The Terrific INFORMS Speakers Program

A huge resource for members of our professional society INFORMS (Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences) is the INFORMS Speakers Program. 


Through this program, one can request a speaker on the Speakers Program list and it is a fabulous list! Typically, an organization requests a speaker and this is an excellent service for INFORMS Student Chapters or Regional INFORMS Chapters. Indeed, this resource was also emphasized at last spring's wonderful Student Leadership Conference in Austin, Texas at which two of our chapter officers, Pritha Dutta and Deniz Besik of the Isenberg School, took part in.

I had chaired this committee a few years ago and very much enjoyed working with Dr. Les Servi of MITRE and Dr. Tim Lowe of the University of Iowa to expand the list of speakers.Speakers are from academia and from industry and are experts in operations research, the management sciences, and analytics.

The host organization is responsible for on-site expenses of the speaker but INFORMS (of course, budget allowing) covers the travel costs.

I've enjoyed very much being a speaker in the INFORMS Speakers Program at various universities (including Texas A&M and the University of Pittsburgh) and also at INFORMS chapter sites (Dallas and Boston).  And when Mary Magrogran, the Director of Membership, Subdivisions & International Activities of INFORMS, reached out to me last week whether I would be willing to speak at the University of Alabama this semester, I checked my schedule and we found a mutually convenient set of dates so I am very much looking forward to going there and seeing operations research and analytics colleagues and students!

As the Faculty Advisor to the UMass Amherst INFORMS Student Chapter (since the chapter was founded in 2004), I also help the students in organizing a speaker series and believe fully in the importance of bringing speakers to campus. We have availed ourselves of the INFORMS Speakers Program over the years and the students, faculty, and even staff,  who were lucky enough to hear our guests speak treasure those memories. Also the networking opportunities are clear.

We have had the following speakers from the INFORMS Speakers Program come to the Isenberg School of Management (note that some may no longer be on the list but others continue providing this valuable, very educational service): Dr. James Benneyan of Northeastern University, Dr. Sheldon Jacobson of the University of Illinois, Dr. Radhika Kulkarni of SAS, Dr. John Birge of the University of Chicago. We have also hosted Dr. Les Servi of MITRE and Dr. Richard Larson of MIT who are on the list (although we did not request funding from INFORMS since they are quite local). We also had the pleasure of hosting Dr. Brenda Dietrich of IBM in our UMass Amherst INFORMS Speaker Series!

Below are some photos of the above named guest speakers. Many thanks for their willingness to travel and speak to audiences that benefit greatly from their lectures and discussions that follow. Also, a BIG thanks to INFORMS for sponsoring the INFORMS Speakers Program.

Dr. Richard Larson at the Isenberg School after his presentation: Simple Models of Influenza Progression and Control

Dr. Radhikha Kulkarni of SAS after her terrific talk on Succeeding with Business Analytics: Key Challenges

Dr. John Birge, now the Editor of Operations Research, after his great talk at the Isenberg School on A News-vendor Model for Dynamic Investment and Financing Decisions: Capital Structure Implications and Empirical Results

Dr. Sheldon Jacobson after lunch at the University Club following his talk: An Analysis of Pediatric Vaccine Pricing and Stockpiling Issues

Dr. Brenda Dietrich's talk was on Services Sciences: A New Opportunity for Operations Research.

Dr. James Benneyan after speaking on Healthcare Systems Engineering   

And, for those of you who are interested in some suggestions as to how to organize a successful Speaker Series, please see one of my most popular blogposts on this topic.

Dallas, INFORMS Lecture, and Making it Just-in-Time

The phone call from USAir came at 4AM yesterday morning -- my 9:30AM flight to DC was cancelled and I was rebooked on the 11:30AM flight to Dallas through Philly with a scheduled arrival time in Dallas at 5:09PM. This was cutting it unnervingly close for my talk which was scheduled for 7PM at Southern Methodist University (SMU), which, for those of you who may have noticed, would be 8PM, my body time. My talk at SMU was being hosted by the Dallas / Fort Worth INFORMS Chapter. The President of the Chapter is Dr. Tim Jacobs of American Airlines and the Vice President is Dr. Patricia Neri, who also handled the arrangements for me. With an audience of professionals from the Dallas area in banking, airlines, etc., and faculty and students from SMU and area colleges and universities I very much wanted to give my talk, "Synergies and Vulnerabilities of Supply Chain Networks in a Global Economy." The first leg of the journey went well and then we sat on the tarmac in Philly for a good 45 minutes and I had the feeling that I would not make it on time for my lecture. Luckily, I had a wonderful companion next to me, a female medical doctor, so some of the time could be spent in very enjoyable conversation.

Amazingly, we arrived in Dallas only 5 minutes late. I grabbed a Whopper from Burger King, something I had not eaten since my daughter was very young, and it was good! After a quick change into a professional suit in the ladies room I ran to catch a cab and had a delightful driver with an accent I could not identify who also had no idea as to where the Trigg Center, the venue for my talk, at SMU was located. Experiencing riding in the HOV lane was fun and the taxi moved smoothly past hundreds of cars, each with only a single driver. The infrastructure was quite good in Dallas and no potholes were experienced. We made it to the SMU campus at about 6:45 and after asking 4 students, found one who knew where the Trigg Center was. I got dropped off, and marched to my speaking venue with my talk on a pendrive. Luckily, two graduate students helped me to set up and the talk went on at about 7:10PM only to finish at about 8:40PM. The discussion afterwards was great and there was even a faculty member in the audience who had gone to Brown University, my alma mater, and had majored in Applied Math and had had my thesis advisor, Professor Stella Dafermos.

We made it back to the hotel at almost 11PM Dallas time. The flights this morning on USAir from Dallas to Bradley (Springfield/Hartford) through Charlotte were both early, which was great, although the shock of 30 degree temps versus almost 70 degrees in Dallas, was eye-opening. My seat-mate this time around was a financial advisor who was a fan of OSU basketball, and their coach is now Travis Ford, who left UMass last year.

