World Cup Fever and Operations Research

The 2014 World Cup has been thrilling, dramatic, and awe-inspiring with the marvelous athleticism of the globe's top soccer players engaged in games that are simply riveting.

Brazil deserves our congratulations for uniting the world as we watch the beautiful game being played at its venues.

I know of two colleagues in Operations Research who have tickets to several of the games in Brazil and I hope to catch their faces on TV at upcoming matches, Dr. Celso Ribeiro, the Editor of the journal, International Transactions in Operational Research (ITOR), and Dr. Mauricio Resende, of AT&T.

This year, as in 2010, 2006, and even 2002, I have been spending weeks during the spring and summer out of the USA, and those have also been World Cup years.

In 2002, I was living with my family in Innsbruck, Austria, where I held a Distinguished Fulbright at the SOWI Business School at the University of Innsbruck.  Brazil won the tournament that year, beating Germany.

In 2006, which was my sabbatical year at Harvard, I traveled to Limassol. Cyprus,  to speak  at the 12th International Conference on Computing in Economics and Finance, June 22 - 24, 2006 and then to Iceland, for the 21st European Conference on Operational Research, Iceland, July 2-5, 2006, and, finally, to  Erice, Sicily, to give an invited talk at the INTERNATIONAL SCHOOL OF MATHEMATICS  G. STAMPACCHIA 44th Workshop: VARIATIONAL ANALYSIS AND PARTIAL DIFFERENTIAL EQUATIONS, Erice, Sicily, July 5-14.

I was with many operations researchers in Erice, when Italy beat France in the 2006 World Cup, an experience we will never forget because of the celebrations that followed and somehow I made it back the next day via Alitalia to Boston and with my hearty congratulations to the staff got upgraded to Business Class!

The below photo is of several of the Erice workshop participants, including Professor Panos Pardalos of the University of Florida, watching the final game!

In 2010, we were in Buenos Aires, Argentina,  for the great ALIO-INFORMS Conference. The World Cup that year was taking place in South Africa. Buenos Aires was replendant in celebrating its team.   Spain won that year (and got eliminated early in 2014). Coincidentally, Dr. Celso Ribeiro gave a tutorial on sports scheduling at this conference, with a focus on soccer, which I enjoyed very much. A special issue of ITOR  was edited on the tutorials and I also had one with Q. Qiang.

I have spent almost 2 of the past several months in Europe, being based primarily in Sweden (which did not, however,  qualify for the 2014 World Cup). I have also been going to conferences in Erice (deja vu), in Taormina, also in Sicily, and in Greece. I have met up with may operations researchers at these venues and together we have cheered on many teams. I enjoy listening to the announcers in different languages.

The photo below was taken in Italy about 2 weeks ago, shortly before Italy was eliminated from the 2014 World Cup, and we commiserated with our many Italian friends.

 

I was disappointed that Greece lost last night especially since Greece was the most recent country at which I was at an operations research conference and it was a truly special one - as readers of my blog know. We recently celebrated Professor Pardalos' 60th birthday with a conference in Chalkidiki, Greece, at which I took the photo below, from the ferry. Many more photos are here.

The Costa Rican goalie, Keylor Navas, who was instrumental in Costa Rica beating Greece in last night's game,  has made headlines with his amazing plays. Afterwards, I enjoyed his quotes, in which he emphasizes his family (and how he kept on thinking of them during last night's game against Greece): I try to be a good father. I tried to be a good friend and in such a beautiful sport as football, I always try to have my kids happy so when they grow up, they can look back and they can see a father who did important things for their country.

It is great that the USA has made the round of 16, although it lost to Germany in its latest match,  and tomorrow it will be very exciting to watch the USA team play against Belgium.

Congratulations to all of the teams that qualified for this terrific 2014 World Cup in Brazil!

Sustainable Supply Chains for Sustainable Cities, Earth Day, and Erice

Today is Earth Day on which we celebrate planet earth and the environment.

