Very Excited About the IFORS Conference in Santiago (Where It Is Winter) and the Dynamics of Disasters Conference in Athens (Where It Is Summer)

Academics are quite good at conferencing and also in optimizing when it comes to packing, etc. Nevertheless, packing for essentially back to back conferences on different continents and seasons can be a challenge especially if the plan is to only have a single carryon as luggage.

In 2006, I spoke at successive conferences in Cyprus (Limassol), Iceland (Reykjavik), and then in Italy (Erice). Family members joined me in Iceland and brought some warm clothing since the temperature, while we were there and it was officially summer, never rose about 48 degrees F. Some reflections on packing for the stream of conferences.

Soon I will be flying to Athens, Greece for the Dynamics of Disasters conference that I co-organized, and then, via Madrid, to the IFORS Conference in Santiago, Chile.

I am thrilled to be delivering a keynote talk, entitled, "Agricultural Supply Chain Networks: From Trade to Resilience and How OR Can Help," at the IFORS Conference.

My keynote will highlight some of our research over the past decade on agricultural supply chain networks including recent work with collaborators in Ukraine. Information on this conference can be found here. I am very honored to be on the list of plenary and keynote speakers.

Also, at the IFORS conference, I'll be taking part in the "Meet the ITOR Editors" panel, which was organized by the outstanding Editor of the International Transactions in Operational Research (ITOR) journal Celso C. Ribeiro! Joining us on the panel is the previous President of IFORS Grazia Speranza and Mario Guajardo. ITOR recently celebrated its 30th anniversary with a special issue. I was delighted to have my tutorial paper on ``Fragile Networks," co-authored with Qiang "Patrick" Qiang included in this special issue. The tutorial paper was based on a tutorial that I gave at the ALIO INFORMS conference in Buenos Aires.

I am very much looking forward to seeing conferees from many continents at this IFORS conference, including my former Isenberg School of Management PhD student, Dmytro Matsypura, who will travel from Australia. He is Chair of the Business Analytics Department at the University of Sydney. The President of IFORS is now Janny Leung and she is traveling from Macao!

And, prior to the IFORS conference, I will be experiencing the warmth of a Mediterranean summer at the Dynamics of Disasters Conference. We have an outstanding lineup of plenary speakers and I thank them all for accepting our invitations. This is the 6th Dynamics of Disasters Conference! It was such a pleasure to work with Ilias S. Kotsireas, Panos M. Pardalos, and Chrys Vogiatzis on this conference.

My presentation at this conference will be on joint work with my PhD student Dana Hassani and colleagues in Ukraine at the Kyiv School of Economics: Oleg Nivievskyi and Pavlo Martyshev.

There is clearly and agricultural theme to my presentations at both these international conferences. In fact, at the Dynamics of Disasters one, we also a special Acknowledgment and Dedication.

Back to packing for the conferences with my new suitcase purchased after I wore out my favorite one!

Safe travels to all those heading to conferences!

Network Models in Economics and Finance and the Acropolis

On Thursday, I was flying from Gothenburg, Sweden to Athens, Greece via Amsterdam. In Amsterdam, our flight was delayed, due to the strike of the air traffic controllers in Athens. The KLM pilot ultimately decided to forge on since he had heard that the strike would be over about the same time as we were to land but we had extra fuel in case we had to circle. Our plane was about the 10th one to land that afternoon.

I was coming to Athens to take part in the Network Models in Economics and Finance Conference at which I was to give a plenary talk, which I did yesterday, despite the fact that the university (National Technical University of Athens) was also on strike.

My presentation was on Network Economics and the Internet.

The conference was wonderful although I missed the first day because I had to give a commencement speech in Sweden, There were speakers from Greece, Italy, Russia, and the US and it was nice to be at a conference with just single sessions (no parallel ones). Speakers were from operations research / management science, computer science, economics, mathematics, and finance.
Lunch and snacks were provided.

 

 Last night, we had the conference banquet at the new Acropolis Museum with a view of the Acropolis and the Parthenon. We watched as the sun set to see the Acropolis then lit up in all its glory. This was an unforgettable evening in which we talked about mathematics and creativity, research, and friendships -- absolutely fabulous.

I thank the organizers: Professors Panos M. Pardalos, Valeriy Kalyagin, and Themosticles Rassias for a conference that we will never forget!

This is my third trip to Athens (always involving conferences) and it is undoubtedly the best!