Was This One the Best One Ever?! - Photos from the INFORMS Minneapolis Conference

Those of us who were at the INFORMS Annual Conference in Minneapolis, which took place October 6-9, 2013 will never forget it!

I have been going to INFORMS conferences since I graduated from Brown University but,  last year, since I was on sabbatical in Sweden, missed the Phoenix one -- my collaborators and students were there, though, in full force.

Not only was the venue of this year's conference at the Minneapolis Convention Center great with 8 miles of Sky Walks (warm, dry, and carpeted) to navigate through downtown from location to location, and with the beautiful Loring Park close by, but the talks and events kept us engaged, entertained, and informed. I would say that time was too short but that means that the conference was very successful.  I very much enjoyed such new initiatives as Coffee with a New Member and even the New Members Breakfast at which we could meet new INFORMS members.

Seeing friends and former students and colleagues from around the globe was the biggest plus and taking part in various awards ceremonies energizing and so pleasant.

The INFORMS staff and conference organizers did an outstanding job -- thank you, thank you, thank you!

Below I have posted some photos. I know that many of us arrived back home in the wee hours of the morning, but it was worth it!

The new members breakfast at which various fora (WORMS, JFIG) and societies networked

We had meetings within the meeting in the form of various journal editorial board meetings -- a great lunch hosted by Wiley for the International Transactions in Operational Research board

We interacted with the great INFORMS staff

And when the sun came out on Monday enjoyed some of the sights outdoors

We celebrated our students' achievements through various awards (student chapter, Judith Liebman, etc.)

We celebrated the recipients of various awards including the WORMS Award given to Dr. Kathryn Stecke by the President of WORMS, Dr. Laura McLay of the University of Wisconsin Madison,  and Dr. Susan Albin of Rutgers

We did more networking and catching up

We were very excited to see our latest book, Networks Against Time: Supply Chain Analytics for Perishable Products, on display at the Springer booth

We learned from fabulous plenary talk presenters  about the latest results in operations research and the management sciences and analytics

And members of my supernetworks team gave many talks

We dined together and had so much fun

As the President of INFORMS, Dr. Anne Robinson, who is also the Director of Supply Chain Strategy and Analytics at Verizon, wrote me, after I thanked her, Dr. Olga Raskina, and various members of the INFORMS staff for such a great conference: The energy level and interest in our community these days is breath-taking and I completely agree.

Until we all meet again in person (face time really matters), keep up the great work!

And for those that could not join us or just want to further reminisce and hear about other perspectives, events, and impressions, do check out the various blogsposts and social media.

Supernetwork Center Associates Will Present a Lot of Papers at INFORMS Minneapolis

As I have mentioned in an earlier post, the Annual INFORMS Conference serves not only as an outstanding professional and social networking venue at which we also acquire a lot of information on the latest research by presenters from around the globe on operations research, management science, and analytics, but also it is a great place for a reunion!

It is the venue where many of the Supernetwork Center Associates of the Virtual Center for Supernetworks at the Isenberg School of Management gather!  I founded this Center at the Isenberg School of Management  in 2001 and have been its Director ever since.

Hence, we have been very busy not only with the beginning of the academic year, but also with the preparation of the talks that we will be giving at INFORMS Minneapolis, beginning this Sunday.

This will be an especially thrilling INFORMS meeting for us, since the UMass Amherst Student Chapter will be receiving a Magna Cum Laude Award (its seventh in a series of awards from INFORMS for its activities), Supernetwork Center Associate Dr. Amir H. Masoumi, who is now at Manhattan College, will be receiving the Judith B. Liebman Award (the third Supernetwork Center Associate to be recognized this way), and, yes, you may have heard, I will be inducted as an INFORMS Fellow (this recognition means the world to me -- thank you ever so much).

As the Director of the Virtual Center for Supernetworks, I must say that I could not be prouder of the great work that our Center Associates have been doing. 

Just to give you a sample of our presentation at INFORMS Minneapolis:

Center Associate Professor Jose Cruz of the School of Business at UCONN has organized a great session: Sustainable and Responsible Supply Chain Management, at which 3 papers by members of our group will be presented, including a paper by Professor Trisha Anderson of Texas Wesleyan University and a paper by Professor Tina Wakolbinger of Vienna and Professor Fuminori Toyasaki of York University in Toronto with Thomas Nowak (Tina's doctoral student).

Center Associate Professor Patrick Qiang of Penn State Malvern will be presenting his latest work in a best paper Service Science session -- good luck!

Our Supernetwork Center colleague, Professor Dmytro Matsypura from the University of Sydney in Australia, who is now on sabbatical at the University of Pittsburgh, will be speaking on his work with Professors Kalinowski and Savelsbergh (who was also elected an INFORMS Fellow in 2013).

Amir H. Masoumi (mentioned above) will be presenting our latest work on humanitarian logistics and disaster relief done also with Center Associate Professor Min Yu of the University of Portland. Min will be speaking on our competitive food supply chain research, which was recently published in the European Journal of Operational Research.

My doctoral student, Dong "Michelle" Li, will speak on our work on pharmaceutical supply chains and outsourcing, which is in press in the International Transactions in Operational Research.

And I will be speaking on the network economics of cyber crime, which is the result of a grant and multidisciplinary collaboration with colleagues at UMass Amherst and the Isenberg School.

The above is not even an exhaustive list of the presentations that Supernetwork Center Associates will be giving but it gives an idea of  the breadth and depth of our research activities.

For the latest information on our Center activities, please visit our website.

Looking forward to a super INFORMS conference!