An Incredible Blackett Lecture Experience at the Royal Society in London

We returned yesterday from London, in time for me to teach my last Transportation and Logistics class of the Fall 2024 semester this morning.

It was a whirlwind week. My husband and I flew from Boston Logan on December 3 (after I taught my class), and, after a few hours of sleep, we had the pleasure of taking part in an Isenberg School get together hosted by my former PhD student, Dr. Stavros Siokos, the co-founder of Astarte Capital. It was a lovely event with Dean Anne P. Massey taking part as well as Senior Associate Dean Bill Brown, plus several Isenberg School development folks, alums and friends.

And, on December 5, it was time for my Blackett Lecture and the annual awards given out by The Operational Research (OR) Society of the United Kingdom. 

The venue was The Royal Society. This society is the oldest scientific society, dating back to 1660. The event was lovely - beautifully organized with the awards taking place first, followed by my one hour Blackett Lecture, a cocktail hour, and then a delicious dinner. The OR Society will be posting a video of my lecture on its youtube channel soon as well as professional photographs on its Flickr.

I was incredibly honored to have the opportunity to deliver my Blackett Lecture, "NetwORks and Policies: OR to the Rescue," at the beautiful venue and to an audience of amazing colleagues, academics and practitioners, as well as friends and invited guests. I would like to acknowledge the President of The OR Society Gilbert Owusu for the warm introduction and for so expertly handling the Q&A, and Gavin Blackett, Carol McLaughlin, Sarah Davies, and Caitlin Griffin of  The OR Society for the hospitality. Special thanks to Graham Rand, Edmund Burke, and Robert Fildes for the conversations and welcome. It's not every day that one gets to be in a photograph next to an oil painting of the Nobel laureate and Founder of OR in the UK - Patrick Blackett! 

It was an honor to have the Isenberg School of Management, UMass Amherst Dean Anne P. Massey and Senior Associate Dean William Brown in attendance as well as Diane Isenberg and University of Massachusetts Amherst PhD alumnus Stavros Siokos. Recognizing so many in the audience because of professional interactions over the years, made for a very enjoyable experience - thank you all! The slide deck of my presentation has been posted: https://supernet.isenberg.umass.edu/visuals/BlackettLecture-Nagurney-2024.pdf

Some additional background on becoming the 2024 Blackett Lecturer can be found here: https://annanagurney.blogspot.com/2024/11/deeply-honored-to-have-been-selected-to.html

Congratulations to all the award recipients recognized at this very memorable event. The impact of our great discipline is humbling and inspiring. Working together we can continue to make positive change. 

Many Thanks to the INFORMS History & Traditions Committee and to Its Chair

At the recent INFORMS Annual Meeting, which took place in Seattle, WA, I had the pleasure of speaking on a panel on: What Does Our Past Tell Us About Our Future, with esteemed colleagues: Linus Schrage of the University of Chicago and Tom Magnanti of MIT. Christopher Ryan of the University of British Columbia served as the moderator.

I had done a lot of research for my presentation and have now posted it. In my presentation, I emphasized how important it is to also include herstories and to feature female operations researchers both for historical purposes and also to inspire younger generations. 

The INFORMS History & Traditions website includes "profiles of more than 230 historic individuals as well as the historic institutions, methodologies and application areas with which they are associated." There is a Committee (I had served for several years on it) that meets regularly and suggests additions to this website and tracks its correctness, etc. 

I was very touched and very honored to have been contacted before our panel took place by Linus Schrage, the Chair of the INFORMS History & Traditions Committee, saying that I should be included on this website.  He worked in securing a writer for my biography and went back and forth with me to make sure that everything had my approval.

Above is a photo of the names on the M-N page and I marvel to be on this list with many that I have cited and some I have even enjoyed conversations with! All the biographies can be accessed here. I am only the 5th female to be thus recognized, and this tribute will make me work even harder and mentor students, collaborators, and others who reach out to me.

My biography, thanks to the INFORMS History & Traditions Committee, can be directly accessed here.

Beautiful that my biography page also includes a link to the interview with me conducted by Anand Subramanian for his outstanding Subject_to series on Youtube.

Deeply Honored to Have Been Selected to Deliver the 2024 Blackett Lecture at the Royal Society in London

You probably remember the day that you received some wonderful news and also the day that you received sad news.

This post is about the former.

I was at a conference in Kalamata, Greece in honor of the 70th birthday of Panos M. Pardalos last summer when the great news arrived. I had been selected by The Operational Research (OR) Society to deliver the 2024 Blackett Lecture at the Royal Society in London. Honestly, as I was reading the letter, the tears started to flow since I was so touched that my hard work was being recognized. 

Patrick Blackett, after whom the lecture is named, was the founder of  OR in the United Kingdom. In the US, we, typically, say "Operations Research." He was also awarded a Nobel Prize in physics.

The abstract of my lecture as well as a link to registration can be found here.

The letter from The OR Society, signed by the Executive Director Seb Hargreaves and by the President of The OR Society, Gilbert Owusu, is below.

I have been enjoying preparing my lecture, which will give a panoramic view of OR and policies from tolls for congested urban transportation networks to tariffs and quotas for agricultural supply chain networks. I will be bringing in a lot of personal experiences as well.

I am thrilled that there will even be guests from New England coming.

I Enjoyed Speaking at the Robert H. Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland

This past Friday, I had the pleasure of delivering a talk in the Department of Decision, Operations & Information Technologies (DO&IT) Research Seminar Series at the Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland in College Park. I flew out after teaching on Thursday, October 31, 2024, which was Halloween, and returned late on Friday, November 1, 2024.