I have been hard at work on a presentation, Sustainable Supply Chains for Sustainable Cities, which I will be presenting at a fascinating workshop, which will take place in early May, at the Ettore Majorana Scientific Center in Erice, Sicily. I had been then before, back in 2006, and it was a fitting ending to not only my year as a Science Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute at Harvard but also to the World Cup (Italy beat France and we were in Italy).

The title of the Workshop that I will be speaking at is given below.

      ERICE INTERNATIONAL SEMINARS ON PLANETARY EMERGENCIES

47th Session
Erice, 11 –15 May 2014

THE ENERGY PLANETARY EMERGENCY

Workshop on Energy, Cities, and the Control of Complex Systems.

I received the formal invitation from the Director and Chairman of the Ettore Majorana Scientific Center, Professor Antonino Zichichi. The workshop is organized by Professor Adlison Motter of the Department of Physics and Astronomy, Northwestern University,

http://dyn.phys.northwestern.edu/  and by Dr. Robert Schock, Center for Global Security Research, Energy Permanent Monitoring Panel, World Federation of Scientists:

http://www.federationofscientists.org/PMPanels/Energy.asp.

The list of invited participants is below.

 

The full workshop program can be downloaded here.

In my presentation I will present both a supply chain network design model with a focus on frequencies, which is in press in the journal Environment & Planning B and will discuss highlights of a model developed with Drs. Min Yu and Jonas Floden on sustainable supply chain network competition and game theory with frequencies of supply chain activities as strategic variables and product path flows. This paper was recently published in the journal Computational Management Science in a special issue devoted to Planet Earth.

Terrific Energy, Cities, and Complex Systems Workshop in Magical Erice, Sicily

Last week I was in beautiful Erice, Sicily, where I had been once before, back in 2006, also for a workshop.

This time, I was an invited speaker at the Workshop on Energy, Cities, and Control of Complex Systems organized by Drs. Adilson Motter and Robert Schock.  Dr. Motter is a Professor at Northwestern University and Dr. Schock is a Senior Fellow on Global Security Research at Lawrence Livermore Lab in Berkeley.  Dr. Schock, this past week, received an honorary degree from his undergrad alma mater, Colorado College, so congratulations are in order! In the photo above I am standing with Dr. Schock who has a PhD from RPI.

The venue for the workshop was the Ettore Majorana Scientific Center, which was originally 4 monasteries with the bells pealing regularly to remind us of that point.

The workshop convened physicists, engineers, transportation researchers, network scientists, a computer scientist (from IBM), as well as energy researchers, an atmospheric scientist, a statistician, several policy makers (including one from Toronto, Canada), and an operations researcher and network economist (me).

This was a multidisciplinary workshop with talks ranging from those with not a single equation to those with many beautiful equations. Quite a few of the talks were on network themes, which I appreciated very much as well as the emphasis on nonlinear dynamics.

My presentation was on Sustainable Supply Chains for Sustainable Cities.

The workshop took place in a room with not great acoustics but with frescoes on the walls.

The meals were provided and the food was delicious - with fish caught that morning and with cannolis that we consumed and did not get heart attacks from. Perhaps it was all the oranges that we ate.

We were picked up at the Palermo airport and bussed through the beautiful hills of Sicily covered with poppies and other flowers to historic Erice.

Now I am back in Gothenburg, Sweden, where, interestingly, it is very warm, whereas it was quite cool in Sicily!

Professors and the World Cup

Being a professor means that one has students, colleagues, and friends from around the world.

During the 2010 World Cup that is taking place now in South Africa there has been a lot of drama, unexpected victories, and unexpected losses.

I have heard recently from friends who are from Chile, The Netherlands, Brazil, Argentina, Egypt, Italy, China, Cape Verde, Ukraine, and other countries, all of whom are intently following the various games and upsets (as well as dubious calls by the refs, the incidents of good sportsmanship and the opposite, and all the various trials and tribulations and the associated drama).

As I had mentioned in an earlier blogpost, the 2010 World Cup began while I was at a conference in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

At the finals of the previous World Cup, in 2006, I was at a conference in glorious Erice in Italy and we watched Italy beat France and then this entire town, which is on the island of Sicily, erupted in celebrations and fireworks. Amazingly, the morning after, I flew back to Boston safely on Alitalia from Naples without incident and enjoyed a delicious meal on the plane.