I'd like to thank my hosts in Dallas for a very pleasant experience! The Radisson hotel there was also terrific and so quiet!

Looking Forward to Speaking at Texas A&M in its INFORMS Student Chapter and Dow Chemical Speaker Series

I am very much looking forward to being at Texas A&M to speak this coming Friday!

Last week, one of my colleagues at the Isenberg School, Dr. John D. Wells, who is the Associate Dean for Professional Programs, and has both a Master's and PhD from Texas A&M, told me to practice saying "Howdy!" when he heard that I would be speaking there.

I was invited by the award-winning Texas A&M INFORMS Student Chapter, and since I am a big proponent of such chapters, and have also served as the Faculty Advisor to the UMass Amherst INFORMS Student Chapter for almost a decade, this was an invitation that I could not refuse.

My talk in the series is also sponsored by Dow Chemical and by the great INFORMS Speakers Program (I may be a bit biased since I served on the committee for this program and also chaired it), which I am a big fan of. At the Isenberg School, we have also invited speakers under the INFORMS Speakers Program (Dr. John Birge of the University of Chicago and Dr. Sheldon Jacobson of the University of Illinois, to name two). INFORMS pays, upon approval,  the travel expenses of the speaker, and the host institution pays for the on-site costs. Given the distance between Amherst and College Station and a two-legged flight, I will be overnighting there. Since I have never been to Texas A&M and have quite a few wonderful colleagues there, I am very much looking forward to visiting! I also am very excited about seeing the students there.

I have starting working on my presentation, which is entitled: "Networks Against Time: From Food to Pharma."

 

 It will be interesting to see the terrain there -- the last time that I was in Texas was at the INFORMS conference in Austin.  Prior to that Texas trip, I spoke in Dallas at SMU, courtesy of the Dallas / Forth Worth INFORMS chapter, and that experience was quite the adventure!

Fabulous New Speakers Added to Our INFORMS Speakers Program!

This year, I have the pleasure of chairing the INFORMS (Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences) Speakers Program. Professor Tim Lowe of the University of Iowa and Dr. Les Servi of MITRE are my committee members.

Not only has the UMass Amherst INFORMS Student Chapter, that I serve as the Faculty Advisor for, availed itself of some of the wonderful speakers in this program (Professor John Birge and Professor Sheldon Jacobson, only to start) but I have also given talks through this program, since I am on the list of speakers.

I'll never forget the talk that I gave at the Dallas/Fort Worth INFORMS Chapter, with the meeting taking place at SMU, at which I arrived, after 11 hours of travel, with only 10 minutes to spare. The discussions that followed after my talk were terrific and I especially enjoyed having industry reps as well as academics and students take part. It was a wonderful experience. I have also given a talk at the Boston INFORMS Chapter (with my great host being Dr. Les Servi from Mitre), and at universities, including the University of Pittsburgh, through this special program.

Instructions as to how to request a speaker can be found on the INFORMS Speakers Program homepage. The interest this year in our program has been great from both companies and universities, especially with our energized focus on analytics.

Now, for the drumroll, I am delighted to announce that the new additions to our Speakers Program are:

Professor Aruna Apte of the Naval Postgraduate School

Professor Margaret Brandeau of Stanford University

Professor Ann Campbell of the University of Iowa

Dr. Brenda Dietrich of IBM

Dr. Radhika Kulkarni of SAS

Dr. Les Servi of MITRE

Professor Alice Smith of Auburn University

Professor Mike Trick of Carnegie Mellon University.


INFORMS will be updating information over the next couple of weeks on the Speakers Program website, so please continue to check back.

In the meantime, please feel free to contact either Barry List, the Director of Communications at INFORMS, or me, if you have any questions.

The INFORMS Speakers Program and Social and Professional Networking

Wow -- now that was a great talk! I have heard such a comment after numerous speaker presentations organized through our UMass Amherst INFORMS Student Chapter. Many, from faculty to students to practitioners, over the years, have commented that these talks, which we schedule on Fridays, with lunch and further discussions to follow, were the highlights of their week.

In organizing a semester's worth of talks, we looked for speakers who could inform and educate a wide audience on timely topics of interest to the operations research / management science community.

We also availed ourselves of the INFORMS Speakers Program and I personally have greatly enjoyed being a speaker in this program, and have given talks in Dallas, Pittsburgh, and other locations, as a result of it. I especially enjoyed the mix of the audience participants from various industries and universities and the wonderful questions and hospitality of the INFORMS Regional and Student Chapters that have been my hosts. My professional and social networks have also grown from participation in this valuable program.

This year I have the pleasure of chairing the INFORMS Speakers Program Committee, with committee members: Dr. Tim Lowe of the University of Iowa and Dr. Les Servi of MITRE. We are working on enhancing this program by adding new speakers and expanding the program geographically and making it more diverse. We also hope to include more video resources and to enable speakers to edit their profiles.

Do stay tuned as we expand this valuable and exciting resource. The next issue of OR/MS Today coming out in August will include a profile of the INFORMS Speakers Program and some of the advantages of using a speaker through the program.

As for tips on how to run a successful speakers series, read more here.

I leave you with some photos above of several distinguished speakers who have graced our Speaker Series at UMass Amherst who are part of the INFORMS Speakers Program. I am sure that you can recognize them but, just to make sure, the above photos are of the visits of Professor Richard Larson of MIT, of Professor John Birge of the University of Chicago, and of Professor Sheldon Jacobson of the University of Illinois Urbana/Champaign.

Thanks to all the speakers in our profession who take the time out of their very busy schedules to come and speak on our campuses and at other sites -- from corporations and beyond!

