Working with Colleagues in Ukraine Is Inspiring

Since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, I have been deeply involved in supporting higher education there. I had already been quite active, due to my affiliation with the Kyiv School of Economics (KSE) as both a member of its Board of Directors (BOD) and its International Academic Board over several years, but, in March, 2022, my connections intensified since I was elected one of the four Co-Chairs of the BOD of KSE https://kse.ua/community/stories/board-of-directors/.  Shortly thereafter, my university - UMass Amherst - established a global partnership with KSE. The partnership included both a student exchange student program (very successful) as well as a Virtual Scholar in Residence Program to reduce brain drain from Ukraine. We have now had two sets of cohorts of Virtual Scholars and I have enjoyed working with several of the scholars.

My colleagues in Ukraine inspire me and I believe that the research that we have done together is strengthened through our collaborations.

I am honored and delighted that Professor Myroslava Kushnir from the Ukrainian Catholic University (UCU) in Lviv and I have had our latest paper accepted for presentation at the Information Technology in Disaster Risk Reduction Conference at Kyoto University https://itdrr.org/conference/itdrr2025/. Our paper, "Social Network Analysis of Civilian Support Networks for the Ukrainian Military," emphasizes that Russia’s war on Ukraine is not only a geopolitical conflict but also a humanitarian, ecological, social and economic disaster. Our study applies Social Network Analysis (SNA) to explore the interaction structure between civil society organizations (CSOs) and military units in Ukraine during the ongoing full-scale war. Dr. Kushnir has been a Virtual Scholar in both cohorts. Our first joint paper, "Civilian-Military Integration in Ukrainian Defense Supply Chain," co-authored with Renata Konrad of Worcester Polytechnic Institute, was published in the Proceedings of the International ISCRAM Conference: https://ojs.iscram.org/index.php/Proceedings/article/view/49

And just a few days ago, at the great EURO Conference in Leeds, UK, I presented a paper co-authored with my Isenberg School of Management PhD student, Ismael Pour, and Professor Borys Kormych of the Odesa Law Academy. The paper, "Integrated Crop and Cargo War Risk Insurance: Application to Ukraine," was recently published in the International Transactions in Operational Research (ITOR): https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/itor.70038 Professor Kormych had also been a Virtual Scholar in the two cohorts. 

And, with Virtual Scholar Pavlo Martyshev and Professor Oleg Nivievskyi of KSE, we have published 4 papers, along with my Isenberg School of Management PhD student Dana Hassani. I am very proud of this work. The papers that have appeared in journals are: 

"A Multiperiod Multicommodity Capacitated International Agricultural Trade Network Equilibrium Model with Applications to Ukraine in Wartime," Dana Hassani, Anna Nagurney, Oleg Nivievskyi, and Pavlo Martyshev, Transportation Science 59(1): (2025), pp 143-164,

"Multicommodity International Agricultural Trade Network Equilibrium: Competition for Limited Production and Transportation Capacity Under Disaster Scenarios with Implications for Food Security,"Anna Nagurney, Dana Hassani, Oleg Nivievskyi, and Pavlo Martyshev, European Journal of Operational Research 314(1): (2024), pp 1127-1142,

"Exchange Rates and Multicommodity International Trade: Insights from Spatial Price Equilibrium Modeling with Policy Instruments via Variational Inequalities," Anna Nagurney, Dana Hassani, Oleg Nivievskyi, and Pavlo Martyshev, Journal of Global Optimization 87: (2023), pp 1-30.

Plus, we have the following paper: "Quantification of International Trade Network Performance Under Disruptions to Supply, Transportation, and Demand Capacity, and Exchange Rates in Disasters,"Anna Nagurney, Dana Hassani, Oleg Nivievskyi, and Pavlo Martyshev, published 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 (2024), pp 151-179.

Dana Hassani has received 4 research awards (2 from the OIM Department and 2 from the Isenberg School) for his publications. These are significant recognitions.

I have written additional article with Professor Nivievskyi and am extremely proud of the paper, "Ukraine - Addressing the Domestic Crisis and the Effects of the War on Global Food Systems," which was published by the Pontifical Academy of Sciences: https://www.pas.va/en/publications/scripta-varia/sv154pas/nivievskyi.html

I have also worked with Professor Elena Besedina of KSE. She was a Virtual Scholar in the first cohort. The paper that we co-authored is: "A Multicommodity Spatial Price Equilibrium Model with Exchange Rates and Non-Tariff Measures for Agri-Food International Trade," Anna Nagurney and Elena Besedina, Operations Research Forum 4: (2023), 84.

My colleagues and collaborators in Ukraine have dealt with drones and missiles and losses of family members and friends and much too much time in shelters. They continue to teach and to conduct research under very challenging conditions. What they do to support their students and knowledge discovery in wartime is heroic. I thank them from the bottom of my heart and look forward to peace and prosperity for Ukraine and its freedom-loving citizenry.

Humbled to Be a Highly Cited Female in Operations Research (OR)

While "diversity" now is being ostracized in the US with the new administration, scientific interest in gender issues continues to be quite intense.

One of my primary fields is Operations Research (sometimes referred to in the UK and Europe as Operational Research). It is a discipline that focuses on quantitative methods for decision-making and I love it!

A fairly recent paper, entitled, "Women Just Wanna Have OR: Young Researchers Interview Expert Researchers," co-authored by Lavinia Amorosi, Rossana Cavagnini, Veronica Dal Sasso, Martina Fischetti, Valentina Morandi and Alice Raffaele, and published in 2021 in Operations Research Forum, interviewed "a group of prominent female professors and affirmed researchers in STEM belonging to different generations, with dissimilar careers and experiences." I was delighted to be interviewed and the article may be accessed here:   https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s43069-020-00039-8

In 2024, the Journal of the Operational Research Society (JORS) published its first discussion paper (suggesting the relevance of the topic): "Gender Equality: Opportunities and Challenges for the OR Community," by Paula Carroll and Annunziata Esposito Amideo: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01605682.2024.2343343 This article was followed by a commentary to which twelve individuals (not all female) contributed. Many of the contributors I am delighted to know professionally. I very much enjoyed writing my contribution to the discussion. The commentary can be accessed here: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01605682.2024.2344969

One theme that caught my attention was citations of the publications of female authors and that there were (very) few females in the top 100 authors in Operations Research.

