It Was a Great Year for the UMass Amherst INFORMS Student Chapter!

It is hard to believe that I have been the Faculty Advisor to the UMass Amherst INFORMS Student Chapter for 15 years, which means 30 semesters of exciting activities, including our Speaker Series. Over the years we have hosted truly extraordinary speakers and luminaries in Operations Research / Management Science and in related fields and I am eternally grateful that the speakers have come to our campus to share with the students and audience members their expertise and collegiality.

Yesterday, we had the pleasure, as is our tradition, of hosting the end of the semester (which was the end of the academic year) party. The weather was ominous, with a lot of thunder and rain (including several downpours) in the afternoon and, given the logistics involved, of bringing all the food to the party (both hot and cold) too the Isenberg School of Management, I was a bit anxious. Also, with the weather being less than appealing, I was wondering whether students and faculty would show up. This Student Chapter attracts members not only from the Isenberg School of Management but also from the College of Engineering as well as from the College of Computer and Information Sciences at UMass Amherst (with the latter two being on the opposite side of campus from the Isenberg School).

The party was advertised through our email lists and even posted on the screens in the Isenberg School.

I had told the Chapter Officers that I would need assistance in helping me unload my van with the pierogies, kielbasy, and desserts, and they did not disappoint, bringing out umbrellas as well, when I arrived.

After parking my van, I entered the party venue at 4:45PM and was so happy to see that, despite the miserable weather, attendance was fabulous, with an alum even coming from Boston for the party,  an with an exchange student from France and a visiting PhD student from Florida, also joining us.

Since the students are studying and researching topics in operations research (and many are very much into logistics), they had budgeted nicely, and did the ordering and pickup and deliveries efficiently. The menu consisted of international cuisines, homemade food, pizza, chicken wings, fries, salads, and fruits. The food was great and the company and conversations even better!  I have been to about 60 of these parties by now, and, every time, I emerge energized and, frankly, thrilled by the fabulous community we have built. I also would like to thank the parent society INFORMS (Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences) for supporting student chapters nationally and even internationally (the Montreal one is amazing for example) through awards and some funds. Additional funds we work hard to acquire and I also provide funding since I very much believe in giving students leadership and networking opportunities and in building intellectual and social communities.

This year we hosted the following speakers: Professors Mike Knodler, Priyank Arora, Peter Haas, Aurora Liu, as well as Dr. Thiago Serra (soon to be a professor at Bucknell University) and Jurij Paraszczak of IBM. We heard about their fascinating research on topics ranging from traffic safety, serving distressed individuals, smart cities, knowledge networks, to machine leaning.  This semester, with the $62 million Business Innovation Hub completed for the Isenberg School, we have benefited from new rooms for the talks and events.

Also, a fabulous initiative that the students started and take part in as interviewers, videographers and editors, is interviews with the speakers. The edited interviews are then posted on the chapter's youtube channel.  There is excellent advice and pearls of wisdom in these, so do peruse.

This year, as the chapter's Faculty Advisor, I recognized, with framed certificates, the exceptional service of the Chapter Officers: Katerina Deliali (President), Mojtaba Salarpour (Treasurer and also expert videographer), Haris Sipetas (our amazing Webmaster who blogs each speaker with photos on the chapter website), Zhangchen Hu (Event Coordinator who posts our events on Isenberg and UMass websites), and Wei Wei (a first year doctoral student and Social Outreach officer who is always smiling).

Also, this year I did something different - four of our long-serving members and soon-to-be PhD alums, who were also all very active former Chapter Officers, were recognized with certificates as Lifetime Members of our Chapter! A special shoutout to Dr. Destenie Nock, soon to be joining the faculty of Carnegie Mellon University; to Dr. Pritha Dutta, off to be a faculty member at the Lubin School of Business at Pace University in NYC, and Ekin Koker - off to Phillips in Cambridge, MA, where he had interned last summer, and Rodrigo Mercado, who, like Ekin, will be defending his dissertation this summer. Destenie was behind the very successful STEM Slams which the chapter had organized several times. Pritha (my PhD student) was a former Chapter President, whose enthusiasm and positive outlook made every event brighter. Ekin redesigned the chapter website and provided so much support over his time as a PhD student at UMass and Rodrigo was our expert editor of the interview videos and so much more! The below photo, taken by my PhD student, Deniz Besik,  shows brilliantly what makes these four so special.

