Offering More Choices on the Internet Through Duration-Based Contracts

We, as consumers, are locked into contracts with Internet Service Providers (ISPs)  over time durations that are too rigid,  over periods of yesrs, typically.

Wouldn't it be wonderful if consumers could be offered more choices, with choices including having contracts for Internet services for the time period that you actually want and need? Perhaps you just want to catch up on the news or view a video or movie.

This is one of the characteristics of a Future Internet Architecture (FIA) that we have been working on as part of our multiuniversity National Science Foundation (FIA) project: Network Innovation Through Choice. Specifically, we have been researching both theoretically and in terms of implementation an architecture which we are calling ChoiceNet with the goal being of introducing an Economy Plane for the Internet. The three principles of ChoiceNet are depicted graphically below.

In one of our fundamental conceptual papers, written by all the investigators on this project, we note that: These three principles interact in a cyclic process that results in increased competition, a faster pace of innovation, and better information for consumers, making it possible for users to make more informed decisions. We expect this “virtuous cycle” to be repeated over and over, on much smaller time scales than is possible in today’s Internet, where customers are locked into their local provider and rely on the latter for everything. Furthermore, we note that omitting any element of the cycle destroys the effectiveness of the others.

In order to investigate duration-based contracts for the Internet, we developed a game theory model for a differentiated service-oriented Internet with duration-based contracts. The model uses variational inequality theory for the formulation of the equilibrium in service usage rates, quality, and contract durations and projected dynamical systems theory for the underlying competitive dynamics. This paper we will be presenting at the 2015  INFORMS Computing Society Conference in Richmond,, VA in mid-January.   The paper will also be published in the conference proceedings. My co-authors on this paper are: Professor Tilman Wolf, who is the Lead PI on our NSF project, Sara Saberi, one of my doctoral students in Management Science at the Isenberg School, who this year received the prestigious 2014 Isenberg Scholar Award, and also Professor Ladimer S. Nagurney, whose university posted a writeup on our paper.

And for those of you who can make it, next Friday, Professor Tilman Wolf will be delivering a talk on ChoiceNet at the Isenberg School of Management in our great UMass Amherst INFORMS Speaker Series. I hope that you can join us!

A Happy White Thanksgiving and Operations Research

For many in the US, Thanksgiving is a favorite holiday during which we celebrate history, give thanks, surrounded by family and friends and nourished by delicious food from the turkey and all the trimmings to sumptious desserts.

The 2014 Thanksgiving in the northeastern US will be especially memorable due to the snowstorm that hit with travel disrupted from planes to road travel and with many in our area of western Massachusetts and beyond without electric power.

I took the photos below this morning because the sun was shining and I had to venture out to see the white landscape that was beckoning to me.

Thanksgiving, with  all the planning, the travel, the cooking, and even the seating of the guests, not to mention what do to with leftovers, if there are any, is the "optimal" holiday for operations researchers at which we get to put all of our analytical tools into practice. For example, as the students in my Transportation & Logistics class know, one has to try an determine an optimal time for departure for the trip home given forecasts for traffic and associated delays. This past Tuesday there was a 60 mile backup on the MA turnpike from Logan Airport to Sturbridge as the Google map below shows (luckily, most of my students were headed east).

As for the plane flight cancellations and delays, the scenario was right out of one of my favorite Steve Martin movies, Planes, Trains, & Automobiles.

The planning and execution of the cooking of the big Thanksgiving meal is a perfect exercise in project planning, with the network tool of Critical Path analysis being especially useful. One needs to identify all the activities, construct the network project model, and then identify the time (longest path) for the completion of all the activities. This is so useful! Of course, the goal is to make sure that everything is completed just in time for the arrival of the guests!

Moreover, one of my former colleagues, rest his soul, Professor Joe Balintfy was an expert in food management science and menu planning, and his parties left a standard that I aspire to.

One previous Thanksgiving, at which we hosted a group of my Management Science doctoral students at the Isenberg School and their families, the weather was so warm, that after indulging in all the food we went out to play outside to burn off some of the calories!

With best wishes to everyone for a wonderful Thanksgiving!

In New England we are resilient and, as readers of my blog know, we have endured a once in a 500 years flood, a freaky Halloween snowstorm, and more!