The title of my presentation was: "Agricultural Supply Chain Networks: Labor, Trade, Policies, and Resilience." The hospitality extended to me was wonderful. I very much enjoyed breakfast with PhD student Jiannan Xu and a delicious lunch with Chaired Professor Zhi-Long Chen, along with a great conversations. Meetings with Professors Raghu Raghavan, Xiaojia Guo, Alex Estes, and Ashish Kabra were delightful (and much too short). It was terrific to also hear some stories from Professor Bruce Golden as well as Professor Michael Fu, both of whom I had seen at the INFORMS Fellows Luncheon the previous week at the INFORMS Annual Meeting in Seattle! I enjoyed also chatting with Professor Wedad Elmaghraby. 

I had been to the University of Maryland several times since I had been on the Organizing Committee of the International Conference on Social Computing, Behavioral-Cultural Modeling, & Prediction a couple of years. However, this was my first trip to the Smith School of Business. There are a remarkable number of parallelisms between programs there and at the Isenberg School of Management, so the conversations were both informative and very interesting!

The Outstanding INFORMS Conference in Seattle!

Last week I had the pleasure of taking part in the INFORMS conference in Seattle, which took place October 20 through October 23. It was a whirlwind conference since my research group had 5 presentations. I gave an invited talk on a paper on defense critical supply chain networks and labor, which was recently published in the Handbook of Management of Threats. Thanks to Shima Mohebbi for inviting me to speak in her game theory session. My 3 PhD students also presented papers. Dana Hassani spoke on our recent paper, now published online in the INFORMS journal Transportation Science, and co-authored with Kyiv School of Economics colleagues Oleg Nivievskyi and Pavlo Martyshev. Samira Samadi spoke on our work with my PhD student Ismael Pour on spatial price equilibrium models with commodity losses. And two days after her presentation in Seattle, the paper was published! Ismael delivered a paper co-authored with Ladimer S. Nagurney and me on a spatial price network equilibrium paradox. For both Samira and Ismael it was their first INFORMS conference!

The panel that I spoke on was a "Committee's Choice" one and it was a great honor to join fellow panelists Tom Magnanti and Linus Schrage, both of whom need no introductions. Chris Ryan was an excellent moderator.  The panel was on What Our Past Can Tell Us About Our Future. I took the perspective of Herstory.

There were editorial board meetings for several journals that I serve as an Associate Editor of  (Journal of Global Optimization and Optimization Letters plus the International Transactions in Operational Research)  - it was great to see fellow editorial board members.

Another highlight was having my Labor and Supply Chain Networks book and the Handbook for the Management of Threats displayed at the Springer booth at the Exhibit Hall.

I thoroughly enjoyed talks and  the INFORMS Fellows lunch. 3 of my nominees got elected this year and there were 12 Fellows, so it was extra special to celebrate with them - Hani S. Mahmassani, Celso Ribeiro, and Grazia Speranza. I also very much enjoyed the WORMS lunch.

Several former PhD students, who are successful professors now, joined me: Pritha Dutta and Grace Ke, and Dmytro Matsypura, who traveled all the way from Sydney, Australia. It was delightful to also see Patrick Qiang.

It was terrific to have the UMass Amherst INFORMS Student Chapter recognized with the Magna Cum Laude Award.

The below collage of photos captures some of the highlights.

INFORMS organized so many additional meetings and networking events at this conference, which I also appreciated. We were kept very busy but the conference was very enjoyable with over 7,300 registrants from around the globe! More info on this conference.

The Supply Chain Resilience (SCRIPS) Workshop in DC and More!

Last week I had the great pleasure of attending the SCRIPS (Supply Chain Resilience Issues, Problems and Solutions for the Homeland Security Enterprise) Workshop in Washington DC. The workshop was extraordinary, bringing together experts from government, academia and industry. The venue was excellent - the Texas A&M Bush Center, very close to The White House. 

It was an honor to be invited to deliver the keynote: Supply Chain Resilience Research: Insights from Agricultural & Food Supply Chains.

There were 3 themes to this workshop: the agricultural and food industry, the semiconductor industry, and ports. The organizers were incredibly prescient with the workshop taking place October 1 and 2, 2024, and the  East Coast and Gulf Coast dock workers set to go on strike at midnight on October 1!

I had anticipated a possible dock workers strike and wrote this article for  The Conversation: "Brown bananas, crowded ports, empty shelves: What to expect with the US dockworkers strike." The article was updated, once the strike was announced, before my keynote on October 1. I was busy going back and forth with my Editor.  The strike ended, preventing an economic disaster, within 3 days, and I had this article published in The Conversation: "Dockworkers pause strike after Biden administration’s appeal to patriotism hits the mark." 

I'd like to take the opportunity to thank the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Supply Chain Resilience Center, the Center for Accelerating Operational Efficiency (CAOE) at Arizona State University and the Cross-Border Threat Screening and Supply Chain Defense Center (CBTS) at Texas A&M University, both DHS Centers of Excellence, for hosting this workshop. Special thanks to Ronald Askin for inviting me to speak with gratitude also to: Ross Maciejewski, Hilary Shackelford, and Pompelli Greg, who did an amazing job leading our food/ag industry break sessions. Appreciation is extended to: Cynthia Gerber, Manish Bansal and Sara Saberi for taking and sharing some of the nice photos in the collage below. Thanks to ALL for their participation and the incredibly inspiring insights and discussions.

It was terrific to see colleagues that I know from Operations Research from multiple universities at the workshop as well as to have CDC, FEMA, and, of course, DHS representatives taking part in the workshop.

It rained periodically during the workshop but, propitiously, the rain would stop when Robert, who is responsible for the amazing Ukraine Rally DC, would be out. I had brought my Ukrainian flag and, both last Monday and Tuesday, I joined him and others.