During the World Cup in 2002, my family and I were living in Innsbruck, Austria, while I was on a Fulbright.

Above are photos taken in Erice during the finals back in 2006.

What a difference 4 years make in terms of World Cup play!

Scenes from Iceland before the Chaos Due to the Volcanic Eruption and the Air Travel Disruptions

With the volcano eruption in Iceland disrupting air travel due to ash spewing now for several days causing chaos, and major havoc for passengers, as well as for freight shipments, I thought that I would acknowledge the magical beauty of Iceland through the above photos. These were taken in the summer of 2006, when my family and I traveled there, since I was speaking at a conference. The conference was the 21st European Conference on Operational Research. Iceland is fascinating with landscapes like no other. The period that we were there was also the time for the World Cup, which made for terrific discussions with the locals. Immediately before Iceland I had spoken at a conference in Cyprus, and after Iceland, I was off to give an invited talk in Erice on the island of Sicily. My family brought me warmer clothes for Iceland, which I definitely needed.

The above photos include one of the Blue Lagoon, the sea outside the capital, Reykjavik, and even a birthday cake in the downtown of Reykjavik to celebrate the birthday of a bank there. We also went on a whale watch but after 4 hours on the rocky sea we only saw lots of open sea and puffins (but no whales). Since that trip on a boat I have not ventured out on any other.

Plane Crash on the Same Day I was Flying (Deja Vu)

Our sincerest sympathies go out to the families and friends of the victims of the Air France plane disaster this past Sunday. The plane was flying from Rio to Paris and all perished in the Atlantic. A 3 mile area in the ocean has now been identified with the plane debris. It will take a long time to identify the cause of the crash.

Strangely, this is the second time in 2009 that I have been flying on the same day as a plane crash. Last February, I blogged about my trip to Dallas to give a talk at the INFORMS Chapter. I flew the same day as the plane crash in Buffalo and last Sunday I was flying back from Rome, Italy. The flight back from Rome was very comfortable except that the female in front of me was seriously ill during the landing and the food critic who was seated behind me also was suffering and told me that she is terrified of takeoffs and landings.

I remember flying back to Boston from Erice via Milan the morning after the Italians beat the French in the World Cup in soccer in 2006. The festivities following the win in Italy were spectacular with fireworks and much partying. I did not expect the Alitalia crew to be able to fly but fly back to the US we did. However, while taking the shuttle back to Amherst from Logan I had an uneasy feeling and asked the driver whether the tunnel we were going through (a product of the Big Dig) was in good shape. The next morning I read in the paper how only a few hours after my query part of the tunnel roof collapsed and a young woman who was in a car died. The suit was just recently settled.

Dr. Arnie Barnett, who is an expert on risk and airplane disasters and is a faculty member at MIT spoke in our INFORMS Speaker Series at UMass Amherst in the Fall 2007. The title of his presentation was "Is it Really Safe to Fly?" I could use a conversation with him now but, luckily, my upcoming speaking engagements I can reach by car and train.

Supernetwork Center Associates to Speak in Orlando, Florida

Summer is a time that academics from around the globe typically do a lot of traveling, writing, regenerating themselves, and speak at conferences.

Next week, several of the Supernetwork Center Associates will be traveling to Orlando, Florida to speak at the 9th AIMS Conference on Dynamical Systems, Differential Equations and Applications, for which Professor Patrizia Daniele of the University of Catania in Italy has organized a special session.

The special session is SS58 and it is on Variational Analysis and Equilibrium Problems.

The papers presented in this special session will include research on supply chain networks and corporate financial risks by Professor Jose M. Cruz of the University of Connecticut and Professor Zugang "Leo" Liu of Penn State University at Hazleton, on electric supply chains  by Patrizia, as well as a paper by her with Professors Fuminori Toyasaki of York University in Canada and Tina Wakolbinger of the Vienna University of Economics and Business on economic equilibrium problems with nonlinear constraints.  Tina will also be presenting a paper of ours on electronic waste flows, co-authored with Dr. Toyasaki and her doctoral student, Thomas Nowak.