The Great 2018 INFORMS Business Analytics Conference with Some Photos

The 2018 INFORMS Business Analytics Conference, which took place in Baltimore, MD, April 15-17, 2018, was fantastic! The conference brought together over 1,000 leading analytics professionals and industry experts (executives, analysts, managers, researchers, data scientists, modelers, etc.) from around the globe to exchange ideas, network, and learn about the exciting results, insights, and opportunities generated by analytics. This is one of my favorite conferences to speak at and to attend because of the interactions with industry professionals, representatives from government, and fellow academics as well as numerous students. Below are the smiling faces of the speakers!

I flew in on Southwest on Sunday and returned back last night feeling energized and with my brain swimming with new ideas and I expect new collaborations as well. What I found especially delightful was seeing many fellow operations researchers and analytics professionals. I had very pleasant exchanges with conferees from the US, Sweden, Mexico, Turkey, Colombia, Serbia, Germany, and Japan. Honestly, I can't think of another conference that provides a better return on investment in terms of what you get out of it per unit time!

My room on the top floor of the Marriott Waterfront Baltimore had a fabulous view and it was very convenient since all the sessions and social events took place an elevator ride down.

The talk that I presented was on cybercrime and cybersecurity and it can be downloaded here.

Getting selected to speak involves a competitive screening process so I was thrilled to be able to speak on some of our latest research on this topic. The previous INFORMS Analytics Conference that  I had spoken at and also thoroughly enjoyed was in Boston in 2014.

The conference began for me with the super dynamic plenary talk by Bill Schmarzo, who, coincidentally, is also an Executive Fellow at the University of San Francisco, where my most recent Isenberg School PhD student alumna, Dr. Shivani Shukla, is now an Assistant Professor, and with whom I wrote several papers on cybersecurity. I took copious notes and enjoyed hearing him say that it's insight from data that matters and that one must start with the business. He spoke on the monetization of data and the leveraging of predictive and prescriptive analytics in order to optimize. I loved his discussion of data being an "unusual currency."

In our registration packets we were provided with a lot of nice conference "swag," including a beautiful blue notebook and a very cool conference bag.

Meals were provided, including the gala Edelman dinner on Monday night (more on this later).

The plenary talk by Bruce Greenstein, the CTO at the US Department of Health and Human Services, which he told us is the largest single government department in the world, was also excellent and took place bright and early on Tuesday morning at 8AM. His presentation was on: From Data to Analytics: How to Solve Complex Health Problems.

Greenstein spoke on Secretary Azar's focus, which includes combating the opiod crisis, bringing down the high cost of prescription drugs (and here he emphasized increasing competition, which is great), and transforming the healthcare system to a value-based system. He spoke of his unique position in connecting various departments and bridging the technical divide and also emphasized the improvement of analytics at HHS through the sharing of data, bringing in experts, and chipping away at the culture. There was even an opioid-code-athon that was very successful and I especially appreciated hearing about the "prevention track," which focused on predicting and analyzing the supply and movement of legal and illicit opioids (sounds like a network flow problem to me and probably even related to the network models that I spoke of on Monday at the conference). There is even now a Co-Lab at HHS, which is an enterprise data initiative, and led by Will Yang.

I had the pleasure of listening to Greenstein's plenary while seated next to Dr. Les Servi of MITRE and Professor Tamas Terlaky of Lehigh University.

Les and I go back to Brown University days and he was on the organizing committee of the conference and we hosted him recently in our UMass Amherst INFORMS Speaker Series. Professor Terlaky led the group that was awarded the 2017 Daniel H. Wagner Prize for Excellence in Operations Research Practice, for “The Inmate Assignment and Scheduling Problem and its Application in the PA Department of Corrections." I went to his talk on this outstanding project and enjoyed it thoroughly. Both Les and Tamas are INFORMS Fellows.

Other highlights at the conference, in addition to the outstanding talks that I attended, which were 50 minutes in length so you can really learn something, and which included those by Professor Jim Cochran of the University of Alabama and Dr. Mary Helander of IBM, was seeing Dr. Michael Prokle, a former doctoral student from UMass Amherst, now a data scientist at Phillips Research in Cambridge,  and taking part in "coffee with a member." Michael was the President of the UMass Amherst INFORMS Student Chapter and I nominated him for the INFORMS Judith Liebman Award, which he received. Coincidentally, we had both been at the Boston Analytics conference, where  the weather was also cold and rainy.

I very much enjoyed meeting and having coffee with Sarah Greenwood, who is pursuing a graduate degree in analytics, and already has several years of experience working in industry. It is thrilling to see such outstanding individuals excelling in STEM!

I would also like to point out and thank WORMS (Women in Operations Research and the Management Sciences), one of my absolutely favorite fora of INFORMS! And, would you believe that years ago I found out about WORMS from my male PhD students at the Isenberg School of Management, who told me that they loved many of the conference events organized by WORMS, so I joined!

The networking reception at which the COO of Google Cloud, Diane Bryant, spoke was standing room only and incredibly interesting. She is a former VP at Intel and was one of only 6% of female VPs until she, with others, started to emphasize being a sponsor/advocate of female employees. I loved some of the takeaways:

• If you are a good leader, you are advocating.
• Luck is manufactured: one has to be open to new ideas - we create our own luck.
• And, quoting Madeleine Albright: "there is a special place for women who don't help women."
• Also, from an HBS Review article:" Women have mentors; men have sponsors."
• Confidence is a core leadership skill. 
• Diversity is a fact: inclusion is a choice.

The Q&A session that followed was provocative and I told her that she should write a book and I would be more than willing to help her with it.

At this session, I was joined by truly special colleagues.

And, since Michael Prokle was the President of our UMass Amherst Student Chapter when we hosted INFORMS Fellow Dr. Radhika Kulkarni, VP of SAS, I had to have the photo below taken as a memento. Also in the photo is Dr. Mary Helander of IBM, who has also spoken in our Speaker Series!

Of course, going to exhibits is also enjoyable and it was great to see my book, Competing on Supply Chain Quality, co-authored with a former doctoral student of mine, Dr. Dong "Michelle" Li, on display at the Springer booth. Many thanks to the Senior Editor, Matt Amboy, for displaying it.