It was very special to meet refugees from Ukraine and even Kiran and Alan, who had worked in the Peace Corps in Ukraine, and I spoke Ukrainian with them!

My time in DC was incredibly rewarding and very special! And, while walking on the street back to my hotel one evening, a gentleman cried out my name and starting hugging me. He had just arrived from Mexico, was very familiar with my research, and was starting his new job at The World Bank the next day. He also knows our UMass Amherst Chancellor Javier Reyes, who is from Mexico. What a small world it is!

Congratulations to the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University on its 25th Anniversary!

The Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard is truly a very special place. I had the great honor of being a Science Fellow in 2005-2006, just a few years after its founding in 1999. It was an incredible year for me with wonderful new friendships made, the writing of my Supply Chain Network Economics book, and many experiences plus collaborations, including with the now Dean of SEAS, David Parkes. Radcliffe also supported my collaborator Patrizia Daniele of Catania, Italy, and she wrote her Dynamic Networks book while at Radcliffe. She also worked with me and Parkes. The Science Fellows were housed at Putnam House and there were engineers, physicists, mathematicians, and computational linguists with us. Radcliffe, at that time, had several buildings for the Fellows. We joined one another for delicious lunches and talks as well as receptions and special events. Since that fabulous year, I have been back to visit many times, and have been a Summer Fellow at Radcliffe twice. I also co-organized with David Parkes an Exploratory Radcliffe Seminar focusing on dynamic networks. Radcliffe now has its own quad and all Fellows are housed in the same building. I love the garden and fountain and there are also often art exhibits.

So, when I heard that Radcliffe would be celebrating its 25th anniversary on September 26 and 27, I had to join, despite a busy teaching schedule, office hours, hosting of  a speaker, and also an All School Meeting of the Isenberg School! To-date, there have been about 1,200 Radcliffe Fellows. 

On September 26, Radcliffe, to kick off its 25th anniversary, hosted an outstanding panel. The session began with introductory remarks by Radcliffe Institute Dean Tomiko Brown-Nagin, who shared some of the history of the Radcliffe Institute and also noted her predecessors as Dean. When I was at Radcliffe, Drew Gilpin Faust was the Radcliffe Dean, and I told her that she would become the next President of Harvard and she did the year after my Fellowship year! The Science Dean my year was the outstanding, very inspiring computer scientist Barbara Grosz.  Brown-Nagin also shared a terrific video of an astronomy discovery by Radcliffe Fellows, which included Alyssa Goodman, whom I have met.

The panel, consisting of two Nobel laureates in Economic Sciences, Claudia Goldin and Oliver Hart, both of whom had been Radcliffe Fellows,  was moderated by the present President of Harvard, Alan Garber. Claudia was a Radcliffe Fellow the same year that I was and here you can see the full 2005-2006 list: https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2005/06/radcliffe-names-2005-06-fellows/

President Garber was an outstanding moderator and I was very impressed by his delightful sense of humor! He reminisced about carrying punch cards across campus, as a student, and always being worried about dropping them. When Claudia spoke, she brought back so many memories of that magical year. She mentioned Geraldine Brooks and her husband Tony Horwitz (who sadly passed away not that long ago) and said that Claudia Olivetti became her best friend. Coincidentally, Claudia is Italian as is my collaborator, Patrizia Daniele. I recall fondly many conversations over lunch together about Berlusconi. Claudia spoke beautifully about what economics is and noted that there are too few females majoring in economics. Male undergrads think econ is finance, so they major in it whereas females also think that econ is finance, so they shy away from it. She emphasized that economics is about people! That reminded me of the essay that I wrote for ORMS Today: In the End, It's All About People!   Oliver Hart, when asked about the influence of technology on his work, said that, as a theoretical economist, he just needs a yellow pad and pencil. He said that he does use technology to communicate with his collaborators but misses the trips that he would take to collaborate face to face. Claudia said that having access to AI would have saved her lots of drudgery type work.

Both Claudia and Oliver are so passionate about their research and that was incredibly energizing and inspiring to hear. 

Information on the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study and its Fellowship Program can be found here.

And here is a post on the 10th anniversary of Radcliffe in which I have several photos from our Fellowship year and in the photos are several individuals noted above.

Kudos to the Organizers of the First International Virtual Conference on Ukraine

Today we mark Ukraine's Independence Day (33 years of independence) and the past two days I had the distinct pleasure of taking part in the first International Virtual Conference on Ukraine. It was excellent and I wanted to express my thanks to Professors Almas Heshmati, Lars Hartvigson, and Olena Nizalova for putting together such a timely and interesting program. It was laudable how the scheduling was done with speakers and participants from Hawaii, California, Texas, Massachusetts, multiple European countries, including Ukraine, as well as Vietnam, Australia, and Morroco!

Jonkoping International Business School (JIBS) in Sweden was the host of this virtual conference, in collaboration with its partners.

I took a snapshot of the closing session, which is posted below.

Each day, the conference began at 3AM, my time; but, despite this, I thoroughly enjoyed the sessions that I managed to join and, of course, it was an honor to present our latest research with my PhD student Dana Hassani and Kyiv School of Economics colleagues Oleg Nivievski and Pavlo Martyshev.

The presentation was based on our paper, noted above, which will be published any day now in the INFORMS journal Transportation Science. The slide deck of our presentation can be downloaded here. I was delighted that all the co-authors of our paper were present! Plus, I enjoyed "seeing" colleagues in Ukraine, with whom I have also published: Elena Besedina of the Kyiv School of Economics and Myroslava Kushnir of the Ukrainian Catholic University in Lviv.