A Great Transportation Class Field Trip to the Arbella Human Performance Lab and Driving Simulator

Today the students in my Transportation & Logistics class and I  had the pleasure of taking part in our second field trip of the semester and just in time before they all headed away from campus for the Thanksgiving holiday. Tomorrow UMass Amherst is closed because of the pending snowstorm, which should make for some interesting travel experiences so do be extra cautious!

The field trip was to the Arbella Human Performance Lab in the Engineering 1 building at UMass Amherst, which is way across campus from the Isenberg School of Management. The weather was perfect and the temps in the 60s so we had a pleasant walk.

The Human Performance Lab is directed by Professor Don Fisher, who is also the Chair of the Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering. He has done seminal research on distracted driving and his research team utilizes the latest in eye-tracking technology to study driver's eye movements and the impacts thereof. Dr. Fisher is a psychologist by training and an expert in human factors. He also is a Faculty Fellow at the Volpe National Transportation Systems Center in Cambridge, MA. His research has attracted over $10 million in funding including an NSF grant to study driverless cars.

In his lab is a $500,000 black car, which is utilized to do some of the testing and experimentation with the use of human subjects as drivers. It has had about another $500,000 put into it for experiments and upgrades. One of the undergraduates was a willing volunteer. and drove the driving simulator.

It was fascinating to hear Professor Fisher speak about hazard mitigation, the types of conditions that lead to distracted driving from inside the vehicle to outside the vehicle plus the differences between experienced drivers and young inexperienced ones as well as younger vs. older ones.

He showed the famous video of counting basketball passes and then asked how many saw the gorilla in the video. The video demonstrates selective attention.

His research has led to new training programs with great positive effects and even to new signage, flashing yellow lights and pedestrian signs,  removal of parking spots, etc., in Amherst and beyond. His team was even involved in studying the effects of the Big Dig and traveller behavior especially with respect to signs in the tunnel.

 

I am a huge fan of Professor Fisher's and the important work that he has been doing for decades. He has spoken in our UMass Amherst INFORMS Speakers Series (in fact, he was our very first speaker) and last April he received an award from the Phi Kappa Phi Chapter at UMass, which I blogged about. I also had the pleasure of giving the speech at the ceremony.

We all left the lab with valuable information and I am sure that everyone drove more carefully today and will continue to do so.

Many thanks to Professor Fisher, to his lab manager, Tracy, and his research assistant, Akhilesh, for such a great educational experience today.

Happy Thanksgiving to all and safe driving!

Historic College Rivalry Takes Over NYC

There are many college rivalries - you probably have your favorite - from Harvard vs. Yale, Army vs. Navy,  Amherst College vs. Williams College, or USC vs. UCLA, but I will be writing about another one - a truly historic one and, yes, indeed, it has been played out in sports, especially football.

The past 3 days I spent in NYC taking part in the iconic #rivalry150 events surrounding the 150th meeting of  Lafayette College and Lehigh University in a football game in none other  than Yankee Stadium to a sold out audience on Saturday of over 48,200 ticket holders!

I admit my husband is a very loyal Lafayette College alum. He received his undergrad degree in physics there before moving on to his graduate degrees, including the PhD, from Brown University. I am a Brown U. alum (4 times over) and a Harvard one as well since I was a Science Fellow at Radcliffe.

Very often one's  loyalties lie with one's undergraduate alma mater since the undergraduate years provide such formative experiences.

Lafayette and Lehigh are part of the Patriot League, a Division 1 athletics league. Both schools also have outstanding academic reputations and I especially respect their excellence in STEM fields.

The New York Times had great coverage of this rivalry with the first meeting of the two football teams in 1884.  Both schools had worked very hard to generate interest and  the activities in NYC were tremendous. Spoiler alert for those who have not heard - Lafayette "routed" (New York Times' choice of words) Lehigh with a score of 27-7 and this they accomplished with a third string quarterback, Zach Zweizig, whose name will go down in his college's history.  

Zach has overcome injuries plus the death of his father and it was only last week that he was called on by his coach to take on the incredible challenge of playing quarterback at Yankee Stadium!

We took the MetroNorth train from New Haven and, in walking to our favorite hotel in NYC, The Excelsior, on 81st Street, through Central Park, on Friday, we heard a band playing, so with our suitcases we investigated and it was the Lehigh band practicing along with cheerleaders.