And, speaking of students, INFORMS hosted a student competition, and I spoke with groups from Turkey and Colombia, who were finalists.

I have not heard, yet, who received the first prize, since I had to leave the lunch early yesterday to catch my flight.

And, on Monday evening, those at the conference had the honor and pleasure of taking part in the Edelman gala banquet and awards ceremonies, hosted by Dr. Don Kleinmuntz of  Kleinmuntz Associates and the University of Notre Dame, who was a magnificent emcee! At the 2014 Boston conference, we had the pleasure of Dr. Anne Robinson being the emcee at that Edelman gala, at which the US CDC received the Edelman Award for the eradication of polio.

The food at the dinner was delicious as was the company at our table.

And a HUGE congratulations to the winners of the 2018 Edelman prize and to all the finalists! The award went to the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) for advancing wireless communications. The team included INFORMS Fellows: Dean Mike Trick of CMU and Professor Karla Hoffman of George Mason University! I can't help but mention that one of the coaches of the winning team was Dr. Irv Lustig of Princeton Consultants - I was his TA from the Operations Research course at Brown University when he was an undergraduate and I was a PhD student. Amazingly, two of the awards noted on Monday night have Brown University connections! Franz Edelman, after whom the Edelman Award is named, received his PhD in Applied Mathematics from Brown University (and so did I). Also, Daniel Wagner, after whom the Wagner Prize is named, received his PhD, also from Brown University, in mathematics! I enjoyed hearing my alma mater being noted twice at the gala dinner on Monday night and it is quite amazing that both Les Servi and Irv Lustig and I overlapped during part of our Brown U. days!

I would like to end this blogpost with a big thanks to the INFORMS staff for making this conference so enjoyable and rewarding.

I wish everyone safe travels back from the conference! When I landed at Bradley, my shuttle driver told me about the terrifying Southwest plane engine failure on the flight from LaGuardia to Dallas, which had an emergency landing in Philadelphia.   Thinking of those injured and the loss of life and the terror and fright  that all must have experienced.

Howdy and Thanks to Texas A&M University for the Hospitality!

I arrived home in Massachusetts from College Station, where Texas A&M University is located, with a connection at Dallas / Fort Worth in the wee hours of the morning.

I would like to thank Texas A&M University where the greeting is "Howdy!" for its outstanding hospitality with special thanks to its award-winning INFORMS Student Chapter.

My flights to and from College Station were great and, after reading The New York Times and The Economist en route on my last leg to College Station I even read Time magazine, with the appropriate cover below. There were many "Aggies" as Texas A&M fans are known on that flight and I shared insights from the cover article with them. My flight seatmate was a student at Ohio State who was visiting friends at Texas A&M and he said that, as a high school student in Texas, they would pledge allegiance to the Texas flag.

I must admit that I enjoyed the very sunny warm weather (low 80s) as well as the hospitality and charm of College Station from the tiny airport to the friendliness of the students, faculty, and staff and everyone that I encountered. I liked the politeness as well and being called "Ma'am" in a Southern accent.

I did experience some culture shock at breakfast when I piled the fresh berries on my plate at the buffet and then next to containers of yogurt saw a big bowl of white creamy stuff, which, since I am from New England,  I assumed was plain yogurt. After mixing it with the berries and sampling the concoction I believe that I ate some Marshmallow Fluff -- so sugary but actually tasty!

The new building housing the Department of Industrial & Systems Engineering was the venue for my presentation, "Networks Against Time: From Food to Pharma," with pizza and drinks served. Afterwards, I got to meet more of the graduate students and very much enjoyed hearing about their research and ideas for plans for the future.

And, Professor Sergiy Butenko, who also helped with the hosting even managed (my itinerary got changed) to fit in 45 minutes of the outstanding presentation by Celia Sandys, the granddaughter of Winston Churchill.on "The Power of Words: The Inspiring Leadership of Winston Churchill," but then we had to leave since my talk was at noon.

 

Her presentation emphasized his moral integrity and how great leaders anticipate change and get constituents to believe in what can be accomplished, i.e., Victory. The video clips of Churchill with tapes of parts of his speech in the background were fascinating. The venue was also stunning with the students calling out in Aggie-like cheers.

She noted in her talk that, in the  aftermath of September 11th, 2001, she was inundated with letters from the leaders of the day. They all held a central message; that it was to the words and inspiration of her grandfather that they had turned to for strength and guidance when faced with the leadership challenges presented by this unprecedented trauma. "Your grandfather was a great source of inspiration and strength to me following the tragic events of September 11th" - Rudy Giuliani.

In walking back for my talk, Professor Butenko showed me the tree below where Aggie couples get engaged.

 It is different in Texas -- I saw no potholes and the building that I spoke at was simply stunning inside and was built, I was told, in 1 year. It had areas and lounges for students, beautiful labs with Dell computers for various faculty member research groups. The kitchen was stunning and there were carpets almost everywhere. The INFORMS Student Chapter Awards were prominently displayed in the hall for all to see and celebrate.

 

 I even met the gentleman who helps students, including graduate students,  with communications -- writing and speaking and I liked his display below.

Thanks, again,  to Texas A&M University for the great hospitality with special thanks to the INFORMS Student Chapter there. It is truly a model student chapter and, as the Faculty Advisor of the UMass Amherst INFORMS Student Chapter, this is a real compliment. Thanks also to Dow Chemical, which provided $10,000 in support for the Texas A&M INFORMS Chapter Speaker Series (How I wish this could be done at UMass -- any donors out there?!)  and also to the INFORMS Speakers Program for covering my travel expenses.

Somehow I managed to get TSA preferred both ways and did not even have to take off my jacket or shoes and marched to the head of the security lines.