Below, thanks to Haris Sipetas, is a photo of Rodrigo being recognized with his Lifetime Membership Award.

Special thanks to the faculty who came to support the chapter and the students (and thanks also to those who were sorry that they could not make it because they were out of town at conferences, etc.): Professor Iqbal Ali of the Isenberg School, Professors Hari Balasubramanian, Chaitra Gopalappa, Ana Muriel and Associate Dean Erin Baker, as well as Professors Eleni Christofa and Eric Gozales, all of the College of Engineering.

It was wonderful to have special treats also made by Katerina Deliali (including salads and Greek halvah) and a yummy lemon cake by Deniz Besik.

Katerina had the honor of cutting the cake from Stop and Shop, whose worker strike (luckily) had just recently ended.

I noticed that many of our PhD students had grown beards over the winter and some faculty have had beards for a while.

 We also took a group photo, since it was getting late, as a lovely memento of a great time and year.

Thanks, everyone, for a terrific Operations Research / Management Science year at UMass Amherst. Best of luck with projects and exams to students and faculty with the grading. I look forward to seeing several of you receive your graduate diplomas next month in the graduation ceremonies at UMass Amherst!

Congratulations on all of your achievements and Thank You!

We Celebrated a Great Semester for the UMass Amherst INFORMS Student Chapter with a Fabulous Party!

In academic circles this is a very busy time of the year with the end of the Fall semester upon us, final exams ahead of us, and with both faculty and students finishing up numerous projects and classwork. 

At the same time, one needs to celebrate accomplishments of the wonderful community that is the UMass Amherst INFORMS Student Chapter! I have had the privilege and fun of being its Faculty Advisor since 2004, which means that I have seen many of our Operations Research and Management Science students graduate with their PhDs and some are even Full Professors now (Dr. Tina Wakolbinger, for example, who was my PhD student and helped to found the chapter in 2004).

This semester, the student chapter hosted spectacular speakers: Dr. Shannon Roberts, Dr. Renata Konrad, and Dr. Dmytro Matsypura, and  began an exciting initiative of establishing a UMass INFORMS youtube channel, which now has two videos of interviews with the latter two speakers. The interviews, thus far, have been conducted by this year's Chapter President, Deniz Besik, and last year's President, Pritha Dutta, with technological assistance in videotaping and video production provided by Rodrigo Mercado and Mojtaba Salarpour. Another highlight this semester was having the chapter recognized with a Magna Cum Laude Award from INFORMS at the Annual Conference in Houston, Texas, October 22-25, 2017!

Yesterday, our wonderful end of the semester party took place at the Isenberg School. The terrific Chapter Officers, led by Deniz Besik, prepared the lovely poster below announcing the party.

In my "spare" time (while chairing a faculty search committee, finishing up two papers and working on another one, plus getting ready for a dissertation proposal defense, in addition to teaching and various other service commitments and writing letters for 5 job candidates), I was getting ready for the party.

I managed to bake some goodies:

and my husband, after spending most of the day at his Engineering School's student design project presentations,  helped to arrange and heat up the pierogies/varenyky and the sausage, which are always very popular. He also helped me to carry the food to the Isenberg School from our car:

The students had extended personal invitations to many faculty and the turnout was fabulous. Since the students are operations researchers, they are also excellent when it comes to the logistics of  procuring various dishes and refreshments for the party and even had a special cake!

Faculty and students  came from my Operations and Information Management Department, including the Department Chair, Dr. Agha Iqbal Ali,  and my colleagues: Dr. Ahmed Ghoniem and Dr. Senay Solak, as well as from the College of Engineering from the Mechanical and Industrial Engineering Department, including Dr. Ana Muriel, Dr. Erin Baker, and Dr. Hari Balasubramanian,  and the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, and from Computer Science! It was very special to also see Dr. Peter Haas, one of our newest faculty members, who spent decades at IBM, is an INFORMS Fellow, and is now at UMass Amherst!  Given that both Computer Science and the College of Engineering are on the opposite side of the UMass Amherst campus from the Isenberg School, and that it was quite cold yesterday, the great attendance speaks to the special community that the UMass Amherst INFORMS Student Chapter is part of and has also helped to build. The students at the party are from the US, Mexico, Turkey, China, Greece, Scotland, Iran, Pakistan,  India, Sierra Leone,  and Iran - a true United Nations.