I am humbled that I am on the list as is Grazia Speranza (who also contributed to the JORS commentary) and whom I recently saw at the EURO Conference in Leeds! 

I am number 56 out of the top 100:

So there are two females in the top 100 authors in OR according to Google Scholar.

And, by the way, I had the pleasure of handling the nomination of Grazia for INFORMS Fellow and she was elected in 2024. We celebrated at the Seattle meeting and you can read my post here: https://annanagurney.blogspot.com/2024/10/the-outstanding-informs-conference-in.html

I am standing next to Grazia in red in the top photo on the left of the above collage. Joining us are Celso Ribeiro (who I also saw in Leeds) and Hani Mahmassani (I also nominated both of them) and Janny Leung, who was also at the EURO Conference.

I believe that awareness will generate action but, most importantly, we need to support one another and to celebrate successes. The field of Operations Research is incredibly rich in both theory and application and is highly relevant in addressing many of the world's most important problems. We need to welcome and work with all the great minds in our profession!

And, for some additional reading, which is quite provocative and entertaining, please see the article, "If Dantzig had a Sister," by Alice Raffaele and Anand Subramanian, published in ORMS Today: https://pubsonline.informs.org/do/10.1287/orms.2024.01.06/full/ Anand is the genius behind the Subject_to video interviews of Operations Researchers. I am a huge fan of his and treasure the photo below taken at the EURO Conference in Leeds.

A Walk Down Memory Lane - I Thoroughly Enjoyed Presenting on 20 Years of EURO Conferences

Congratulations to the European Association of Operational Research Societies (EURO) on its 50th anniversary, which we recently celebrated at the great EURO Conference in Leeds, UK, June 22-25, 2025  https://euro2025leeds.uk/outline-programme/. I am writing this post, which is the 5th one in a series on this conference, while in Edinburgh.

It was a very busy, engaging conference for me, with 2,000 delegates from across the globe. I was honored to give 3 presentations. The first two (on tariffs and trade in the Making an Impact session, and on war risk insurance in the Insurance and finance session) I have already blogged about.  My third presentation was: "Reflections on Wonderful OR Experiences at EURO Conferences Over 20 Years."

This talk I gave on the last day of the conference. I  am very grateful to Professor Gerhard-Wilhelm "Willi" Weber for inviting me to speak in the session: "Celebrating 50 Years of EURO."

The session presenters and their titles:

Reflections on Wonderful OR Experiences at EURO Conferences Over 20 Years

Anna Nagurney

Why the 1970’s Was an Important Era in Operational Research, with Personal Reflections

Jyrki Wallenius

Lessons I learned from EURO

Emilio Carrizosa

Fifty years of Data Envelopment Analysis

Ali Emrouznejad, Anna Mergoni, Kristof De Witte.

The session was chaired by the Immediate Past President of EURO - Professor Anita Schöbel.

I have posted the slide deck of my presentation on the Supernetwork Center website: 

https://supernet.isenberg.umass.edu/visuals/EURO20YearsNagurney.pdf

In my slide deck I have many photos of conferees at EURO Conferences in Reykjavik, Poznan, Glasgow, Dublin, and Copenhagen. I was touched that several colleagues, whose photos I had included in my presentation, came to my talk in Leeds! 

Afterwards, we took a group photo, which included the session chair,  Professor Anita Schöbel,  the session organizer, Professor Gerhard-Wilhelm "Willi" Weber, and Graham Rand, who was mentioned in several of the presentations, including mine.

The EURO conference have been expertly organized, with excellent scientific sessions, and, above all, I now can consider many of the wonderful researchers and practitioners that I have met at these conferences to be friends. Science is about research, education, and, most of all, it is about people!

Presented Our Integrated War Risk Insurance Paper at EURO in Leeds

The outstanding EURO 2025 conference in Leeds is now over and delegates have disbursed. Scientific conferences are essential to knowledge exchange and also to networking and building communities.

It was an honor to present our recently published paper, "Integrated Crop and Cargo War Risk Insurance: Application to Ukraine," in the International Transactions in Operational Research (ITOR) at this conference.

The paper was co-authored with my Isenberg School of Management PhD student Ismael Pour and Professor Borys Kormych of the Odesa Law Academy in Ukraine. Professor Kormych was a Virtual Scholar, in the first and second cohorts, thanks to the partnership between UMass Amherst and the Kyiv School of Economics (KSE). We enjoyed our collaboration very much.

The paper can be accessed here: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/itor.70038?af=R

The paper was presented on Monday, June 23, 2025, in a very relevant session on Data Science in  Insurance and Finance. Information on the session is below.

Integrated crop and war risk insurance

Anna Nagurney, Ismael Pour, Borys Kormych

Finding robust profiles of mental well-being across Europe

Irene Albarran

Premium calculation using Parametric Quantile Regression for insurance count data

Fabio Baione, Davide Biancalana, Aurora Ferri

Implementing non-dominated sorting into asset preselection within portfolio problem

Tomáš Tichý, David Neděla, Sergio Ortobelli Lozza

We took a selfie of the speakers and the session chair.

Thanks to all who came to our session, including Christina Phillips! The link to our slide deck, from which our full presentation can be downloaded, is here: https://supernet.isenberg.umass.edu/visuals/EURO-2025-NPK.pdf

Outstanding Making an Impact Lightning Talks: Honored to Speak on Tariffs, Trade, and OR

This post is the third in a series on the EURO Conference, which took place in Leeds, UK, June 22-25, 2025.

I was honored and delighted to have been invited by Ruth Kaufman to deliver a lighting talk in the Making an Impact session on Monday morning, June 23, of the conference at 8:30AM. All 13 speakers, from several different continents, showed up. The full list of speakers, their presentation titles, and abstracts can be found here: https://euro2025leeds.uk/making-an-impact/. The breadth of topics was fantastic and included algorithms for fighting crime, reducing food waste on airplane flights, and emergency ambulance service planning. 

My presentation was on Tariffs, Trade, and OR.

This session was a truly outstanding beginning to this scientific conference.

Below is photo of the speakers with Ruth Kaufman and Jane Parkin, followed by a photo of the audience.