That morning there was coverage of the rivalry on both the Today Show and GMA.

The Presidents of the two academic institutions, President Alison Byerly of Lafayette College and President Kevin J. Clayton of Lehigh, got to ring the closing bell at the New York Stock Exchange on Friday with the college mascots of a lepoard and a mountain hawk to accompany them.

 Courtesy of the Associated Press

Friday evening we were treated to a gala event with scrumptious desserts at the Museum of Natural History, and I felt as though I was in the movie Night at the Museum.

On Saturday morning, before going to the game, we saw several Lafayette College students walking on Broadway in leopard prints, of course!

The below photos were taken at the football game at Yankee Stadium. It was great to see the two college bands perform together at halftime!

And, as the sun was setting, the Empire State building was lit up in the rival school colors, maroon and white, and brown and white!

And, no wonder why we all love NYC, after the game on Saturday at Yankee Stadium, because of the crowds trying to get on the subway, everyone was allowed to just pass through!

More great coverage of the game and events from USAToday to NPR can be found here.

The terrific memories are what build great school spirit!

Cybersecurity Research and the Isenberg School of Management

There is tremendous interest in cybersecurity issues at UMass as well as at the Isenberg School of Management.

For example, on December 2, 2014, there will be a Cybersecurity Network Workforce Summit taking place at UMass Boston with participation from the UMass system President Dr. Robert Caret and the UMass Amherst Chancellor Dr. Kumble Subbaswamy.

And, just this past September, along with my Isenberg School of Management colleagues, Professor Mila Sherman of Finance and Professor Senay Solak of my Operations and Information Management Department, we, together with Professor Wayne Burleson of ECE, organized, with help from Professor Andrew Lo of the Sloan School, a very successful cybersecurity workshop at MIT. This workshop was supported by the second grant that we had received from the Advanced Cuber Security Center (ACSC).

I have posted all the presentations from our Workshop here.

Since our workshop at MIT, my OIM colleague, Professor Ryan Wright, received an NSF grant, joint with his University of Oklahoma colleagues, entitled, Building the Human Firewall. Plus, we heard that one of our Management Science doctoral students, Yueran Zhuo, who is being supervised by Solak, had her poster, titled "Optimizing Cybersecurity Investments with Risk: Insights for Resource Allocation" tie for second place as voted by ACSC Annual Conference attendees as a Best Cyber Security Solution for 2014.  The $1,000 prize will be shared with the other second place winner "Authentication Using Embedded Logical Queries."

There is a lot of excitement on the UMass Amherst campus surrounding the possibility of a Cybersecurity Institute that would be across colleges and schools, which is terrific. 

My interests and research in cybersecurity center around the network economics of cyber crime and cybersecurity with additional foci on risk management, information asymmetry, information sharing and security investments, Internet vulnerability and resilience,  as well as supply chain aspects of security and vulnerability due, for example, to outsourcing. My latest paper on the theme is  A Multiproduct Network Economic Model of Cybercrime in Financial Services.

A video of my presentation on cybercrime and financial service organizations filmed at the INNFORMS Minnepolis conference can be viewed here.

Net Neutrality and Opening Up the Black Box

I very much care about fairness, equity, and making sure that there is no discrimination and that also is the case for the Internet.

Net neutrality is a topic that is now being fiercely debated on the news and talk shows and has many taking political sides.


To many consumers, and even businesses, the Internet is a “black box,” which has revolutionized the way in which economic and social transactions and interactions are conducted, entertainment is obtained and experienced, communications are done, and numerous educational activities participated in. If one were to ask Internet users to identify the mechanisms by which the videos that they view, the news that they read online, and the messages that they disseminate, one may very well find that a consumer would be able to identify the content provider and, perhaps, the network provider. The user/consumer will not know where the content is being delivered from, the routes that have been taken to transmit the data, and the service providers that might have been transacted with en route. Moreover, they will not be aware of the encumbered costs and, very likely, the profit garnered.