Road Warrior and Road Scholar

My suitcase is packed and, after teaching my Logistics & Transportation class this morning, I will be heading off to the airport. Today I will have a two-legged flight from Bradley airport to Dallas / Fort Worth and then onward to College Station where Texas A&M University is located.

The definition of road warrior is, according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary: a person who travels a lot especially as part of his or her job. Of course, as an academic, my mode of transportation, whether to conferences or to give invited talks, is frequently by plane.

Last night, I had some concerns since I was having a difficult time printing my boarding passes on the America Airlines website and,  after contacting colleagues at Texas A&M,  was told that they had not experienced this problem before. Well, after paying about $100 extra on a ticket whose price I do not want to reveal (ouch) I managed to get seats and print out my boarding pass.

Now you may wonder, why would I journey so far to give a talk and then come back past midnight tomorrow?!

The Texas A&M INFORMS Student Chapter invited me so I have to support this award-winning student chapter (congrats on the Summa Cum Laude Award from INFORMS this year) plus I have never been to this university campus and have quite a few colleagues there that I very much respect.

Moreover, since I teach courses in Logistics & Transportation and related subjects I am also a Road Scholar (not to be confused with the freight company of the same name -- great name).

The students have prepared a great itinerary for me so I am very much looking forward to seeing everyone there.

My presentation tomorrow will be on "Networks Against Time: From Food to Pharma," and this evening (it will be late for me given the time difference) I will be dining in Texas. I am being sponsored in part, also by the great INFORMS Speakers Program.

The last time that I gave an invited talk in Texas (not counting conferences) was when I spoke at SMU upon the invitation of the Dallas/Fort Worth INFORMS Chapter and I made it just in time for my evening talk! 

Soon I will be saying "Howdy!"

Interestingly, The New York Times the other day had an article on Texas A&M (TAMU) starting a new campus in Israel and it has the full support of Governor Rick Perry of Texas and the Chancellor of Texas A&M, John Sharp. They were room-mates back at TAMU!

I guess one can get a lot accomplished with such close connections.
 

Congrats to the 2012 INFORMS Fellows and the RSAI Fellows!

Being elected a Fellow of a professional society is a sizable recognition and achievement.

Different societies have different rules regarding who can nominate someone for a Fellow Award and what criteria are used for nomination and selection (even who can or cannot nominate, sometimes).

For example, in 2007, I was elected a Fellow of the RSAI (Regional Science Association International), and was the only female elected that year, but I was not the first female and followed in the footsteps of my dear friend and colleague, Karen Polenske of MIT, with whom I have explored, because of conferences and workshops even exotic St. Petersburg. To follow in the footsteps of Professor Martin Beckmann, who was on my dissertation committee at Brown University and whose seminal book, Studies in the Economics of Transportation, with McGuire and Winsten, set the bar for transportation research, Professor Walter Isard, the founder of the field of regional science, Professor David E. Boyce, a true mentor, gentleman, and scholar, and also INFORMS Fellow, and Professor Jean Paelinck, who has published over 55 books, and 300 refereed journal articles (now, this is being productive) and speaks numerous languages, is quite the honor. These true greats were elected in 2002, the first class of RSAI Fellows. Professor Isard passed away at age 90 just a few years ago.

Since my election, I have served on the RSAI  Fellows Selection Committee and have also chaired it. RSAI Fellows are recognized for their research and previously elected Fellows vote but cannot nominate someone.

INFORMS (Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences) just announced the class of 2012 elected Fellows and it is a great list:

• Guillermo Gallego, Columbia University
• Bezael "Ben" Gavish, Southern Methodist University
• Daniel Granot, University of British Columbia
• Patrick Harker, University of Delaware
• Michael N. Katehakis, Rutgers Business School
• Karl Kempf, Intel
• Ramayya Krishnan, Carnegie Mellon University
• Richard P. O'Neill, Federal Energy Regulatory Commission
• Rakesh Kumar Sarin, University of California, Los Angeles
• Yves Smeers, Université Catholique de Louvain
• Marius M. Solomon, Northeastern University
• Sridhar Tayur, Carnegie Mellon University. 

So congratulations are in order!  The Fellows will be formally inducted during a luncheon at the INFORMS Annual Meeting in Phoenix this fall. The rules for INFORMS Fellow nominations are here.

 The newly elected 2012 RSAI Fellows are below:

•  Brian J.L. Berry, The University of Texas at Dallas, USA
• Ronald E. Miller, University of Pennsylvania, USA
• Stuart S. Rosenthal, Syracuse University, USA
• Yves Zenou, Stockholm University, SWEDEN.

It is also a terrific list of recipients.

The RSAI awards ceremony will take place at the annual meeting, which will be in Ottawa, Canada in November 2012. I stepped down from serving on this committee after 3 years of service and chairing it last year.

And, in November, there will be another Nagiurney becoming a Fellow of one of his professional societies. My husband will be inducted in NYC  (I am very much looking forward to this event) as a Fellow of the Radio Club of America. He will receive his certificate at the Club's 103rd Annual Banquet at the New York Athletic Club. The Radio Club of America is the oldest association of professionals in the radio and wireless telecommunications industries. Founded in 1909, The Radio Club of America has counted among its Fellows the very best in the radio communications industry such as Edwin Armstrong, David Sarnoff, Louis Hazeltine, John V. L. Hogan, Paul Godley and Allen B. DuMont. 

So, this year we will be singing "For He's a Jolly Good Fellow" at multiple locations and toasting all the newly elected Fellows.

Recognizing Female Talent in Tech, Welcome to the 21st Century, Mr. Nadella of Microsoft

The news came to me this morning from my husband who had received it in his ASEE (American Society for Engineering Education) daily email newsletter and he was shocked.

Yesterday, at the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing Conference, Satya Nadella, the Chief Executive of Microsoft,  suggested that women who do not ask for more money from their employers would be rewarded in the long run when their good work was recognized.