I also thoroughly enjoyed being on a panel with: 

Pham Khanh NAM, UEH University Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

Hans LÖÖF, Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), Sweden

Vesa KANNIAINEN, University of Helsinki, Finland

Mykola TKACHENKO, CEO of SOE Prozorro (Transparency), Ukraine.

Yuriy BILAN, regrettably, could not make our panel, as scheduled.

A remarkable amount of information was exchanged and the discussions were terrific.

The keynote talks by Roman Sheremeta and Yuriy Gorodnichenko were excellent! I wish that all presentations could have been recorded and posted since with the different time zones it was challenging to hear all in real time.

Themes that resonated throughout included: the resilience of Ukrainians; the fact that Russia's war on Ukraine is a massive threat to global security; Ukraine needs immense support from its allies; economic & military aid to Ukraine is the best investment; agriculture and IT continue to be shining lights in Ukraine whereas steel production has essentially collapsed; investing in transportation routes is critical and keeping maritime routes safe and efficient; human capital must be brought back and nurtured; security is of the utmost importance; damages are immense to educational institutions, healthcare, critical infrastructure (energy, transportation, logistics, supply chains), and the environment, and so much more!

I was impressed how much researchers and practitioners and even PhD students who took part want to help. There was emphasis on the need to get research results in front of policy and decision-makers more quickly.

Information on this conference can be found here. 

The full program has been posted here.

Outstanding Future BA (Business Analytics) Prof Workshop at the University of Iowa

I recently returned from the Tippie College of Business at the University of Iowa. I was there to give an invited talk on research at the 3rd Future BA (Business Analytics) Workshop. Many thanks to Professor Ann Melissa Campbell for inviting me and congratulations to her and to her workshop co-organizers Professors Kang Zhao and Beste Basciftci on the success of the workshop!

There had been 80 applicants with 28 selected and participating with advanced PhD students and postdocs from many universities taking part including: UC Berkeley, Virginia Tech, Purdue, Clemson, University of Oklahoma, University of Buffalo, Harvard, MIT, and UMass Amherst.  It was my first time in Iowa and it was great to see the faculty and to also hear from the other invited speakers: Professor Tallys Yunes, who spoke on teaching, and Professor Bin Gu, who also spoke on research. 

Below is a photo that was taken of the group. It was quite remarkable that I had met several of the PhD students previously. 

I was also thrilled that my PhD student, Dana Hassani, took part. It was great to hear him give the elevator speech on his research and to hear from the others.

What impressed me was the enthusiasm and passion of the participants for their research, which I found uplifting and inspiring. 

The workshop kept us all very busy with the presentations, nice lunches and coffee breaks, networking sessions, and a dinner at a winery.

We could not resist taking a few more photos and the smiles on everyone's faces show how rewarding this workshop was.

I have posted the slide deck of my presentation here.

I wish all those who took part best of luck on their research and completing their dissertations, if they have not done so, plus successful academic job interviews!

I was very touched by the number of nice email messages I received from the PhD students and participants - they were very heartwarming and I appreciate the politeness and the reaching out.

This group has established a very nice and supportive network and I warmly thank Professors Campbell, Zhao, and Basciftci. It was also terrific to hear from Professor Barrett Thomas and to see Professor Thiago Serra, who has just joined the Tippie Business Analytics faculty after spending 5 years at Bucknell University.

Some background on this workshop on its website here.

On Serving on Boards, Including Board of Directors

As an academic, one is engaged in research, teaching, and service and, also, public outreach, if that is your interest and forte. Service can take many forms from internal department and university service to external service, including professional service of different kinds.

This post is on service on boards.

For example, just two days ago, I had a meeting with fellow Co-Chairs of the Board of Directors of the Kyiv School of Economics (KSE): Olena Bilan, Oleksandr Kravchenko, and Makar Paseniuk, and the KSE President Tymofiy Mylovanov.

We have regular meetings throughout the year and the previous meeting I attended virtually while in Brno Czechia, from my hotel room, since I was conferencing in Europe over three weeks.

The full list of the Board of Directors of KSE is here.

It is an outstanding group of thought leaders, public intellectuals, academics, business leaders, former ambassadors, a Nobel prize winner, and even a Ukrainian rockstar. 

The newest members of the KSE Board of Directors are:

Michael A. McFaul — Director of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI), Former US National Security Advisor, U.S. Ambassador to Russia (2012-2014), Co-Chair of the International Working Group on Sanctions against Russia,

Lola Woetzel — Senior partner of McKinsey & Company, Director of the McKinsey Global Institute,

William B. Taylor — Vice president, Europe and Russia, at the U.S. Institute of Peace, 6th US Ambassador to Ukraine (2006–2009), US Chargé d’Affaires to Ukraine in 2019.

Since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, our input has been more needed than ever and supporting this higher education institution in Ukraine is incredibly humbling and inspiring.

In addition, I have been serving on the International Academic Board (IAB) of KSE for over half a decade. Its Chair is the Nobel laureate Roger Myerson. The full list is here. It is thrilling to have as the KSE IAB's newest members: Serhii Plokhii, the Director of the Harvard University Research Institute, and Maryna Viazovska, the Fields Medalist.

It has been amazing as well as thrilling to see KSE triple its student enrollment since Russia's full-scale invasion and also to expand its programs. It also has many new partnerships and I am especially excited about the partnership between UMass Amherst and KSE, which has funded two cohorts of Virtual Scholars based in Ukraine who have been matched with faculty at UMass Amherst, the latest 10 with faculty at the Isenberg School of Management. Plus, in the Fall we will have another set of exchange students from KSE studying at UMass Amherst. Some info here.