Hence, we are dealing with information asymmetry in today’s Internet, a subject that, in terms of quality, dates to the Nobel laureate’s George Akerlof’s classic 1970 paper. Consumers, as well as businesses, are unaware of the intermediaries involved in network provision, the costs and profits of service providers, and are locked into contracts of durations that are inflexible and, possibly, not optimal from their utility perspectives. Such an economic landscape creates an inertia for innovation as well as consumer satisfaction and limits competitive behavior. Furthermore, it is not clear, due to the lack of transparency and information asymmetry, whether scarce resources are being utilized in an optimal manner, with the understanding that different stakeholders and decision-makers may be faced with distinct objective functions, which may, include, for example, aspects of environmental sustainability as well as cybersecurity and even enhanced quality for network transport provision.

Furthermore, the constraints that stakeholders and decision-makers are faced with are not transparent, which may result of an inefficient use of resources. The information asymmetry results in a lack of trust, and, even to a certain extent, paranoia on the consumers’ part since vital economic and engineering information is not shared in a transparent and clear manner.


The topic inspired us to write a Guest Commentary entitled, "Net Neutrality, the Past, Present, Future and What It Means to Us"  for masslive.com


My colleagues and I have been working since 2011 on a project funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), Network Innovation Through Choice. As part of the project, we are envisioning the components of an economy plane for Future Internet Architectures and, in particular, one which we are developing and which we are calling ChoiceNet. 

Specifically, we wish to offer consumers more choices and in a transparent way. Why should we be locked into long-term contracts, for example, when it comes to Internet services?!

Towards that end, we have proposed duration-based contracts for a service-oriented Internet. In the paper, A Game Theory Model for a Differentiated Service-Oriented Internet with Duration-Based Contracts, co-authored with my doctoral student, Sara Saberi, Professor Tilman Wolf, the PI on our NSF project, and Professor Ladimer S. Nagurney, we introduced a game theory model of a service-oriented Internet in which the network providers compete in usage service rates, quality levels, and duration-based contracts. We formulate the network-based Nash equilibrium conditions as a variational inequality problem, provide qualitative properties of existence and uniqueness, and describe an algorithm, which yields closed-form expressions at each iteration. The numerical examples include sensitivity analysis for price functions at the demand markets as well as variations in the upper bounds on the quality levels for the services.

The paper will be presented at the INFORMS Computing Society Conference in January 2015 in Richmond, VA and will be published in its Proceedings.

And speaking of quality, our paper,  A Network Economic Game Theory Model of a Service-Oriented Internet with Price and Quality Competition in Both Content and Network Provision, appears in the December 2014 issue of the INFORMS journal Service Science.

In the meantime, I am sure that the lively discussions on net neutrality and regulations will continue!

Transparency is key!

Amazing Management Science PhD Students at the Isenberg School of Management (Present and Past)

The strength and intellectual vitality of any college or university depends on the quality of its students and faculty, as well as programs.

In the case of a university, in particular, doctoral students add to knowledge discovery and generation and bring energy in terms of curiosity, ideas, critical thinking, and problem-solving.

I continue to be impressed by the quality of the doctoral students at the Isenberg School of Management at UMass Amherst and, in particular, by those in the Management Science track that I work closely with. To-date,  I have had the joy of chairing 17 doctoral dissertations and am now supervising 3 doctoral students, all of whom, coincidentally, it just so happens, are females, from 3 different countries.

Having returned recently from the INFORMS Annual Conference, which was in San Francisco, I can attest to the professionalism, creativity, and cameraderie of our PhD students, both past and present, who make up our academic family. They support one another professionally, enjoy one another's company, and some even share a room (fun and cost-wise) at conferences. They exchange tips with one another, whether in regards to teaching or research, collaborate on challenging problems, and even attend one another's weddings. And, when it comes time to celebrate achievements, such as the awarding of promotion and tenure, a special award,  or even promotion to Full Professor (3 of my former PhD students are now Full Professors),  we do it with style and joy. Just to mention some recent achievements: my doctoral student, Dong "Michelle" Li received the 2014 Outstanding Doctoral Student Researcher Award from the Isenberg School, and my student, Sara Saberi, received the 2014 Isenberg Scholar Award (one of twelve) for $10,000 and recently had this award renewed. Together,  one of our papers, written with Professor Tilman Wolf, and published in Netnomics,  was recognized by the ACM (Association of Computing Machinery) with a Notable Paper Award for 2013.  Professor Senay Solak's student, Heng Chen, also received a 2014 Outstanding Doctoral Student Researcher Award, as well as a prestigious FAA research award. In addition, Professor Solak's student, Yueran Zhuo, had her poster tie for second place at the Advanced Cyber Security Annual Conference. And, as I always say, "Apples don't Fall Far from the Tree," Farbod Farhadi, who received his PhD last May, and whose advisor was Professor Ahmed Ghoniem, last year was recognized by the Isenberg School with an Outstanding Doctoral Student Teaching Award!