I have been publishing on tariffs (of different types) for quite a few years now, so I very much enjoyed preparing and delivering my presentation, which is now posted on the Supernetwork Center website: https://supernet.isenberg.umass.edu/visuals/EURO2025_MakinganImpact-Tariffs,%20Trade,%20and%20OR.pdf

Excellent Journal Editorial Board Meetings at the EURO Conference in Leeds

The outstanding EURO Conference in Leeds, UK, is now over and this is the second blogpost in a series about this conference. I have been coming to this OR conference since 2006, which was in Reykjavik, Iceland.

One facet of these conferences that I very much enjoy is the editorial board meetings. I have the honor of serving on both the editorial boards of the International Transactions in Operational Research (ITOR) and the European Journal of Operational Research (EJOR). ITOR is the flagship journal of IFORS (International Federation of Operational Research Societies) and EJOR is the flagship journal of EURO (European Association of Operational Research Societies), which, at this year's conference, we celebrated its 50th anniversary. EURO is part of IFORS.

Celso Ribeiro, the EIC of ITOR, travelled all the way from Brazil and our lunch time meeting on Monday, June 23, 2025, was wonderful. The journal is doing very well with thousands of submissions each year. A highlight for me is always seeing Celso and also fellow Associate Editors. 

I enjoyed meeting Sunil Tiwari, who is in the above photo with Kathy Stecke and me. Kathy was the first conferee that I encountered and that was at our hotel in the elevator in Leeds.

And, on Tuesday, June 24, 2025, Elsevier, the publisher of EJOR, treated us to a nice lunch and the EIC, Roman Slowinski, shared with us a lot of good news about EJOR. I had the pleasure of being seated next to Michael Yearworth, one of the main editors,  and Shaunna Whittle, publisher of EJOR.

Below is a collage of  photos taken at the editorial board meeting and after lunch.

Thanks so much to the Editors, and to all the Associate Editors, reviewers, and authors of articles published in these important journals that advance scientific knowledge in OR as well as its relevance to so many disciplines!

Serendipity of Great Conferences - the 50th Anniversary of EURO in Leeds

This is the first post of a series on the EURO Conference, which took place June 22-25, 2025 in Leeds, UK. This Operational Research (OR) Conference brought together 2,000 delegates from around the globe and was historic since it also marked the 50th anniversary of the establishment of EURO - the Association of  European Operational Research Societies. There were delegates even from China!

This post is on the serendipity of conferences - it is always a delight to see colleagues in person, some of whom you might not even have realized would be coming.

On Sunday, June 22, 2025, in the hotel elevator, I saw Kathy Stecke of the University of Texas Dallas and we burst out laughing. Then, en route up a big hill to the University to register on Sunday, I was greeted with a warm: Hello! on the street by Razia Amzad of Springer Nature. At registration, it was truly a delight to see Christina Phillips, Graham Rand, Tetyana Romanova, Martine Labbé, and Gendreau Michel! And, amazingly, in my third conference presentation on 20 years of EURO conferences I have photos of many of these wonderful colleagues in my slide deck. A delight was to even see at registration the photographer who took the official photos at my Blackett Lecture at The Royal Society on December 5, 2024, thanks to The OR Society.

Conferences can be very energizing and inspiring from the scientific knowledge exchange perspective to all the wonderful personal connections. On June 24, 2025, after my second conference presentation,  I was thrilled to see Anand Subramanian, the genius behind the Subject_To interview podcasts, who came all the way from Brazil. Then, to meet up with Suresh Sethi, whose passion for life and scholarship fills me with hope, plus to see Kostas Nikolopoulos, one of the outstanding editors of the Journal of the Operational Research Society (JORS) of The OR Society, and its publisher Richard Goodman, along with Sunil Tiwari, whose dynamism and intellect delight, made for an extraordinary afternoon. Joining us was Pritha Dutta, one of my former Isenberg School of Management, UMass Amherst PhD students, who traveled all the way from Portland, Oregon, where she is now an Assistant Professor at Willamette University. Pritha presented on her latest research on humanitarian operations with applications to India.

After my third conference presentation, and the wrapup of the conference, as we were heading to the Leeds train station from the hotel, I saw Senay Solak, who is the Chair of my OIM Department at the Isenberg School of Management! We were delighted to see each other and walked together to the station, each heading onwards on our journeys.

Many thanks to EURO and to The OR Society for such wonderful conference experiences, which further emphasize the importance of face to face professional meetings.

And, then at the Leeds train station, I saw Janny Leung of Macao, who actually chaired the session that Senay spoke at the day before. We had an excellent conversation about some initiatives. 

The Spring Supernetwork Newsletter Is Published!

I am delighted to share that the 2025 Spring Edition of The Supernetwork Sentinel, the newsletter of the Virtual Center for Supernetworks that I founded in 2001 and continue to serve as the Director of, has now been published.

It was an extraordinary spring semester with many activities and news items to report.

It is wonderful to see that our research is making impact and that we continue to be sought by the media for our expertise on supply chains and various policies, including tariffs. This summer will be busy with conferences and also with work on international trade as well as food security.

The Spring 2025 newsletter, as well as all other earlier newsletters, can be accessed here: https://supernet.isenberg.umass.edu/newsletters/sentinel.html

Thank you for the support!

Excited About the 2nd Virtual Conference on Ukraine with Amazing Keynote Speakers!

The 2nd Virtual Conference on Ukraine (with free registration) will take place August 22-23, 2025.

Many thanks to the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) in Stockholm, Sweden for providing support.

Last year I was involved with the first such conference and, this year, I am honored to be on the conference Scientific Committee as well as to be one of the keynote speakers. This conference will also have 3 Nobel Laureates in Economics delivering keynotes: 

• Nobel Laureate Daron Acemoglu, MIT, USA
• Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman, City University of New York, USA
•  Roger Myerson, University of Chicago, USA

along with keynoters:

• Yuriy Gorodnichenko, UC Berkeley, USA
• Subal Kumbhakar, Binghamton University, USA.

I have the pleasure of working with Roger Myerson on the International Academic Board of the Kyiv School of Economics (KSE) and the same for Yuriy Gorodnichenko.

We are also organizing a panel on “Challenges of Ukraine’s Post-War Reconstruction.”