These are not the only boards that I am now serving on.

I am chairing the INFORMS Magazine Editorial Advisory Board (MEAB) and am working with Kara Tucker of INFORMS and other wonderful board members. Our meeting last week was incredibly engaging intellectually and personally.

Also, and this is expected of many of us academics, I serve on multiple journal editorial boards and also book series. 

In addition, I enjoy interacting with board members such as the Advisory Board of my Operations and Information Management Department.

I have not yet served on a corporate board but would be interested in doing so. Of course, there are also opportunities in serving on other nonprofit boards, including those outside of academia, such as, for example, on a hospital board or on an NGO one.

Working with other board members can be incredibly exciting and rewarding and one can help institutions to grow and to be more effective.

Thanks to all who provide such valuable service!

Suitcase Packing Optimization - 3 Weeks in Europe in 5 Countries and 1 Carry On Suitcase

I recently returned from 3 weeks in Europe and managed with just 1 carry on suitcase, despite beginning the trip with a conference in hot Halkidiki, Greece and ending the travel with a conference in cool and rainy Copenhagen.

After United lost my suitcase (never found) after a 2 week business trip to Japan, I will (almost) never check in a suitcase. Below is a photo of my carry on.

I heard from several conferees at the EURO Conference in Copenhagen that their luggage had not arrived, including the suitcase of a child of a conferee.

The 3 weeks in Europe entailed, besides the two conferences that I had blogged about and included photos of; see  https://annanagurney.blogspot.com/2024/06/the-outstanding-pardalos-70-conference.html for info on the Halkidiki conference in honor of Panos M. Pardalos and here: https://annanagurney.blogspot.com/2024/07/complex-societal-problems-and.html for highlights of the EURO conference in Copenhagen.

In the 3 weeks of travel, not only were there multiple flights (and in southern Europe one usually gets bussed to the plane and then has to march up a flight of stairs to board the plane and then back down again after landing), but also multiple train trips plus some travel on busses.

Along with my spouse, who was marvelous at helping me to haul my carry on up and down flights of stairs, we traveled from Halkidiki to Thessaloniki, onwards to Vienna, where I met with my former PhD student Tina Wakolbinger (whom I also saw in Copenhagen), and then off to Brno in Czechia, where we visited the university where my father had studied electrical engineering.  Also, in Brno, I had a virtual Co-Chairs Board of Directors of the Kyiv School of Economics meeting. It was interesting to hold it in a hotel room, but everything worked out splendidly and it was exciting to reconnect and also meet with KSE President Tymofii Mylovanov and on European time! Then we were off to Prague (it was our first time in Czechia) and, subsequently, we flew to Gothenburg, Sweden where I visited the University of Gothenburg, where I had a multiyear appointment. We took the train from there through Malmo to Copenhagen, a lovely trip, during which I wrote an invited essay.

OK, so what did I pack - this took a lot of thought but optimization is in my DNA and I used each and every item. I packed a navy pant suit, a navy skirt suit, a warmer navy sweater, 3 poplin long-sleeved shirts (white, black, and blue), two polo shirts (I wore one on the plane, along with khaki pants and a navy sporty blazer with an emblem), two long sleeved elegant dresses, and 3 short sleeved ones, two pairs of Bermuda shorts, 1 colorful sweater vest, 2 colorful skirts, socks, stockings, 3 pairs of shoes (1 dressy plus the ones I wore on the flight over) and the usual undergarments and pjs.

Below are a few photos as proof that what I packed was put to good use!

It was great that both in Halkidiki and in Gothenburg we could avail ourselves of a laundry service!

My Panama hat that I had bought in Greece several years ago wore out, but I managed to replace it with a similar one in Vienna.

I also had my made in Ukraine blue and yellow scarf and purchased another scarf in Gothenburg. These were quite useful in chilly Copenhagen.

Thanks to all who made our conferencing and travel in Europe such a pleasure both professionally as well as culturally and socially.

Complex Societal Problems and the Serendipity of Conferences

This week I am taking part in the EURO 2024 Conference in Copenhagen, Denmark, and, yesterday, I chaired the invited session: Complex Societal Problems, and also delivered a presentation on our latest research with my Isenberg School PhD student Dana Hassani and two Kyiv School of Economics colleagues: Oleg Nivievskyi and Pavlo Martyshev.

The session was excellent and papers were presented on refugee resettlement, impacts of climate change of refugee flows, healthcare entrepreneurship in rural areas of Kenya, and our work on international trade network performance under various disruptions with examples drawn from Russia's war on Ukraine.

Full information on our session can be found here.

The audience was terrific, asking many questions, and this also demonstrates the interest in the topics and the research that was presented. I am grateful to Tina Wakolbinger, a member of the conference program committee (and a former PhD student of mine) for the invitation to chair this invited session, which was part of the Humanitarian Operations track. I am very thankful to all the speakers. It was exciting to see Kash Barker, whose work with Andres Gonzales and Buket Ci, was presented by Andres.

This conference is taking place at the Danish Technical University (DTU). For many of us, who are staying in hotels in central Copenhagen,  getting there requires a commute via train and bus. The DTU campus is big and sessions are spread out across multiple buildings, which can require a trek. Lunches, coffee breaks, and snacks are provided, and there are nice exhibits. I especially enjoyed the Springer exhibit where my latest book is on display!