It takes a community to solve tough problems and to also make the academic journey more pleasant.  

Below is a photo that my former doctoral student, Professor Min Yu, took at the INFORMS Student Chapter Award ceremony in San Francisco last Monday evening. So proud of the UMass Amherst INFORMS Student Chapter receiving and yet another national award from INFORMS for its activities. The chapter is truly in the Isenberg model and vision with officers and members from the Isenberg School and the College of Engineering.

 

Below, I have posted some more photos of the Management Science PhD students, both present and past, taken at the INFORMS conference. Other photos  are on previous blogposts on this blog.

In the above photo, taken at the INFORMS conference exhibit area, I am standing with my former student, Professor Jose M. Cruz, who received 5 degrees from UMass Amherst, and with Professor Min Yu. Professor Cruz is at the School of Business at the University of Connecticut Storrs. He has won both the undergraduate and graduate teaching award there and has been appointed an  Ackerman Scholar twice (a major research achievement). One of my former Operations Management students, Jan Sudra, who works at UTC, and is studying for a Master's at UConn, told me that he loved Professor Cruz, and he called him a research superstar!  Cruz is also the Director of the super successful Master's in Project Management and Analytics at UConn.  Professor Min Yu is one of my co-authors on many papers as well as on my latest book, Networks Against Time: Supply Chain Analytics for Perishable Products. She was recognized for her achievements by being appointed a Pamplin Fellow at the University of Portland.

In the above photo, we await the beginning of our supply chain session that I organized for the conference that took place last Monday. In the photo are the speakers, including my first female PhD student, Professor June Dong of SUNY Oswego, Professor Patrick Qiang of Penn State Malvern, and, in the audience, Professor Ke Ke of Central Washington University, who was also my PhD student.
Dong "Michelle" Li, seated in the front, was the first presenter and you can find our presentations on the supernetwork center website. My doctoral student Sara Saberi is seated behind Professor Qiang. I have co-authored books with Professor Dong and also with Professor Qiang, whose dissertation received the Charles Wootan Award from the Council of University Transportation Centers (CUTC).

In the photo below, I am with my former doctoral student,  Dr. Padma Ramanujan of SAS, whose dissertation received the Transportation Science Section (now the Transportation Science & Logistics Society) of INFORMS dissertation prize,  Dr. Deanna Kennedy, one of our former doctoral students in Management Science, and Dr. Min Yu. Deanna was recruiting for a faculty position at the University of Washington Bothell and it was wonderful to see her again!

Supernetwork Center Associate Reunion at INFORMS San Francisco

Conferences at which you get a chance to see in person wonderful collaborators, colleagues, and former students are always my favorites and, of course, the venue is also important.

The 2014 INFORMS conference was fabulous and served as a great venue at which many of the Supernetwork Center Associates got together face to face. Although not everyone could be there, including Professor Dmytro Matsypura of the University of Sydney in Australia (a regular at this conference) and Professor Patrizia Daniele of the University of Catania in Italy, as well as Dr. Stavros Siokos, Sciens CEO of London, UK, Professor Tina Wakolbinger of the Vienna University of Economics and Business in Austria,  the representation by the supernetwork team was, nevertheless,  great! It was extra special that doctoral students could meet some of the more senior Center Associates, who are Full Professors or managers in industry.

Below I provide photos that will keep the wonderful memories alive of this terrific supernetwork team and this great conference.

We went to J&G's for dinner on Sunday and one of several of my colleagues, who were born in China,  remarked that this was the best Chinese food that they had had in the US and I agreed. Thanks to Professor Min Yu of the University of Portland for locating it and to Professor Patrick Qiang of Penn State Malvern  for being our navigator to the location.

Our supply chain network competition session that I organized generated good questions and we thank Professor Vladimir Boginski of the University of Florida for taking the group photo below and for inviting me to put together this session!

