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.