The deadline for full papers or extended abstracts is approaching, so, please, also visit the website at KTH: https://www.kth.se/ukraine-conference

And for some highlights of last year's conference, please see my blogpost: https://annanagurney.blogspot.com/2024/08/kudos-to-organizers-of-first.html

Making an Impact - All Set with 3 Talks for the EURO Conference in Leeds, UK!

In a few days, I head to the UK. I am very excited about the EURO conference at the University of Leeds https://euro2025leeds.uk/, at which I will have 3 invited presentations. My talks are all prepared. This conference marks 50 years of the professional society of EURO, so it will be a very celebratory conference.

The Making an Impact stream, which is the practitioners' stream at the EURO conferences, is always a favorite of mine. I'm thrilled that, at this conference, I'll present on: Tariffs, Trade, and OR: Impacts on Producers, Consumers, and Labor in the Making an Impact: 'OR in Action Lightning Talks' session. Thanks to Ruth Kaufman for organizing this session, which will be the first one of the conference. I last saw Ruth at my Blackett Lecture, which I delivered at The Royal Society in London on December 5, 2024. 

And, in the session immediately following, I'll deliver the presentation, "Integrated Crop and Cargo War Risk Insurance: Application to Ukraine," which is based on a paper I co-authored with my Isenberg School of Management, UMass Amherst PhD student Ismael M. Pour and Professor Borys Kormych of Odesa. The paper was recently published in the International Journal of Operational Research: https://lnkd.in/ewmXR8kU. 

Many thanks also to Professors Gerhard-Wilhelm Weber and Roberto Rossi for inviting me to speak in the session: Celebrating 50 Years of EURO on "Reflections on Wonderful OR Experiences at EURO Conferences Over 20 Years." In that presentation slide deck I have many photos of conferees at EURO conferences in Reykjavik, Poznan, Dublin, and other locations.  I am very much looking forward to the outstanding scientific presentations and social gatherings and to building new memories.

Thrilled to be Ranked #6 in Supply Chains Globally by ScholarGPS

 A while back, I received the following letter from ScholarGPS:

I had been seeing posts on social media, including on LinkedIn, celebrating notifications by ScholarGPS, which uses a combination of metrics to achieve their rankings. I had also heard that one of my former PhD students, now an Associate Professor - Jose M. Cruz of UConn's Business School, was ranked #94. Given that there are many notable contributors to supply chains, I was thrilled to see my ranking as being #6 since I have been working very hard (but loving the work) on supply chains for over two decades. 

I know quite a few of the scholars in the top 20 in supply chains - the list can be viewed here

https://scholargps.com/highly-ranked-scholars?ranking_duration=LIFETIME&specialty=Supply+chain&p=1#6

and am honored and delighted to be included.  Quite amazing to also be #26 in MIS and #76 in Business and Management since there are so many scholars in different areas in Business: https://scholargps.com/scholars/90395641764625/anna-nagurney

Back to finishing up presentations for the upcoming EURO conference at the University of Leeds in the UK.

Our Latest Paper on Multicommodity Trade of Fresh Produce with a Case Study on Bananas Is Now Published!

I am thrilled that the paper, "Multicommodity Fresh Produce Trade Networks with Quality Deterioration Under Congestion and Transportation Capacities," that I co-authored with Deniz Besik of the University of Richmond is now published in the Journal of Global Optimization! Plus, the paper is published open access and can be read and downloaded on the link: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10898-025-01507-3.

Deniz presented this paper last year at the EURO Conference in Copenhagen:

The paper contains a very interesting case study on bananas, the most widely traded fruit globally, and demonstrates the impacts on fresh produce quality of transportation disruptions and delays. The work was inspired by recent challenges to transportation on the Panama Canal because of insufficient water, leading to congestion. The paper shows that because of negative transportation impacts, consumers may pay higher prices for bananas of lower quality. 

Deniz will present this paper at the 2025 Commodity and Energy Markets Association Annual Meeting (CEMA) in Houston in a few days, as I head to the EURO Conference in Leeds, United Kingdom, where I have three invited talks!

This was another outstanding collaboration of ours on a highly relevant topic.

Visit of Dr. Kyrychenko from the Kyiv School of Economics (KSE) to UMass Amherst

This past week, we were delighted to have Dr. Kostyantyn Kyrychenko, the Vice Rector for International Cooperation at the Kyiv School of Economics (KSE), come to UMass Amherst. Those of you who have been reading my blog are aware of the global partnership between these two universities established shortly after Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022. 

It was a pleasure to have Dr. Kyrychenko join a group of us for lunch. At the delicious lunch at The Commonwealth Restaurant sponsored by the UMass Amherst Office of Global Affairs (OGA) even the one and only Associate Vice Chancellor Ken Toong stopped by! When I told our distinguished visitor from Ukraine that UMass Amherst had been voted as having the best college food 7 years in a row - he corrected me (thank you) - UMass Amherst has received this honor 8 times! Special thanks to Kimberly Stender and Claire Novotny of the Office of Global Affairs for the lovely time and to my great Isenberg School of Management, UMass Amherst colleagues, Professors Bogdan Prokopovych 🇺🇦 and Ina Ganguli, who also has an appointment in our Economics Department and who graciously shared the photo with Ken Toong in the collage below. It was extra special to also have exchange students from KSE join us.

I was touched by a lovely gift set that Dr. Kyrychenko presented me from Sumy, which is the city in eastern Ukraine that he is from and also where one of our exchange students is from. Kimberly Stender presented him with some gifts from the Office of Global Affairs and he gave her some KSE branded gifts. The conversations were wonderful and I am sure that they will continue. The exchange student program has brought 7 different students from KSE to UMass Amherst in the past two years and they have thrived on our beautiful campus. The students are fabulous ambassadors for Ukraine and their courage and work ethic inspire me.

We thank Dr. Kyrychenko for visiting us. The journey from Ukraine is quite long and I know that tomorrow he will be back for KSE Open Days!

Rerouting to Evade Tariffs - Our Latest Study

Tariffs and their impacts we have been researching for several decades now because of the relevance of the topic as well as the scientific interest in the mathematical modeling of supply chain networks and international trade. Furthermore, there are different types of tariffs, including unit tariffs, ad valorem tariffs, and even tariff rate quotas. We have studied the impacts of tariffs in perfectly competitive contexts such as spatial price equilibrium problems as well as in oligopolistic markets.