In the above photo top row are: Professors Min Yu, June Dong of SUNY Oswego, and Ke Ke of Central Washington University, with Isenberg School Management Science doctoral students Sara Saberi and Dong "Michelle" Li. In the front row Professors Patrick Qiang and Amir H. Masoumi of Manhattan College  are seated with me. All of the presentations delivered in this session are now posted on the supernetwork center website.

After our session it was time to celebrate the UMass Amherst INFORMS Student Chapter cum laude award at a very nice ceremony. It was great to see Professor Min Yu come to support the students. She had been a long-serving member of the chapter before receiving her PhD.

On Tuesday, we had a great turnout for the WORMS (Women in Operations Research and the Management Sciences) awards lunch at which we enjoyed the delicious food (an amazing dessert) and the conversations.

It was special to speak with Center Associate Professor Jose M. Cruz of the University of Connecticut and Dr. Padma Ramanujam of SAS, both of whom received their PhDs with a concentration in Management Science from the Isenberg School at UMass. I was their very proud dissertation advisor.

Center Associate Professor Trisha Anderson of Texas Wesleyan University was also a presenter but could not stay for the full conference. She spoke at a session on supply chains that Professor Cruz organized and her co-author was Center Associate Professor Zugang "Leo" Liu, whose wife recently gave birth to a baby girl (so he was otherwise preoccupied).

It was also to have Doctoral Student Center Associate Sara Saberi present for the first time at an INFORMS conference. Sara spoke on our joint work with Professor Tilman Wolf on game theory and a service-oriented Internet.

Recognizing and Celebrating Outstanding Female Operations Researchers and Analytics Professionals

There are truly amazing female academicians and professionals in our field.

At the 2014 INFORMS conference, which finished yesterday, we had the opportunity to recognize and celebrate the accomplishments of several amazing women.

In recognizing and celebrating them, we provide support also to younger generations, in the form of wonderful role models.

This past Tuesday morning, I had the pleasure of attending the Fora/Chapters breakfast at which the Moving Spirit Award was given as well as the Judith B. Liebman Award.  The Liebman award was given out to great student leaders:  Michelle McGaha Alvarado and Kimia Ghobadi, and Ruixie Guo. The Moving Spirit Award was given to Dr. Laura McLay of the University of Wisconsin Madison. Laura is a superwoman and she was recognized for her contributions as an officer of WORMS (Women in Operations Research and the Management Sciences), having also served as this forum's President. Laura has promoted the activities of this forum and both women and men through innovative activities, blogging, and social media.  She has worked tirelessly in nominating women for awards, while also being a top educator, mother of 3, and even runner and knitter! As has been said multiple times, Laura is also a great ambassador for Operations Research.

I was so happy to see her on the podium and then we could not resist taking a joint photo. Laura is holding her award plaque.

Later that day, at the WORMS (Women in Operations Research and the Management Sciences) lunch, the 2014 WORMS Award recipient was announced - Professor Aleda Roth of Clemson University. Professor Kathryn Stecke of UTDallas, last year's award recipient, was the chair of this committee. Aleda has already achieved Fellow status of several professional organizations and is especially known for her empirical work in Operations Management. The list (with photos) of WORMS Award winners can be viewed here.

One of my former students, Professor June Dong, took the below photo of Professor Roth and me:

The WORMS lunch was sold out and the below photo was shared with me by Professor Christian Wernz of VT. Thanks to Professor Susan Martonosi of Harvey Mudd College, who is the President of WORMS, for being such a great emcee of this event!

On Monday, we recognized and celebrated the 2014 elected INFORMS Fellows. Only .015% of the over 11,000 INFORMS members are Fellows and the full list is here.

This year, 2 out of the 12 new Fellows are females: Dr. Candi Yano of UC Berkeley, who was the organizer of the INFORMS San Francisco conference, and Dr. Radhika Kulkarni of SAS.

I took the photo of Drs. Yano and Kulkarni below.

I have written about Dr. Kulkarni on this blog. One of my former PhD students, Dr. Padma Ramanujam, works for SAS and I have visited SAS in Cary, NC.

Below are photos of the desserts at our INFORMS Fellows lunch table as well as of my great companions at the lunch. Professor Panos Pardalos and I "hosted" several student award winners.

Congrats to all the remarkable women!