It is the serendipity associated with conferences that I especially love and seeing various conferees from around the globe while one is in transit, or having coffee, etc. It was such a delight to meet, on the first full day of the conference my former Isenberg School PhD students: Tina Wakolbinger, Sara Saberi, and Deniz Besik, all of whom are successful professors and Pritha Dutta arrived yesterday and came to our session. I have had the opportunity to enjoy the EJOR (European Journal of Operational Research) Editorial Board meeting, led by Roman Slowinski, with lunch provided, and to attend various sessions, including on food supply chains. Deniz Besik presented some of our latest work on  the impacts of supply chain disruptions on food quality. Semih Boz, one of our Isenberg School PhD students,  also met with us, which was great and presented a paper.

It has been lovely to encounter Anand Subramanian, Christina Phillips, Grazia Speranza, who I heartily congratulated on her receipt of the EURO Gold Medal (only the second female so honored), as well as many of the Associate Editors at the EJOR meeting, including Paolo Toth and Immanuel Bomze.

Also, what a small world. My three weeks in Europe began with the Pardalos conference in Halkidiki, Greece, and there I met two Ukrainians from Kharkiv, Tetyana and Petro, who are also at the EURO conference, which is very special. 

And we have made new friends from Athens, who are at this conference, and have been enjoying breakfasts with them.

I could not capture photographs with all the wonderful conferees - lots of discussions and chatting and hugs taking place. Super to see collaborators from Italy (but not all) including Laura Scrimali and Gabriella Colajanni plus even Annamaria Barbagallo. Coincidentally, the next conference that I will be speaking at will be the VINEPA conference in Catania, Italy in mid July. I even saw the immediate past President of INFORMS Laura Albert, but only for a brief time. I hope to meet many other conferees today.

And for my post on tips for networking, based on the panel I was on this past Sunday, click here. This panel was part of the WISDOM organized events and kicked off the conference for me in a marvelous warm way (unlike the weather).

Some Tips on Networking - Terrific EURO WISDOM Panel in Copenhagen

Yesterday, I had the pleasure of speaking on a Networking panel at the start of the EURO 2024 Conference in Copenhagen. The panel was organized by Paula Carroll and Annunziata Esposito Amideo. Joining me on the panel was life coach Margaret Collins. The panel attracted an excellent audience, very enthusiastic and energetic.

The WISDOM Forum aims "to provide a platform to support, empower and encourage the participation of all genders in Operational Research within EURO." It is very active in organizing events, engaging in social media and has various terrific initiatives; more info on its website. Other related such forums include the WORMS forum of the professional society of INFORMS.

What we emphasized on the panel included the following:

1. The importance of networking.

2. Strategies for developing networks of visibility.

3. Communication skills to deliver your message.

4. How to deal with nerves or anxiety.

As an academic, who also has worked in high tech consulting in the defense sector, I noted the importance of being engaged with practice and the serendipity of meeting people and expanding your network, whether at conferences (a fabulous venue for networking) or even during travel, such as on planes. I spoke about reaching out to researchers that I admired, early on, in order to gather their wisdom and professional advice. I shared that George Dantzig, one of the founders of the field of OR, came to the first conference presentation that I ever gave, which was at the Mathematical Programming Symposium at MIT, and the kind words that he shared. I also acknowledged my PhD dissertation advisor, the late Stella Dafermos, in my presentation. I was her first PhD student. I showed the audience my academic genealogy, which includes Maxwell, Newton, and Galileo!

On our panel, the importance of social media was emphasized, which can create opportunities and invitations, and in keeping your profile up to date. In addition. Margaret, through her nicely interactive presentation, told the audience to have prepared a short introduction of yourself (perhaps several). One should also think about whom you might network with. Different people have distinct comfort zones, and it is important to acknowledge that some may be introverts or extroverts, or somewhere in between.

I focused on networking as your career progresses.

My presentation can be downloaded here. Early in one's career, one networks laterally and up, and it is important as one's career progresses to mentor and support others. Taking risks is also important since new experiences can help one to grow both personally and professionally. I also spoke about networking with journalists and decision-makers in order to have one's research make a greater impact. I emphasized the relevance of writing Letters to the Editor and OpEds to broaden one's reach.

Ultimately, networking is about people, and professional societies are playing a big role in bringing us together, through conferences, newsletters, opportunities for leadership, and various means of support and enhanced visibility.

Many thanks to the organizers of the EURO 2024 conference for the lovely city location venue of Copenhagen. More info on the conference here.

Also, early in my presentation, I congratulated both Paula and Annunziata on the publication of their discussion paper (the inaugural one): "Gender equality: opportunities and challenges for the OR community,"  in the Journal of the Operational Research Society. Their paper is now trending, along with the set of invited commentaries, which I contributed one to. These publications are open access and are very informative and relevant.   Relationships matter and networks do as well.

The Great UMass Amherst - Kyiv School of Economics Partnership Continues with the Second Cohort of Virtual Scholars in Ukraine

Russia's war on Ukraine has caused immense damage to education, including higher education, with the destruction of universities, and disruption to scholarship and learning. UMass Amherst stepped up, in the month after the full-scale invasion of February 24, 2022, through the establishment of memoranda of understanding with the Kyiv School of Economics in Ukraine. I have been affiliated with this university for over half a decade, and have served both on its International Academic Board and its Board of Directors. In March 2022, I was elected a Co-Chair of its Board of Directors.

As part of this global partnership, 15 Virtual Scholars, all based in Ukraine were partnered with faculty hosts at UMass Amherst. 9 of these were with faculty at the Isenberg School of Management. I had the great pleasure of working with Elena Besedina and Pavlo Martyshev of the Kyiv School of Economics and with Myroslava Kushnir of the Ukrainian Catholic University.

And, I am delighted that the second cohort of Virtual Scholars, numbering 10, has now been selected. The process was very competitive and I wish that we could fund more. All of these faculty, which hail from 5 different universities in Ukraine, have been matched with faculty at the Isenberg School of Management. More information on the call for applications can be found on the Kyiv School of Economics website.