The New York Times had a great article on this "misspeaking"  complete with a video in which Dr. Maria Klawe, the President of Harvey Mudd College, and former Dean of Engineering at Princeton, completely disagrees with him. I have written about Dr. Klawe, since I am a big fan of hers and she has been very innovative in computing education and in breaking down barriers.

The Twittersphere lit up with Nadella's telling women not to ask for a raise but to wait for good karma - I kid you not! 

We are, last time that I checked, living in the 21st century, in which Lean In has become the mantra, Larry Summers is no longer President of Harvard University, but Drew Gilpin Faust is and she was the Dean of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study when I was a Science Fellow there 2005-2006.  Coincidentally, in the same Times article, Claudia Goldin, who was also a Radcliffe Fellow at Harvard my year,  is quoted.

Female talent in tech needs to be recognized and rewarded and having the right salary is one clear way in which to do this. Dr. Klawe regrets not speaking up when negotiating for her offer from Princeton and even more recently from Harvey Mudd College.

Another way to recognize females is through professional society awards.

For example, WORMS (Women in Operations Research and the Management Sciences),  a forum of INFORMS, started the WORMS Award 9 years ago.  The Award for the Advancement of Women in OR/MS celebrates and recognizes a person who has contributed significantly to the advancement and recognition of women in the field of Operations Research and the Management Sciences (OR/MS).

Several of the WORMS Award recipients have also been  elected  INFORMS Fellows: Cynthia Barnhart of MIT, Brenda Dietrich of IBM, Kathy Stecke of UT Dallas, yours truly in 2013, and, this year, we have two out of the twelve 2014 INFORMS Fellows being female and also previous WORMS Award winners: Dr. Candi Yano of UC Berkeley and Dr. Radhika Kulkarni of SAS. WORMS has had outstanding officers, including Laura McLay, now at the University of Wisconsin Madison, who served as President, and has done great work in advocating for female tech professionals - thanks!

Perhaps Nadella should come to the INFORMS Conference in San Francisco and meet some truly successful, wonderful female and male pioneers in tech.

Nadella might learn something from Ed Lazowska, who is a Brown University alum, as am I. In an article in USA Today it was stated:  Hiring women and minorities isn't about window dressing. It actually makes it a better and more profitable company, says Ed Lazowska, a professor of computer science and engineering at the University of Washington-Seattle. "Engineering (particularly of software) is a hugely creative endeavor. Greater diversity — more points of view — yields a better result," he said.

Indeed, and they should be fairly compensated!

Upcoming Travel and Hosting Speakers

As the new semester is gearing up, it is exciting to be able to both travel to give talks as well as to host speakers. Next week, I will be flying to Dallas, Texas, to give a talk, "Synergies and Vulnerabilities of Supply Chain Networks in a Global Economy." I will be hosted by the Dallas/Forth Worth Chapter of INFORMS (The Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences). My gracious host will be Dr. Patricia Neri, who works for Southwest Airlines. The talk will take place at Southern Methodist University.

The following week, we will begin our Spring 2009 Speaker Series in Operations Research / Management Science at the Isenberg School of Management at UMass Amherst. Our first speaker, on Friday, February 20, 2009, will be Professor Ellis Johnson of Georgia Tech, who will be talking about Operations Research and Air Traffic Problems. We are delighted that Professor Johnson, who is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, will be inaugurating out Spring Series! UMass Amherst has issued a press release for the series. This will be the tenth semester of this Speaker Series which is organized by the UMass Amherst INFORMS Student Chapter. I serve as the chapter's Faculty Advisor and it is so rewarding to see the enthusiasm of the students in this endeavor. The series adds so much to the intellectual life of the school and university and the students can hardly wait for it to start!

Thanking Outstanding Journalists in the Pandemic

In the pandemic, a positive feature has been the number of excellent journalists that I have had the pleasure to interact with through interviews. The writings of journalists and their investigative journalism have kept us informed as new information becomes available at, sometimes, an incredibly rapid pace. Journalists are challenged now for so many reasons, including their personal safety and I thank them for their work ethic, their outreach, and their attention to digging deep. 

Honestly, one of the highlights in this pandemic is the numerous conversations that I have had with journalists, some lasting for an hour or more. I have also very much enjoyed being interviewed for several radio programs, both in the US and in England, and have enjoyed being on TV news programs in Boston and in Dallas. The intelligence of the journalists and their thoughtful questions keep this academic intellectually engaged on many dimensions. Sometimes the interviews even end with laughter and it is clear that a real connection has been made. Also, as an educator, I believe that we can play an important role, especially if our expertise is relevant, to helping journalists and the media, in general, get the important news out in the pandemic, whether it involves, for example, product shortages due to supply chain disruptions, challenges associated with the cold chains needed for the Covid-19 vaccines, and many logistical issues surrounding the distribution of the vaccines, as well as technological innovations in the vaccine cold chain.  Recently, the professional society of INFORMS, which has over 11,000 members had its virtual conference, and I was interviewed by Glenn Wegryn on my experiences with the media in the pandemic. You can view it on youtube.

In my previous blogpost, I wrote about the vaccine cold chain and noted several informative articles, including the fascinating one by Lori Hinnant in the Associated Press on challenges of the vaccine cold chain in developing countries and even the CareTalk podcast that I was honored to be a guest on.

When responding to inquiries from journalists and the media, one has to be ready, since often (but not always), they are on a tight timeline (and this is especially evident in the pandemic). I have received quite a few messages from journalists in my email marked URGENT in the subject line.

A while back I was interviewed by Charlie Slack, for the excellent article, "The pandemic offers valuable lessons that can help you compete in the months and years ahead," for the Bank of America, which is part of a series. I also thoroughly enjoyed speaking with Jeff Reinke for his article published on manufacturing.net (which has been reprinted on other outlets), "Vaccine poses immense, unprecedented distribution challenges." Jeff's knowledge of logistics is vast - honestly, I could have spoken with him for hours!

