This past week was a whirlwind with the
INFORMS Annual Meeting taking place in Houston, Texas, October 22-25, 2017. There were almost 6,000 conferees and the conference, which took place less than two months after Hurricane Harvey hit Houston, one to remember.
It was also very special since 12 members of the
Virtual Center for Supernetworks at the Isenberg School of Management that I serve as a Director of were there to present papers, chair sessions, accept an award, and enjoy technical talks, business meetings, and many social events.
Last Sunday, I gathered a group of
Supernetwork Center Associates, who had arrived in Houston, for dinner al fresco at the restaurant Pappadeux, which is right next to the Convention Center.
Kudos to Professor Dmytro Matsypura who travelled all the way from the University of Sydney in Australia to present his work! Eight of my former PhD students, along Isenberg School UMass Amherst PhD alums, were there, plus two of my present doctoral students: Pritha Dutta and Deniz Besik. The PhD alums are now professors at great institutions: in addition to Dr. Matsypura, Dr. Jose M. Cruz is at UConn's School of Business, Dr. Amir H. Masoumi is at the School of Business at Manhattan College, Dr. Patrick Qiang is at Penn State, Dr. Sara Saberi is at the Foisie School of Business at WPI, Dr. Min Yu is at the Pamplin School of Business at the University of Portland, Dr. Dong "Michelle" Li is at the College of Business at Arkansas State University, Dr. Shivani Shukla of the University of San Francisco, and Dr. Trisha Anderson is at the School of Business at Texas Wesleyan University.
I am so proud of my former (and present) doctoral students who are so professionally active and engaged and whose work in both research and education is making a big difference.
I have posted 7 of the presentations that we gave at INFORMS Houston on the
Supernetworks Center site since we have had multiple requests.
It was thrilling to see my book with Dr. Michelle Li displayed at the Springer booth at the Exhibition area, along with the latest issue of the Journal of Global Optimization in which Dr. Min Yu, Deniz Besik, and I have our paper on supply chain capacity competition and outsourcing, which Deniz presented at the conference.
Dr. Michelle Li, Dr. Yu, and I also heard last Friday that our paper that Dr. Li presented on Monday on consumer learning in differentiated product markets was accepted for publication in the journal
Omega. We could not have asked for better timing!
Below is a photo taken after the session on
Networks and Supply Chains that I organized of the speakers and several members of the audience who are a part of our great Supernetworks Team!
Our presentations included ones on freight and sustainability, cybersecurity investments, game theory and disaster relief, closed loop supply chains, and even blood supply chains and game theory!
Another highlight was getting together at the WORMS lunch and, of course, having our UMass Amherst INFORMS Student Chapter receive the Magna Cum Laude Award from INFORMS!
We all returned energized and brimming with new ideas and also a strengthened sense of community.
Thank you INFORMS for holding the conference in Houston, despite the uncertainty and the associated challenges. It is a conference to be very pleasantly remembered!