The 10 selected scholars are faculty at the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, the Ukrainian Catholic University, the Kyiv School of Economics, Polissia National University, and the Odesa Law Academy. Their faculty hosts are in the Operations and Information Management Department (yours truly), the Finance Department (Wenting Ma), the Isenberg Management Department (Ina Ganguli, Giuseppe (Joe) Labianca, Bogdan Prokopovych 🇺🇦, and Orlando Richard), and the Accounting Department (Orhan Akisik). The projects are fascinating and include such themes as: human resource management in Ukrainian companies during wartime, Ukrainian scientist research productivity, mobility, and collaborations in wartime, agricultural trade flows between Ukraine and Africa, post-war reconstruction of Ukrainian agriculture and entrepreneurship, and civilian-military defense supply chains. Deepest gratitude to KSE Rector Tymofii Brik, the University of Massachusetts Amherst Provost's Office, the UMass Amherst International Programs Office and Vice Provost for Global Affairs Kalpen Trivedi and Manager of Global Partnerships Eric Wirth, and Dean Anne P. Massey for the great support of this important initiative and partnership. Highlights of some of our activities can be found here with more planned for the next academic year, including another symposium.

I am thrilled that we have even published several articles and that one of my PhD students, Dana Hassani, has been collaborating with Oleg Nivievskyi and Pavlo Martyshev of KSE. Some of our papers and others that may be of interest can be found on the Supernetwork Center site.

This partnership is truly special - it helps in reducing brain drain from Ukraine and provides not only financial support but mentorship. It also is resulting in meaningful research and its dissemination plus friendships.

I am so proud of UMass Amherst and the Kyiv School of Economics for leading the way during these very challenging times.

The Outstanding Pardalos 70 Conference in Greece

It has been only a few days since the outstanding Pardalos 70 conference in Halkidiki, Greece and the aura continues.

Conferees gathered from 5 continents to celebrate Professor Panos M. Pardalos on his 70th birthday. The talks were excellent (clearly, everyone worked very hard to present their best work) with many including photos and comments on what Pardalos has meant to them as scholars and as a mentor and even a friend.

Panos has supervised the dissertations of over 60 PhD students and has received numerous well-deserved honors and recognitions, including election as INFORMS Fellow and the EURO Gold Medal plus the Constantin Caratheodory Prize. His impact on global optimization, operations research, and numerous applications is profound. The organizers of this conference: Sergiy Butenko, Athanasios (Sakis) Migdalas, and Oleg Prokopyev did an incredible job in site selection, banquet and activity organization, and overall theme selection plus logistics. 

Thanks also to the Program Committee: Vladimir Boginskii, Altannar Chinchuluun, Dalila Martins Fontes, Faruque Hasan, Pavlo Krokhmal, Foad Mahdavi Pajouh, Dmytro Matsypura, Leonidas Pitsoulis, Themistocles Rassias, Mauricio G. C. Resende, and Petros Xanthopoulos for putting together such a fascinating set of single track sessions on the conference theme of "Optimization, Analytics, and Decisions in the Big Data Era." I very much enjoyed also serving on the Program Committee.  The presentations were on topics ranging from sports analytics (quite relevant with the EURO Cup now) to machine learning, complex networks, various aspects of game theory, energy and supply chain applications, and so much more! It was heartwarming to hear in many of the talks how the presenters met Professor Panos Pardalos and his impact on their lives. 

A theme that permeated the conference is that of wonderful friendships, great collaborations, and experiences. Special thanks to Mauricio G. C. Resende for kicking off the conference with his talk on his 30+ years of collaboration with Professor Pardalos. I have been proud to collaborate with Panos for over three decades and we have a new edited Dynamics of Disasters volume going to press shortly with Co-Editors also Ilias Kotsireas, Stefan Pickl, and Chrysafis Vogiatzis. Warm acknowledgments to Professor Stefan Pickl for the presentation of lovely gifts to Panos at the banquet. A very moving part of this conference was seeing a proclamation from the Ukrainian National Academy of Sciences in honor of Panos in the presentation given by Tetyana Romanova on work with Petro Stetsyuk and Andreas Fischer.

Below is a collage of photos from the conference.

More information on the conference: https://sites.google.com/view/panos-70/home

And it was quite remarkable to have so many Ukrainians in attendance and as speakers. Although Ukraine lost its first Euro Cup match, it did win its second one against Slovakia and Sergiy Butenko was at the match in Germany with his family.

Below is a photo of the Ukrainians at the Pardalos conference.

Wishing Professor Panos M. Pardalos wonderful experiences on his new journeys!

Thanks to All Those Who Organize Conferences

This is going to be a very busy but exciting summer with many conferences to present at.

It takes a lot of time and effort to organize a successful conference from the venue selection to the invitation of keynote and other speakers, the organization of exciting sessions, and, of course, the various social and networking events and even panels. 

Conferences allow for the formal exchange of the latest research and also for many encounters, often occurring with serendipity. Friendships can even be made and wonderful memories established. It is great that, after a multiyear hiatus due to COVID-19, conferences are now taking place in person and with great enthusiasm!

Conferences can be huge or smaller and more focused and all play important roles.

In the next month alone, I will be giving talks at conferences in Greece (at the conference in honor of Pardalos with many friends in attendance), Denmark (at the Euro Conference, at which I will see quite a few of my former PhD students, who are now successful professors), and Italy (at the VINEPA Conference).

Thankful to be an invited speaker at the VINEPA (Variational Inequalities, Nash Equilibrium Problems and Applications) Conference in Catania, Italy. This conference will focus on some of my favorite methodological tools. 

