Women in Operations Research and the Management Sciences and the Analytics Conference

Although I won't be at the INFORMS Analytics Conference, which begins tomorrow in San Antonio, Texas, with many exciting activities, since I have recently returned from speaking at the University of Oklahoma and a month in Europe (Sweden and Austria), in spirit, I will be well-represented by one of our special communities, WORMS (Women in Operations Research and the Management Sciences), and its innovative activities.

Members of WORMS, which is a forum of the professional society INFORMS, received the following message from our President, Dr. Laura McLay:
 

Dear WORMS members, I am excited that WORMS will be participating in several events at the INFORMS Analytics Conference this year.  WORMS is pleased to announce that, due to our many generous sponsors (see below), we were able to sponsor attendance for two students to the Industry Professonal Colloquium at the INFORMS Business Analytics and Operations Research Conference in San Antonio April 7-9, 2013. The two recipients are: Andrea Gallego Fang Dong Fordham Business School Industrial & Operations Engineering Dept. Fordham University University of Michigan, Ann Arbor Candidate for Masters in Business Analytics PhD Candidate August 2013 (expected) May 2013 (expected) Congrats to Andrea and Fang! WORMS will be sponsoring the  Dessert Reception Date: Sunday, April 7, 2013 Time: 8:30 pm – 9:30 pm Location:  Grand Hyatt Republic Room We would like to invite all conference attendees to join us for a dessert reception on the opening night of the conference. WORMS was established in 1995 to encourage interest in the field of OR/MS and to encourage discussion and interaction among individuals having interest in the issues facing women and their relationship to the profession of OR/MS.  WORMS has been actively involved in the INFORMS Annual meeting, and this year WORMS would like to extend its reach to the INFORMS Business Analytics & Operations Research Conference.  We want to gratefully acknowledge the support of our sponsors who made this event and the scholarships possible: Institute for Information Industry Ford SAS IBM Jeppesen Sandia National Laboratory BNSF WORMS will be sponsoring a Birds-Of-A-Feather Discussion Group: Helping Women Negotiate the ORMS Corporate Ladder lead by Rhadika Kulkarni & Brenda Dietrich Monday 4:40 - 6:00pm Presidio B -- Laura A. McLay, PhD Associate Professor Department of Statistical Sciences & Operations Research Virginia Commonwealth University (804) 828-5842 (Office) (804) 828-8785 (Fax) lamclay@vcu.edu http://www.people.vcu.edu/~lamclay/ http://punkrockOR.wordpress.com/ I second the congratulations to the scholarship winners and thank our corporate supporters! I am sure that everyone in the audience for the Birds-Of-A-Feather Discussion Group: Helping Women Negotiate the ORMS Corporate Ladder will benefit from hearing from Dr. Kulkarni and Dr. Dietrich of SAS and IBM, respectively. I had the pleasure of visiting SAS two autumns ago since one of my former PhD students, Dr. Padma Ramanujam, works there and was so impressed by Dr. Kulkarni and the facilities at SAS, that I wrote a blogpost (with photos) on my visit. We have had the pleasure of hosting Dr. Brenda Dietrich at the Isenberg School of Management at UMass Amherst in our UMass Amherst INFORMS  Speaker Series and she was also one of the plenary speakers in the First Northeast Regional INFORMS Conference in May 2011 that we helped to organize on the UMass Amherst campus. To all at the Analytics Conference in San Antonio, enjoy!