I also very much enjoyed speaking with Michael Goldstein for his superb article in Forbes, "Covid-19 vaccines are here: Are airlines ready to transport them" which presciently anticipated the big news today about Pfizer's vaccine being air shipped from Belgium to the US yesterday via United cargo!

And, I hope that all of you who celebrated Thanksgiving had a pleasant, festive day! Just before the holiday I was contacted again by a Senior Technical Writer for USA Today, Jessica Guynn, who had interviewed me a few months ago, and her latest article on product shortages, including that of, yes, here we go again, toilet paper (if you read it to the end it may make you smile). I was laughing out loud, having been reminded of summers spent at scouting camps; sleeping in a tent, and having access to very limited shower (cold water only) and bathroom facilities (outhouses).

It was a pleasure to speak with Karen Pallarito, whose article, "This is why the COVID-19 vaccine is going to take longer than you think," published on Livestrong.com.

I would also like to thank Kim Severson, a journalist for The New York Times, who had interviewed me for an article on food, "7 ways the pandemic has changed the way that we shop for food," that was published in early September. The article was very well researched and insightful. It was special to speak with Katie Surma of The Chicago Tribune for her article, "Chicago-area grocers stock up as COVID-19 cases rise.

And, as for technological innovations, Jared S. Hopkins of The Wall Street Journal, who has been writing very timely articles on the vaccine rollout, interviewed me for an article on new vials developed by Corning, that can enhance the storage and transport of the Covid-19 vaccines.

I had mentioned earlier in this blogpost that one had to be ready to respond to media inquiries. For example, I was contacted by BBC radio recently in the early afternoon for a live segment for the Colin Murray show, which took place at 5:30ET (but 10:30PM UK time).  Since I had been a Visiting Fellow at All Souls College at the University of Oxford in England, I am quite good at parsing different British accents and our conversation, I believe, was terrific.

I would also like to single out and thank Larry Collins, another award-winning journalist with whom I have had the pleasure and honor of speaking in the pandemic for the news segment, "COVID-19 vaccine distribution, shipping present challenges." The TV news segment from Dallas can be accessed here. Larry is a fabulous interviewer!

It is important to add that not every interview that one might do results in quotes. Nevertheless, I have gotten thanks from two journalists for educating them and several have told me that they wish that they had majored in operations and logistics and college, so I consider this a success.

And for those of you who are interested in reading and learning more,  INFORMS maintains regular updates on its members on its website, who have appeared in the media, and who have been interviewed on various pandemic topics, including healthcare and supply chains. This is an excellent, very valuable service.

The Fun of Public Speaking and Giving Invited Seminars

When faculty (or students) complete research, it is important to disseminate it.  Of course, one should always disseminate research results through publications such as journal articles, OpEds, and, if you have a substantive amount around a central theme, even through books. Speaking at conferences is another wonderful way in which to share one's research and also to get feedback on it.

Another great venue at which to share your research and to educate is through forums such as invited seminars that many departments within colleges and universities organize and hold at regular intervals.

If you have a great talk (or, better yet, since sometimes it is more fun not to be repeating oneself even if the faces in the audience are different, several talks) and are willing to travel, then, when the right invitations come, giving an invited seminar can be great fun.

You may get to go to places that you might not otherwise have gone to and meet new colleagues and students during your travels and also learn about other schools and their challenges.  I recall giving the Kleber-Gery lecture at St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota, where the faculty have survival gear, including snowshoes, in their car trunks. I was put up in a hotel where Jesse James stayed and I got the bridal suite, complete with a canopy bed!  I spoke at the University of Oklahoma as part of their Dream Course series, instituted by President Boren and was put up in my own villa with multiple rooms decorated with U. of Oklahoma paraphernalia.

I have also given quite a few invited seminars abroad in other beautiful locations such as Stockholm and Gothenburg, Sweden, Vienna, Austria,  and in Catania, Italy. Some of the questions I received from the audiences have turned into research problems that we are now pursuing. The food was also amazing in all those locations and the hospitality!

Other very enjoyable experiences I have had, in terms of speaking engagements, were through the INFORMS Speakers Program. I have traveled to Dallas to speak at SMU through this program, where the audience consisted of academics, students, and practitioners, many from the airline industry, and also to Boston to speak at the Boston INFORMS Chapter with my wonderful host, Dr. Les Servi of MITRE.  For the former presentation, I made it with just minutes to spare - the taxi driver was asking me for directions to SMU  and I had never been there, plus it was after 7PM and pitch dark!

Every audience that you speak to generates new ideas for you and that has something to do with the give and talk of a lively seminar.

Sometimes the invitation to speak may come from an organization or venue, which is unique and also very rewarding. Examples of the latter that I have had have included being a panelist at the World Science Festival on Traffic in NYC and also a panelist on Transport and Traffic at the New York  Times Energy for Tomorrow Conference, also in NYC, with a theme of Building Sustainable Cities. One member of the audience, from Toronto, at the former venue still communicates with me and told me that my panel and presentation changed his life! This year's Energy for Tomorrow conference is taking place in Paris next week under heightened security.

At times the audience may even be a bit "frightened" of your talk. When I organized a team residency at Rockefeller Foundation's Bellagio Center on Lake Como in Italy back in 2004 and was there for 2 weeks, my group, which consisted of three females - we were the first Operations Research group invited for a residency in the center's 50+ year history, gave a talk to other Center Fellows, who included civil rights activists, poets, and even a Lincoln historian. Some were a bit scared that we would be showing some math. I think that we made our talk quite enjoyable but then, to me, networks can be a global language. A similar experience I had while speaking on Dynamic Networks at Radcliffe Institute at Harvard University, while I was a Science Fellow there in 2005-2006.

In my previous blogpost, I wrote about how thrilled I was that so many students showed up to my game theory and cybercrime seminar late in the day just  two days before Thanksgiving, when the talk was not even required and no faculty member was taking attendance!  Now, that was an energizing experience and so rewarding.