Many thanks to the organizers of this conference. I have published journal articles with all the organizers, except for one!

Talks that I will present at the first 3 conferences have now been prepared. Deniz Besik of the University of Richmond will deliver a paper on our latest work at the Euro Conference in Copenhagen and is finalizing that presentation. I am thankful to my excellent collaborators, including colleagues at the Kyiv School of Economics (KSE) in Ukraine as well as my Isenberg School of Management PhD students.

Additional information on conferences, can be found on the Supernetwork Center website.

Civilian-Military Integration of Ukrainian Defense Supply Chain - A Paper by Three Females

The ISCRAM conference, which took place recently in Munster, Germany, is now over. The conference focused on information systems for crisis response and management and attracted speakers from many countries.

I was thrilled that Professor Myroslava Kushnir of the Ukrainian Catholic University (UCU) in Lviv, Ukraine was able to present our paper, "Civilian-Military Integration of Ukrainian Defense Supply Chain" at the recent ISCRAM conference that took place in Munster, Germany.  The paper was also co-authored by Professor Renata Konrad of the Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI). For all three of us, Ukrainian is our first language.

The paper was published in the refereed conference Proceedings and is open access. It can be downloaded here.

I started working with Myroslava, through the outstanding UMass Amherst - Kyiv School of Economics (KSE) partnership, in which the 1st round of Virtual Scholars had 15 scholars in Ukraine matched up with faculty hosts at UMass Amherst. 9 of the 15 were matched with faculty at the Isenberg School of Management at UMass Amherst. I had the pleasure of working with Myroslava and also with Elena Besedina of KSE and Pavlo Martyshev of KSE as well as Oleg Nivievskyi of KSE. I published papers with all of them.

Nathan Greenfield wrote this wonderful article in World University News about the meaning of this partnership and you can see therein quotes from Kushnir, Besedina, and Martyshev.

Myroslava told me that she was the only Ukrainian that presented at the ISCRAM Conference.

Our research continues and we expect to have an announcement of the 2nd round of Virtual Scholars before too long.

Working with faculty and researchers in Ukraine has been incredibly humbling and inspirational.

Three of My Former Isenberg PhD Students (All Females) Received Promotion and Tenure This Past Year

This has been a remarkable year in that, since last spring, three of my former Isenberg School of Management PhD students: Shivani Shukla, Dong "Michelle" Li, and Sara Saberi, all received promotions to Associate Professor with tenure at their home institutions, which are, respectively: the University of San Francisco (USF), Babson College, and Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI). Both Babson and WPI are in the state of Massachusetts.

Shivani is now the Program Director of the Business Analytics Major and Minor at the School of Management at the University of San Francisco. Michelle is a faculty member at Babson's Academic Division: Mathematics, Analytics, Science, and Technology. Sara is a faculty member at the School of Business at WPI and a year ago was named the Norton Assistant Professor. Shivani was notified in April 2023 and USF issued a press release on all the promotion and tenure awards. Michelle was notified of the good news last December, when her colleagues surprised her with a party. Sara heard in February her good news. WPI issued a press release on the promotions and tenure.

They are my 18th, 19th, and 20th PhD students and I have chaired the dissertation committees of three other PhD students. More information on their dissertations can be found on the Supernetwork Center site.

Congratulations to these outstanding Isenberg School PhD alumnae, who continue a great legacy of  research and education. 

Below is my and their academic genealogy, which includes Maxwell, Newton, and Galileo, by way of my PhD advisor at Brown University Stella Dafermos. We are truly standing on the shoulders of giants.

My Isenberg School of Management PhD Student Dana Hassani Receives the Outstanding Doctoral Student Research Award

As the 2023-2024 academic year was growing to a close, there were many celebratory events including my department's award ceremony that  I had blogged about.

And, at the final All School Meeting of the Isenberg School on May 9, 2024, there were faculty and PhD students recognized for research and teaching as well as staff for their accomplishments.

I was thrilled to hear that my Isenberg School PhD student, Dana Hassani, who has completed almost two and a half years in our doctoral program in Operations Management, was the sole recipient of the 2024 Isenberg School Outstanding Doctoral Research Award! I had nominated Dana for this award.

Below is a collage of photos taken after the announcement and prior to the Senior Barbecue that followed.

Dana has already had two journal articles published, one in the European Journal of Operational Research, and the other one in the Journal of Global Optimization.

Both of these papers, Dana co-authored with me and with colleagues at the Kyiv School of Economics (KSE) in Ukraine, Professor Oleg Nivievskyi and Dr. Pavlo Martyshev. Preprints of these and other papers of ours can be found on the Supernetwork Center website: https://supernet.isenberg.umass.edu/dart.html These papers are reflective of a wonderful collaboration began through the UMass Amherst - KSE partnership, which was established after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine by Russia on February 24, 2022. Pavlo was one of 15 Virtual Scholars in our first round and was placed with me as a Faculty Host.

In addition, we, recently, heard that another joint paper of ours, "Quantification of International Trade Network Performance Under Disruptions to Supply, Transportation, and Demand Capacity, and Exchange Rates in Disasters," has been accepted for publication in: Dynamics of Disasters- From Natural Phenomena to Human Activity, I.S. Kotsireas, A. Nagurney, P.M. Pardalos, S. Pickl, C. Vogiatzis, Editors, Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

The achievement of Dana's receipt of this award is quite impressive since there are 7 departments in the Isenberg School of Management.

The research on international agricultural trade network equilibrium problems continues, with various policy interventions, analysis of disruptions due to the war, as well as impacts on food security. 

Our KSE colleagues inspire us as do all Ukrainians fighting for their freedom and that of democracies globally.