Recently, because of the escalating trade wars and imposition of various retaliatory tariffs in the second Trump administration, our research has included rerouting to evade tariffs. This topic has been quite newsworthy; see, for example, this article in The New York Times, which was published today: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/24/business/vietnam-china-transshipment.html

My paper, "Multicommodity Trade, Tariffs, and Rerouting," co-authored with my Isenberg School PhD student, Samirasadat "Samira" Samadi, was accepted in the very special volume: Convex and Variational Analysis with Applications: In Honor of Terry Rockafellar’s 90th Birthday. Panos M. Pardalos and Themistocles M. Rassias, Editors, Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

It was an honor to have been invited to contributed to this edited volume in honor of the amazing Professor Rockafellar, a giant in the optimization and variational inequalities.

A preprint of our paper can be downloaded from the Supernetwork Center website: https://supernet.isenberg.umass.edu/articles/MulticommodityTradeTariffsandRerouting.pdf

The case study in the paper focuses on tea, which is produced in both China and Vietnam, and, in our numerical examples, can be rerouted, with associated additional costs (although it is illegal) to demand markets. It is important to model and to quantify trade-offs associated with such illicit tariff evasion in order to provide policy- and decision-makers with insights for interdiction purposes. Our research continues.

Congratulations to Dana Hassani on Receipt of the 2025 Outstanding Doctoral Student Researcher Award at the Isenberg School!

On May 9, the Isenberg School of Management held its All School Meeting to wrap up the academic year. At the meeting, various awards were given out to faculty, staff, and doctoral students.

My Isenberg PhD student in Operations Management Dana Hassani, who was announced as the recipient of the 2025 Outstanding Doctoral Student Researcher Award, was, at that time, was en route to the POM Society Conference in Atlanta, so could not attend. I had blogged about this conference in previous posts.

So, this past Thursday, after the Isenberg PhD robing ceremony, the Director of our PhD Program, Dr. George Milne, presented Dana with the award plaque in our Business Innovation Hub.

Dana arrived at UMass Amherst in January 2022, after a delay in obtaining his visa. He has published 3 journal articles, and one book chapter, which is quite remarkable. And he has also been teaching this past academic year a required course, "Business Data Analysis," for our business undergraduates each semester. Dana is the lead author of the paper, "A Multiperiod, Multicommodity, Capacitated International Agricultural Trade Network Equilibrium Model with Applications to Ukraine in Wartime," co-authored with me, and Kyiv School of Economics (KSE) colleagues: Oleg Nivievskyi and Pavlo Martyshev, which appears in in the INFORMS journal Transportation Science,  vol. 59, no. 1, January-February 2025, pp. 143–164. He is also the co-author (second author) with the same co-authors as above of the paper, "Multicommodity International Agricultural Trade Network Equilibrium: Competition for Limited Production and Transportation Capacity Under Disaster Scenarios with Implications for Food Security," published in the European Journal of Operational Research, vol. 314, no. 1, 2024,  pp. 1127-1142. He is also a co-author, with the same authors as above of the paper, "Exchange Rates and Multicommodity International Trade: Insights from Spatial Price Equilibrium Modeling with Policy Instruments via Variational Inequalities," published in the Journal of Global Optimization, vol.  87, 2023, pp. 1-30.

Dana's book chapter, co-authored with the same team as his journal articles, "Quantification of International Trade Network Performance Under Disruptions to Supply, Transportation, and Demand Capacity, and Exchange Rates in Disasters," was published 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, 2024, pp. 151-179.

It is important to emphasize that there are 9 tracks in the Isenberg PhD Program so receiving this award is quite the achievement. And, Dana also got this award last year. He successfully defended his dissertation proposal a few months ago. I look forward to his successful PhD defense in the coming academic year. He has done excellent research focusing on agricultural supply chains and international trade under disruptions, including in Ukraine during wartime. It has been an honor to work with him and with colleagues at the Kyiv School of Economics. 

We Celebrated the Outstanding Exchange Students from the Kyiv School of Economics (KSE)

This is the second full academic year that exchange students from the Kyiv School of Economics (KSE) in Ukraine have been studying at UMass Amherst. The exchange program, during wartime Ukraine, was made possible because of a partnership established between KSE and UMass Amherst, under the leadership of the Vice Chancellor for Global Affairs Dr. Kalpen Trivedi.

Two of the KSE exchange students have been with us for two academic years and are now returning back to Ukraine. Two are staying on for another year and we expect additional ones to arrive in the Fall.

I invited the students for a special dinner in order to celebrate their accomplishments. The dinner was at The Inn at Boltwood in downtown Amherst.  The warm conversations covered much territory - the students' classes and great professors, friends made from Massachusetts and from around the globe, the award-winning UMassAmherst food, college sports (notably, UMass hockey), life in beautiful Amherst, and the differences between learning in the US and in Ukraine. Traveling thousands of miles from their homes and their families, the students: Asta Motrenko, Marharyta Nechytailo, Oleksandra Horusieva, and Karyna Lutsenko have achieved so much and have left a big imprint on all those who have had the pleasure of interacting with them. Thanks to Lorraine Martinelle of Marcomm at the Isenberg School for the lovely, informative article on the students: https://www.isenberg.umass.edu/news/three-years-later-isenberg-reflects-umass-amherst-partnership-ukrainian-institution

They students have spoken on university panels (thanks to UMass Amherst Student Chapter of INFORMS), been on Talk the Talk radio show, made the Dean's List each semester, took part (Marharyta as an analyst) in the amazing and very impactful Isenberg Undergraduate Consulting Group (IUCG) and even placed second on a team in a national Capital One competition. Songs have been created, produced, and performed in Amherst (Asta). Since two students are returning to Kyiv, with Ukraine still enduring war, now in its 4th year,  this made the evening also bittersweet. 

I am sure that the KSE exchange students will play an important role, through their education, experiences and friendships made, in the recovery and rebuilding of Ukraine. A big thanks to their professors, including those at the Isenberg School of Management, UMass Amherst, who have provided such outstanding courses and have mentored them. And, thanks to the top administrators: Provost Fouad Abd-El-Khalick, Vice Provost for Global Affairs Kalpen Trivedi, and Isenberg Dean Anne P. Massey for the support in the global partnership between UMass Amherst and KSE. 