I will be busy on the lecture circuit over the next few months.

This coming Wednesday, I will be speaking in a Cyber Security Faculty Seminar Series at UMass Amherst (no travel reuiqred). The week after, on December 9, 2015, I will be speaking at MIT in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering Seminar Series. I was invited to speak there last year but I was booked with travel and other professional commitments so am very glad that I can do it this academic semester.

On February 17, 2015 (I picked the date), I will be giving a Distinguished Lecture at Yale University in its YINS  (Yale Institute  for Network Science) seminar series, which I am very much looking forward to!

Then the day that our spring break begins, March 11, 2015, I will be speaking at the University of Buffalo (the invitation came before UMass Amherst's football team beat Buffalo's and knocked them out of a bowl game). The seminar series is the Praxis Seminar Series and it was very neat to see Michael Trick, a fellow blogger and INFORMS Fellow,  will be speaking there later this week and my colleague, Sundar Krishnamurthy, who is the chair of the Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering at UMass Amherst will follow me in this seminar series (Maybe it is because the U. of Buffalo is located in Amherst (NY)).

I have also agreed to speak at Carnegie Mellon University of April 4, 2016.

Many thanks to all those who extended such wonderful invitations!

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.

Looking Forward to Speaking at the University of Oklahoma

Tomorrow (yes, Easter Sunday), I will be flying to Oklahoma through Dallas, Texas.

I was invited by Professor Janet K. Allen to take part in a Dream Course, Understanding and Engineering Systems, at the University of Oklahoma. As I wrote in an earlier post, President David L. Boren, who has been the University of Oklahoma's long-serving President, is an avid supporter of this initiative.

On Monday (yes, April Fools' Day), I will be giving two lectures. The first lecture will be in the Dream Course  class and is entitled: "Grand Challenges and Opportunities in Supply Chain Networks: From Analysis to Design."

The second lecture is a public lecture: "Assessing the Performance and Vulnerability of Networks from Transportation to the Internet, Financial Networks, and Supply Chains: Which Nodes and Links Really Matter?

 The notice for the public lecture is online on the page of the Vice President for Research.

I am very much looking forward to seeing a part of the USA that I have never been to.

Plus, the itinerary that has been prepared for me is wonderful and I will be meeting with faculty from the School of Industrial and Systems Engineering there and the School of Computer Science and the School of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering, as well as with administrators.

I will certainly be kept busy!

Another highlight will be meeting with some students of the University of Oklahoma INFORMS Student Chapter over dinner and before my public lecture on Monday night! As the Faculty Advisor of the UMass Amherst INFORMS Student Chapter, this will be an added treat.
 
Tomorrow evening should be an especially exciting time at the University of Oklahoma since the women's basketball team will be playing against Tennessee in the Sweet Sixteen NCAA 2013 event in Oklahoma City, which is very near Norman.

I will post the full presentations after I return back to Massachusetts from Oklahoma.

Go, Sooners!

Meet the Executive Event a Big Success -- What a Day!

Today, we hosted Mr. Marc Schneider, the Group President of Dress Furnishings at Phillips Van Heusen (PVH), as part of our "Meet the Executive" initiative. The announcement even made the UMass Amherst homepage.

Mr. Schneider, who is an alum of our School of Management, was simply fantastic.

Some tips from Mr. Schneider's lecture and a fabulous Q&A that followed are below:

You should go for a career and not for a "job." He spoke about how he began his career at Macy's and benefited from its outstanding training program.

What creates success? -- preparation, clarity of objectives, and putting the work in! Do not be outworked!

Those who succeed aren't necessarily smarter -- whatever profession you select, you must be good at it. The successful ones are the ones who have worked the hardest. Make sure that you do your homework.

In business, you must know finance, marketing, logistics, and organizational behavior.

You need a toolbox of capabilities. I create value, he said -- I set the strategy and create the roadmap. I set the structure and populate it with great people. I give them the space to succeed and encourage them to execute with distinction.

One needs to focus on the end results and to build a good team and to collaborate.

I want my employees to be charged up and to love coming to work. Employees must be engaged. (Now, wouldn't the world be a better place if all bosses were like this?!)

Mr. Schneider also emphasized the importance of mentoring and looking at the longer view.

He regaled us with his travels as part of his work and he always combines work and pleasure when he travels.

He was asked about the greatest obstacles that he has faced, about the relative importance of face time vs. electronic communication (he is on 24/7 and loves it that way), and about whether he is always learning (indeed, he is, and sometimes will go to the library for a couple of hours to just reflect and think).

And, yes, he was even at the Super Bowl game last weekend in Dallas (PVH works with the NFL) and was also there at various festivities since his company had corporate seats. He highlighted how football players have to work really hard to make it to the NFL and those who make it to the Hall of Fame are those who have worked the hardest.

His near-term travels will take him to LA, where he regularly checks out a manufacturing plant, to Reno, to Milan, and then to China. He was in Istanbul last summer.

It was fascinating to hear him speak on the global supply chain of his fashion products and to hear about the role of information technology (he even reworked this aspect of the business). His decisions as to where to outsource and the associated risk in the world that we live in today he analyzes very thoroughly because they will affect many. He even mentioned how the events in Egypt are affecting the delivery of some of his company's products! And we all know what happened in Egypt today!

What came through is his energy, his love of his career, his curiosity about the world around him, and his willingness to advise and mentor our students.

The lunch at the University Club at UMass Amherst was not only delicious but the conversations continued and were so warm and entertaining.

Thank you, Mr. Marc Schneider, for a visit we will all remember and, think, he could have just stayed in Manhattan with this being Fashion Week!

Thank you also for noting the great education that you received in our school -- and he is now responsible for a business valued at an amount with a 1 followed by a lot of zeros!

You can find more photos from this and our UMass Amherst INFORMS Student Chapter activities on the chapter homepage, which also has links to Facebook and Twitter.