulous addition.
I've already had several meetings with both faculty and doctoral students here in Gothenburg.
While in Sweden I heard the sad news that Dr. Bertil Liander, who interviewed me for the position at UMass Amherst and was the MBA Director at the School of Management when I started out as an Assistant Professor, passed away. He was Swedish and such a charming and pleasant individual. He will be missed! He had studied at the Stockholm School of Economics and received his PhD from what is now the Isenberg School of Management at UMass Amherst. He was 87. We enjoyed seeing him and his lovely wife periodically at Whole Foods.
I get my muse in Sweden, where I have written several books and where the natural beauty, architecture, people, and culture, plus food, I never get tired of!
I am now back in Gothenburg, Sweden where I have been reappointed a Visiting Professor at the School of Business, Economics and Law at the University of Gothenburg. This reappointment enables me to finish up some projects (and, of course, start some new ones) that have evolved from my time here while on my sabbatical.
It always feels wonderful to be back - to see my great colleagues here and to catch up with many friends.
The crocuses have been blooming here and there is green grass (unlike the snow back in Massachusetts)!
I am especially excited about some research on intermodal transportation and sustainability as well as different business models for freight which I believe also may be of relevance to the Future Internet Architecture NSF-funded project that we have been working on. Just last week our group submitted a revision of our paper to a special issue of a journal that will feature different such architectures.
The big news in my group here in Gothenburg is that we got a new coffee machine and the cappuccino I just had was delicious!
Plus, they have hired a new senior faculty member, Professor Kevin Cullinane, from Great Britain, who will be arriving on May 1. This is a fabulous addition.
I've already had several meetings with both faculty and doctoral students here in Gothenburg.
While in Sweden I heard the sad news that Dr. Bertil Liander, who interviewed me for the position at UMass Amherst and was the MBA Director at the School of Management when I started out as an Assistant Professor, passed away. He was Swedish and such a charming and pleasant individual. He will be missed! He had studied at the Stockholm School of Economics and received his PhD from what is now the Isenberg School of Management at UMass Amherst. He was 87. We enjoyed seeing him and his lovely wife periodically at Whole Foods.
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