Presentations of Our POMS Talks in Atlanta Have Been Posted: From Agricultural Trade to War Risk Insurance

Last week,  I was busy with events and the last week of the academic year, but my Isenberg School PhD students traveled to Atlanta to present our joint work at the POM (Production and Operations Management) Society 35th Conference. They had an outstanding time and also, thanks to Isenberg PhD alumna, Dr. Deniz Besik of the University of Richmond, enjoyed a delicious lunch at a Turkish restaurant. My former PhD student, now at the University of Portland, as a tenured Associate Professor, Dr. Min Yu, also joined them. Below is a collage of photos of my PhD students: Dana Hassani, Ismael Pour, and Samira Samadi, presenting plus a lunch photo.

Dr. Deniz Besik also presented on our work on food banks. Below is a graphic of the first slide of our four presentations.

The slide decks of the full presentations, which, in the case of my PhD students, were all based on recently published papers, can be found on the Supernetwork Center website:  https://supernet.isenberg.umass.edu/visuals.html Dana's presentation was based on a paper published in the INFORMS journal Transportation Science. Ismael's paper appeared recently in International Transactions in Operational Research, and both his and Dana's paper was co-authored with colleagues in Ukraine. Samira's paper, which was co-authored also with Ismael, appeared in the Journal of Nonlinear and Variational Analysis.

I am very lucky to have excellent PhD students (present and former).

My 3 PhD Students Will Present Our Recently Published Papers at the POMS Conference in Atlanta

I am a very lucky and proud Academic Mom. My 3 Isenberg School of Management, UMass Amherst PhD students will present our recently published papers at the POMS Conference in Atlanta, which overlaps with Mother's Day https://pomsmeetings.org/conf-2025/

Dana Hassani will present the paper, "A Multiperiod, Multicommodity, Capacitated International Agricultural Trade Network Equilibrium Model with Applications to Ukraine in Wartime," which was co-authored with colleagues at the Kyiv School of Economics: Oleg Nivievskyi and Pavel Martyshev, and published in the INFORMS journal Transportation Science: https://lnkd.in/eUC3PA3J.  Ismael will present the paper, "Integrated Crop and Cargo War Risk Insurance: Application to Ukraine," which was co-authored with Borys Kormych of the National University "Odessa Law Academy" and published just this morning in the IFORS journal International Transactions in Operational Research: https://lnkd.in/e-3MxaDY. Samira will present the paper, "A Variational Inequality Trade Network Model in Prices and Quantities Under Commodity Losses," that we co-authored with Ismael, and that was published open access in the Journal of Nonlinear and Variational Analysis: https://lnkd.in/eSuiqC_C. Support for co-authors in Ukraine was made possible through the outstanding partnership between the University of Massachusetts Amherst and the Kyiv School of Economics, thanks to the leadership of Vice Chancellor of Global Affairs Kalpen Trivedi and Isenberg School of Management, UMass Amherst Dean Anne P. Massey. 

Our presentations are ready!

Happy Mother's Day and Happy Conferencing! 

The UMass Amherst INFORMS Student Chapter Celebrated the End of the Semester with a Great Party and Congratulations Cake

Yesterday, during the next to the final week of classes in the 2024-2025 academic year at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, we had our UMass Amherst INFORMS Student Chapter party. This is a tradition of this wonderful student chapter that brings both students and faculty together who work in the areas of Operations Research and the Management Sciences.

It has been a very busy week, with many additional events, that I even blogged about, including the 2025 OIM Awards Celebration just the evening before. And, yesterday morning, for the first time ever, the OIM Department Chair Professor Senay Solak organized a retreat for the department.

I left the retreat early, since, as is also the tradition, my husband and I always bring warm varenyky/pierogies, kielbasa, and desserts.

Some faculty mistakenly thought the party was at 4PM, although the poster circulated stated that the start time was 4:30PM. We appreciate the enthusiasm.

There was a kerfuffle - with all the events happening now at UMass Amherst, because of the end of the academic year, the order for food that the Chapter President Ismael Pour (one of my PhD students) put in got cancelled in the last minute. He scrambled then to get food orders from Atkins and from the famous Antonio's Pizza in downtown Amherst.

The food spread was fantastic and took up two large tables in Room N135 in the Business Innovation Hub at the Isenberg School of Management. Besides the Ukrainian food and the pizza, there were veggie and fruit trays, cold cuts and cheeses, and different types of sandwiches.

Josh Gladstone did a great job slicing the Congratulations cake. 

We brought both potato cheese varenyky and cabbage varenyky and the cake with Congratulations on it we bought at Whole Foods, along with a wide assortment of cookies. There were also various desserts from Atkins and even a spread of baklava pastries from Stop and Shop. It was appropriate to celebrate with a Congratulations cake since this chapter, in October, received the Magna Cum Laude Award from INFORMS at the Seattle Annual Meeting. Also, several of our PhD student members: Semih Boz, Dana Hassani (last year's Chapter President), Ismael Pour, and Samira Samadi have had journal articles published this past year and others are in press!

We have hosted a variety of events and speakers this past academic year. We were delighted that Lorraine Martinelle, of the Isenberg Marcomm Department, wrote an excellent article on our events associated with a panel with the Kyiv School of Economics (KSE) exchange students and the visit and talk of the KSE President Tymofiy Mylovanov from Ukraine:  https://www.isenberg.umass.edu/news/three-years-later-isenberg-reflects-umass-amherst-partnership-ukrainian-institution Two of the exchange students, Marharyta Nechytailo and Karyna Lutsenko, joined our party. Also, it was wonderful to see Dr. Natalia Bychkova from Ukraine, who has been teaching at Amherst College.

The student chapter aims to enhance networking, share scientific knowledge through seminars, and also to build community. The students also present their research in a tune-up before the INFORMS Annual Meeting each year. Lasting friendships are made (and even a few marriages) through the chapter. Its members come not only from the Isenberg School but also from the College of Engineering at UMass Amherst and from the Manning College of  Information and Computer Sciences.

I have been the Faculty Advisor of the UMass Amherst INFORMS Student Chapter since 2004.

To learn more about the Chapter, its Officers, and its activities, please, visit its website: https://websites.umass.edu/umassinf/

Outstanding Operations & Information Management Awards Celebration 2025!

