Photos that Capture the Festivities and Diversity at the 2009 WORMS Award Luncheon in San Diego

Now that the fabulous INFORMS conference in San Diego has come to its conclusion, I would like to share with you some photos taken at the Women in Operations Research and the Management Sciences (WORMS) luncheon on Tuesday, October 13. The photos acknowledge the sponsors, display the program, capture our wonderful officers, and the 2009 WORMS Award recipient, Professor Alice Smith of Auburn University. They also demonstrate the diversity of those in attendance.

Congratulations to the WORMS community for such a special and wonderful occasion and many thanks to the sponsors of this truly memorable event.

We thank both Professor Patrick Qiang and Professor Christian Wernz for assisting with the photography!

More photos will be posted on the WORMS site.

INFORMS in San Diego

The INFORMS Annual Conference in San Diego has been fantastic! The venues of the Convention Center and the Hilton Hotel overlooking the Pacific Ocean and graced by palm trees and flowers are simply gorgeous. The conference has thousands in attendance and I have been enjoying immensely seeing colleagues from around the globe.

Today, we began with the breakfast FORA meeting at which the INFORMS student chapter awards and several other awards were given. It was a pleasure to give out the chapter awards, along with Professor John Fowler. I congratulate the student chapters who received their summa cum laude, magna cum laude, and cum laude awards today. The UMass Amherst student chapter and the Texas A&M chapters received the summa cum laude awards. I also would like to congratulate the winners of the Moving Spirit awards and the Judith Liebman awards! Dr. Patrick Qiang is my second former doctoral student to receive the Judith Liebman award.

After the awards breakfast I had the terrific experience of being interviewed by Barry List, the INFORMS Communication Director, for a podcast. We will let you know when it goes online.

I managed to also give a talk today and to attend a session before joining hundreds at one of the highpoints of the annual INFORMS meeting -- the WORMS (Women in Operations Research and the Management Sciences) luncheon. I am also very pleased and proud that both the College of Engineering and the Isenberg School of Management at UMass Amherst donated substantial funds to support this luncheon.

At the luncheon, I had the distinct honor of giving the 2009 WORMS Award to Professor Alice Smith of Auburn University for her extensive contributions to increasing the visibility and success of females in operations research. She has chaired the department of industrial engineering at Auburn University for 10 years, has written over 150 publications, and has led two NSF grants in support of female researchers. I read several quotes from her letters of support and from her nominator. It was a very festive event!

Many lingered over the lunch and afterwards to network and to chat. At my table, I had so many of my former doctoral students, who are now professors: Dr. Dmytro Matsypura, who is at the University of Sydney in Australia, Dr. Jose Cruz, who is at UCONN, Dr. Tina Wakolbinger, who is at the University of Memphis, Dr. Zugang Liu, who is a professor at Pennsylvania State University at Hazleton, and Dr. Patrick Qiang, who is a professor at Penn State's Graduate School of Professional Studies in Malvern. It was like a reunion and it was so much fun to exchange experiences and our recollections. We were joined at our table by other Isenberg School PhDs with concentrations in Management Science: Professor Debbie O'Connor from Holy Cross and Professor Shenghan Xu from the University of Idaho. In addition, Dr. Christian Wernz, who received his PhD in Industrial Engineering from UMass Amherst and who is now a professor at Virginia Tech, helped to complete a most convivial group which also included Professor Laura McLay of Virginia Commonwealth University.

What really impressed me was the large number of both males and females as well as minorities that attended this luncheon which speaks volumes about the warmth that faculty, practitioners, and students feel in the WORMS community.

This evening there is a reception at Sea World!

The Award Season and the INFORMS Conference in San Diego

October is a season for the announcement of some major awards, including the Nobel prizes! I always find it fascinating to see who gets selected and, this week, the big news has been about President Obama's selection as the recipient of the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize.The recipient of an award receives recognition and, when an award is not expected, there is that extra element of surprise and wonder (and, of course, heightened expectations). The newspapers have had articles on previous recipients who continue to feel energized that their hard work has been recognized in a substantive and magnificent way.

Many of my colleagues and I are now getting ready to travel to take part in the 2009 INFORMS Conference, to be held in San Diego, October 11-14. This is an annual conference for operations researchers and management scientists and you can read a press release here. The program even includes a talk by the Nobel laureate in Economics, Dr. Harry Markowitz, who will be speaking next Monday, the same day that the 2009 Nobel Prize in Economic Science will be announced.

As Chair of the 2009 WORMS (Women in Operations Research and the Management Sciences) Award Committee, I will be giving out this award on Tuesday at the WORMS luncheon. I have already prepared my speech in which I have included quotes from several support letters for the awardee (very moving, I must say). I will also be taking part in a breakfast for fora at which the student chapter awards and other fora awards will be given out. The UMass Amherst INFORMS Student Chapter that I serve as the Faculty Advisor of will be honored with the summa cum laude award and one of its former officers, Dr. Patrick Qiang, will be receiving the 2009 Judith Liebman Award.

I am also very much looking forward to the Transportation Science & Logistics Society business meeting next Monday evening in San Diego at which a dissertation prize and the Robert Herman Lifetime Achievement Award will be given out.

Many of my former doctoral students from as far away as Australia as well as Associates of the Virtual Center for Supernetworks will be attending the INFORMS Conference in San Diego. It will be a wonderful venue in which to reunite and to celebrate research, community, and friendships.

The Importance of Knowing Languages, Prize Competitions, and Michael Jackson

This certainly has been an interesting week! I am serving on two scientific prize committees. The first competition is the 2009 Mathematics Competition for Young Mathematicians in Ukraine sponsored by the Shevchenko Scientific Society of America and the U.S.-Ukraine Foundation with a prize of $6,000US. This is the second year that this competition is taking place and I also served on last year's award committee. This week, as part of the reviewing process, I read over a dozen nomination packets and evaluated the scientific papers forwarded by the nominees, their curriculum vitae, plus letters by outside examiners who commented on the publications and overall reputations of the nominees. If English was the only language that I could read, I would have been unable to appropriately evaluate the submitted materials and to rank the top candidates for the award.

The years of learning both Ukrainian (my first language) and Russian (I have a degree in Russian from Brown U. plus three degrees in Applied Mathematics) paid off! As for English, that is my second language, which I began studying in kindergarten a while ago. During this competition I read mathematics papers in all three languages plus nomination and review letters in those languages. Mathematics is its own beautiful and elegant language so I certainly put my degrees and expertise to great use this week. The competition is now in its second round and we hope to announce the recipient of this award soon. To see the caliber of research and publications being done by young mathematicians in Ukraine, a country of 46 million people, which continues to struggle after its independence, was very inspiring!

In addition, I am serving as the Chair of the WORMS (Women in Operations Research and the Management Sciences) Award of INFORMS. The deadline for nominations is July 1, 2009. This award celebrates and recognizes a person who has contributed significantly to the advancement and recognition of women in the field of Operations Research and the Management Sciences.It is an honor to be serving as the chair of this committee.

The shocking and untimely death of Michael Jackson yesterday at age 50 invoked memories of the death of my dissertation advisor at Brown University, Dr. Stella Dafermos, who was truly a leader in her fields of operations research and transportation science and who died just shy of her 50th birthday. The former spoke in his language of music and the latter in her language of applied mathematics and operations research. They left lasting legacies, respectively, in music and scholarly publications.