 It is great to see our academic genealogical tree growing.

Even Professor Stephen Robinson of the University of Wisconsin will be speaking in this session. There will also be other colleagues from Italy and from Canada so it will be a terrific reunion for some members of our Virtual Center for Supernetworks.

I sometimes refer to our Supernetwork Team as a mini - United Nations because of  the many different countries of origin of the Center Associates (Cape Verde, Italy, Ukraine, Canada, China, Greece, India, Iran, and even the US) and  how well we work together and collaborate (perhaps we do this better than the UN).

I will be missing this conference, however, since I am packing my bags and will be returning soon to the US, having spent most of the month of June in my new appointment as a Visiting Professor of Operations Management at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden.

Coincidentally, tonight is the England vs. France soccer match in Euro 2012,  and I spoke with Patrizia the other day and recalled fondly how we were at a conference in Erice, Sicily, back in 2006, when Italy beat France in the World Cup and the festivities I will never forget. Somehow I managed to fly back on Alitalia to Boston the day after and all went smoothly (I even got upgraded since I can speak soccer and this helps).

Patrizia will be watching the soccer game tonight before she flies to the US and I will be doing exactly the same.

Very Excited About the IFORS Conference in Santiago (Where It Is Winter) and the Dynamics of Disasters Conference in Athens (Where It Is Summer)

Academics are quite good at conferencing and also in optimizing when it comes to packing, etc. Nevertheless, packing for essentially back to back conferences on different continents and seasons can be a challenge especially if the plan is to only have a single carryon as luggage.

In 2006, I spoke at successive conferences in Cyprus (Limassol), Iceland (Reykjavik), and then in Italy (Erice). Family members joined me in Iceland and brought some warm clothing since the temperature, while we were there and it was officially summer, never rose about 48 degrees F. Some reflections on packing for the stream of conferences.

Soon I will be flying to Athens, Greece for the Dynamics of Disasters conference that I co-organized, and then, via Madrid, to the IFORS Conference in Santiago, Chile.

I am thrilled to be delivering a keynote talk, entitled, "Agricultural Supply Chain Networks: From Trade to Resilience and How OR Can Help," at the IFORS Conference.

My keynote will highlight some of our research over the past decade on agricultural supply chain networks including recent work with collaborators in Ukraine. Information on this conference can be found here. I am very honored to be on the list of plenary and keynote speakers.

Also, at the IFORS conference, I'll be taking part in the "Meet the ITOR Editors" panel, which was organized by the outstanding Editor of the International Transactions in Operational Research (ITOR) journal Celso C. Ribeiro! Joining us on the panel is the previous President of IFORS Grazia Speranza and Mario Guajardo. ITOR recently celebrated its 30th anniversary with a special issue. I was delighted to have my tutorial paper on ``Fragile Networks," co-authored with Qiang "Patrick" Qiang included in this special issue. The tutorial paper was based on a tutorial that I gave at the ALIO INFORMS conference in Buenos Aires.

I am very much looking forward to seeing conferees from many continents at this IFORS conference, including my former Isenberg School of Management PhD student, Dmytro Matsypura, who will travel from Australia. He is Chair of the Business Analytics Department at the University of Sydney. The President of IFORS is now Janny Leung and she is traveling from Macao!

And, prior to the IFORS conference, I will be experiencing the warmth of a Mediterranean summer at the Dynamics of Disasters Conference. We have an outstanding lineup of plenary speakers and I thank them all for accepting our invitations. This is the 6th Dynamics of Disasters Conference! It was such a pleasure to work with Ilias S. Kotsireas, Panos M. Pardalos, and Chrys Vogiatzis on this conference.

My presentation at this conference will be on joint work with my PhD student Dana Hassani and colleagues in Ukraine at the Kyiv School of Economics: Oleg Nivievskyi and Pavlo Martyshev.

There is clearly and agricultural theme to my presentations at both these international conferences. In fact, at the Dynamics of Disasters one, we also a special Acknowledgment and Dedication.

Back to packing for the conferences with my new suitcase purchased after I wore out my favorite one!

Safe travels to all those heading to conferences!