Last evening, we had our second annual Operations & Information Management (OIM) Awards Celebration. Our Isenberg School of Management OIM Department, during this lovely evening ceremony and delicious buffet banquet at The Inn at Boltwood in Amherst, MA, recognized the outstanding award recipients.

Congratulations to ALL the amazing students receiving the awards last evening and to the recipient of the OIM Distinguished Alumni Award Brian Howell! The awards celebration was stunning - with excellent organization, thanks to the Department Chair Senay Solak, the Associate Department Chair Michele Burch, and our superb Office Manager Samantha Whittle. My colleague Dr. Oscar Lopez, took many photos of the event.  

The students inspire us: the OIM Exceptional Impact Scholarship Recipients: Joseph Ganley, Jasmine Tran, Anna Wagner, and Elizabeth Elvin; the Isenberg Senior Leadership Award Recipient: Shane DeRubeis; the Isenberg Academic Excellence Award Recipient: Fiona Tanikonda plus Hunter Edwards and Emma Dengler, both nominated for the William F. Field Alumni Scholar Award. Congratulations also to: Sydney Edlund, who received The NCG Operations and Information Scholarship Award and to Gavin Acocelli, the recipient of The Nagurney Scholarship. Gavin is still in Florence, Italy on an exchange program but will be back for the University of Massachusetts Amherst graduation. Kudos to Patrick Little on receipt of the RSM U.S. Foundation Consulting Scholarship and to Macy Ring for her receipt of the David J. Czarnecki Scholarship. Congrats to the OIM Elevate Scholarship Recipients: Treyden Finlay, Carolin Z., Julia Sheridan, and Nicholas Blinn! Bravo to OIM Elevate Scholarship (PhD) Recipients: Mantek Bhatia and Dana Hassani, who is my PhD student in Operations Management.

The above group photo includes faculty, Brian Howell, and also some friends. It was a truly memorable evening and the food was exceptional and included salmon, lovely salads, chowder, breads, and yummy desserts. Wishing our students all the best as they graduate and assume their professional careers! 

Thrilled that My Blackett Lecture paper, "NetwORks and Policies: OR to the Rescue," is Now Published and Free Access!

I would like to express my deepest appreciation to The Operational Research Society for publishing my  Blackett Lecture paper, "NetwORks and Policies: OR to the Rescue," in its flagship journal, the Journal of the Operational Research Society (JORS),  and for making it free to access through 2025! JORS recently celebrated its 75th anniversary and is the oldest journal in Operational Research (OR).

The full paper can be downloaded from the link:  https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01605682.2025.2494706?src=exp-la#d1e107

For a post on the incredible experience of delivering the Blackett Lecture on December 5, 2024 at The Royal Society in London, England, click here: https://annanagurney.blogspot.com/2024/12/an-incredible-blackett-lecture.html

I have enjoyed, over the years, reading other Blackett Lecture papers and have even used several of them in my classes. Deeply honored to have been selected as a Blackett Lecturer and to be "in the company" of such former Blackett Lecturers as: Arnold Barnett, Luc Van Wassenhove, and William Cooper, who has since passed away. 

Fascinating Presentation on Nature-Based Solutions (NBS) for Disaster Risk Reduction

This past Friday, we had the pleasure of hearing from Dr. Marta Vicarelli, who spoke in our UMass Amherst INFORMS Speaker Series. Her presentation at the Isenberg School of Management was fascinating. In this Speaker Series, we highlight thought leaders who are breaking barriers and boundaries.

With University of Massachusetts Amherst emphasizing sustainability, this presentation could not have been more timely. The topics discussed included biodiversity loss, and mitigation and adaptation as responses to climate change. Dr. Vicarelli structured her seminar in a very engaging way asking whether 

1. Are NBS effective in increasing resilience and 

2. Are they cost-effective? 

Dr. Vicarelli is a leader in NBS and shared with us many highlights of her important studies. There were many questions from the audience. It was clear that NBS can be powerful mechanisms for disaster risk reduction. We could have listened for hours! The lunch afterwards at The Commonwealth Restaurant at UMass Amherst was lovely and our conversations continued. Below is a collage of photos from the event, along with the poster, which was kindly designed by Ismael Pour, who is the UMass Amherst INFORMS Chapter President this year. It was great to have faculty from my OIM Department take part and also many of the Chapter Officers!

My Agricultural Supply Chain Networks Under Uncertainty Seminar is Now Online, Thanks to CORS (Canadian Operational Research Society)

I am grateful to Dr. Anjali Aswathi for inviting me to present on April 11, 2025 in a CORS event. Dr. Aswathi is the President of the Canadian Operational Research Society,

The title of my presentation was, "Agricultural Supply Chain Networks Under Uncertainty."

The link to my slide deck for the lecture is here: https://supernet.isenberg.umass.edu/visuals/CORS-Nagurney-2025.pdf

The link to the video recording on Youtube is here: https://youtu.be/AIbWpVPM4uU

The above video recording also includes the presentation by Dr. Emma Freninger, which followed my presentation.

It was also very thoughtful of the CORS President to provide the above certificate. 

Thanks to my PhD students and all others who attended our virtual presentations with special thanks to Ismael Pour for writing up some of the highlights on the UMass Amherst INFORMS Student Chapter blog: https://websites.umass.edu/umassinf/2025/04/13/two-talks-in-one-day/

Our research on agricultural supply chain networks continues!

Thanking Dr. Khama Ennis for Her Brilliant Guest Lecture in My Humanitarian Logistics Class

 A very important feature of the Humanitarian Logistics and Healthcare class that I teach at the Isenberg School of Management, UMass Amherst is guest lectures from outstanding practitioners. There are truly "heroes" among us. On March 27, 2025 (before I headed to the airport to fly to the University of Louisville to give an invited seminar), the students and I had the incredible honor of hearing Khama Ennis, MD, MPH, FACEP, FAIHM speak on her journey from being born in Jamaica to becoming a leading medical professional, heading the ER department at the Cooley Dickinson Hospital, becoming a documentary maker, and even working at Bellevue Hospital in NYC during 9/11! The messages from students continue as to the impact that her guest lecture made on them. 

Dr. Ennis's intelligence, courage, creativity, and care for her patients and community are truly inspiring. We are incredibly lucky to now have Dr. Ennis with us at the University of Massachusetts Amherst Health Services. A short bio of Dr. Ennis can be found here: https://www.umass.edu/uhs/about/directory/khama-ennis-md-mph. Her first alma mater is also my alma mater - Brown University.  

Dr. Ennis's documentary, Faces of Medicine, "explores the paths of Black female physicians in the United States," of which there are very few: https://www.facesofmedicine.org/.  She kindly allowed us to view the documentary, which I found to be profound, inspiring, and, actually, very elegant. It was wonderful to hear from other female Black doctors, some of whom are in our region of western Massachusetts!

It was poignant to hear from a student in the class, whose family also comes from Jamaica, as to the impact that Dr. Ennis's presentation had on her.

It is such a small world. Dr. Ennis trained at MGH in Boston where our cousin, Dr. Toby Nagurney, was head of the ER and also a faculty member at the Harvard Medical School. I shared photos with him of Dr. Ennis with my students and he was delighted. He said that she has not changed at all.  

And, when, upon the return from speaking at a conference in Buenos Aires 15 years ago, and while taking a walk in our neighborhood, I slipped and fell where a pothole had been recently patched up, and our UMass Health Services, for some reason, could not treat the scar on  my bleeding forehead, I headed to the Cooley Dickinson ER. There, after about 4 hours of a grueling wait, which I blogged about https://annanagurney.blogspot.com/2010/06/operations-and-emergency-room.html , Dr. Ennis came to the rescue and essentially "glued" the wound.

Thank you, Dr. Ennis, for all that you have done and are doing! We are so lucky to now have you at the UMass UHS (Health Services)!

Three Papers Accepted in One Week!

My Mother always said that "good news comes in threes" and this week we certainly had some much appreciated good news.

My paper, "NetwORks and Policies: OR to the Rescue," which is based on the Blackett Lecture that I delivered at The Royal Society in London, England on December 5, 2024, thanks to The Operational Research Society, was accepted for publication in the Journal of the Operational Research Society. And, incredibly, I received the galleys of the paper yesterday (a Saturday) and they were in great shape. Below is the first page.

And, since the Blackett Lecture experience was so special I include a collage below made of photos from the event, with deep gratitude for all that took part.

Many thanks also to The Operational Research Society for posting my Blackett Lecture online on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-LsIEsi-m0

Also, we heard from the International Transactions in Operational Research that the paper, "Integrated Crop and Cargo War Risk Insurance: Application to Ukraine," that I co-authored with my PhD student Ismael Pour and Professor Borys Kormych of the Odesa Law Academy in Ukraine, was accepted for publication. We hope to receive the galleys soon. Professor Kormych is a Virtual Scholar in our terrific UMass Amherst - Kyiv School of Economics (KSE) partnership. He was in the first cohort and is also in the second cohort. You can read more about the Virtual Scholars and their Faculty Hosts at the Isenberg School of Management here: https://www.umass.edu/global-affairs/news/kyiv-school-economics-and-university-massachusetts-amherst-launch-second-round-virtual-scholar

We heard the good news shortly after Ismael Pour presented the paper in the doctoral seminar in Management Science that I am teaching this semester. We took the nice photo below with him and Yongdong Chen and Samira Samadi (both also PhD students in the seminar) after Ismael's presentation.

Ismael will present this paper at the POMS Conference in Atlanta next month.

Also, Samira (full first name is Samirasadat) and I got the paper, "Multicommodity Trade, Tariffs, and Rerouting," accepted in a very special volume: Convex and Variational Analysis with Applications: In Honor of Terry Rockafellar’s 90th Birthday. Panos M. Pardalos and Themistocles M. Rassias, Editors, Springer Nature Switzerland AG. This is a very interesting and timely paper, given the trade wars that are happening now in real time. It discusses the evasion of tariffs and impacts through rerouting, with minimum processing, except for repackaging/relabeling in other countries.

We are grateful to the Editors and reviewers of our papers.

I Had a Great Time Speaking on Agricultural Supply Chain Networks at the University of Louisville in Kentucky

I returned from Louisville, Kentucky, past midnight. Immediately after my Humanitarian Logistics & Healthcare class at the Isenberg School of Management this past Thursday, I headed to Bradley airport for my flight to Detroit, and onwards to Louisville. I was very excited to have been invited to speak at the Department of Industrial Engineering at the University of Louisville. I was invited by Professor Lihui Bai, who, along with Professor Monica Gentili, co-directs the Logistics and Distribution Institute there. Professor Bai's PhD advisor at the University of Florida was Don Hearn, who was a good friend of my PhD advisor, Stella Dafermos of Brown University. Both have passed away.

It was also wonderful to be in a warmer climate with even flowers, after a very long winter in New England. It was great to meet in the morning with Professors Yunmei Liu and Thomas Riedel (a University of Massachusetts Amherst PhD alumnus), and to hear Professor Bai's PhD students speak on their fascinating research! One of Dr. Bai's PhD students is now working with one of my former PhD students and Dr. Bai.  A feature of academia that I love is all the connections that we have across the miles. Thanks also to Professor Brian Yueshuai He for meeting with me and discussing congestion pricing in Manhattan. He has a PhD from the Tandon School at NYU.   I thoroughly enjoyed speaking about agricultural supply chain networks and the many challenges that exist today (including tariffs) and how we quantify resilience and robustness under disaster scenarios. I also spoke on making an impact and interacting with journalists and the media as well as legislators. The Q&A was excellent after my presentation and we took a nice group photo.

The lunch at the University Club with Interim School of Business Dean Jeff Guan, the Chair of Computer Science and Engineering Wei Zhang, and Dr. Bai, which included oysters, was delicious. Another highlight was a group discussion with the IE PhD students, from so many countries (Turkey, Iran, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh....). Their energy, enthusiasm, and passion for their research are uplifting. I was surprised by a beautiful gift of stunning coasters presented to me with Kentucky Derby artwork on them.  We will use them when we toast the derby in early May! 

Sincerest thanks to all and especially to Professor Lihui Bai for the exceptional hospitality extended to me and for the great attention to detail in organizing my visit.

Many thanks to Delta for terrific 4 flights and for upgrades!