 

The camaraderie was fabulous as were the appetites.

A big thank you to the amazing UMass Amherst INFORMS Student  Chapter Officers for such a warm and fun event! Below is one of my favorite selfies ever, thanks to Destenie Nock!

Best of luck to everyone on a great end of the Fall semester and early wishes for a Fantastic New Year!

GREAT UMass INFORMS Student Chapter Party with Surprise Attendance by Isenberg Alums

Today we had our end of the semester (academic year, actually) UMass Amherst INFORMS Student Chapter party. It was held in the Isenberg School of Management.

As many said who came (and the attendance was fabulous with faculty from the Isenberg School, the College of Engineering, some staff members, several administrators, and both graduate and several undergraduate students coming),  this party has become a tradition and not to be missed!


It was extra special for me because two of my former students came, with Jan Sudra driving up from United Technologies in Hartford and Bill Bebrin from the Boston area. Both were Operations Management majors and I had to hug them. The former one even brought pierogies that he had made! What a wonderful surprise it was to see them.

Seeing former students who are doing so well, makes me so happy and so proud!

The UMass Amherst INFORMS Student Chapter officers and members outdid themselves and being experts in operations research, management science, and, of course, logistics, the food arrived in a timely manner with the hot food hot and the cold food cold.

The food was delicious with a predominance of European and Asian cuisines. And, as is my tradition, I also brought pierogies (two types) and kielbasy.

The desserts came from several local stores with the chocolate and mousse cakes coming from Whole Foods.

 Best of all was seeing so many very wonderful people who make our academic community so special.

A special shoutout to our PhD Director, Dr. George Milne, and to our former Dean, Dr. Tom O'Brien, for coming! The students very much appreciate when administrators support them and so do I!

Thanks to Bill Bebrin for taking the group photo above - wish we had captured everyone but it was getting late.

Thanks also to this year's Chapter Officers for their extraordinary work! It is a pleasure to work with them as their Faculty Advisor.

We Got the Grant and the Exciting Research Begins!

Writing proposals is a very time-consuming and challenging endeavor.

And, once a proposal is submitted to an organization or funding agency for peer review, ultimately getting funding to conduct the research described in the proposal, is far from guaranteed. In many competitive calls for proposals less that 15% of the proposals will get funded.

So why bother to take the time out of one's busy schedule to engage in such an activity, which does not guarantee a positive pay-off?

Moreover, why should faculty in business schools, who could be spending their time consulting, teaching in Executive Ed, etc., even bother to write proposals?

I write proposals because I truly believe in the research underlying the projects and much frontier research today is multidisciplinary, which means bringing teams together. This may be costly in the sense that there may be travel involved, a new cadre of students to engage in the research and to educate, plus equipment (at the very least, computers) to purchase. Plus, one must scope out the time to be able to do the collaborative research. Hence, to do multidisciplinary research, which crosses boundaries, often requires financial backing and funding.

Of course, one can just go with one's comfortable status quo but I refuse to not be growing and challenging myself, as well as my students and collaborators. Hence, I continue to write proposals and to plant my seeds wherever I can, and to see which ones germinate.

The receipt of a research grant, that has been subject to peer review (I am not talking about earmarked projects which I have never been the beneficiary of), provides a type of validation that is important both professionally and, to me, at least, personally. It means that the community of scholars believes in one's ideas and creativity. This type of recognition gives one an added push to do one's best to excel.

Moreover, it provides a type of freedom to conduct the research because one has attained both the backing of one's peers (who are always anonymous in reviewing the proposals) and the financial support to pursue new, challenging research topics. It also opens up new opportunities -- one may get invited to present the new research at workshops and conferences and to attend special meetings at the funding agency, etc., which can provide venues for additional intellectual exchanges and idea generation.

Plus, when the efforts of writing a proposal result in positive reviews (even after multiple setbacks, and I have had my share of those but I never give up or stop trying) and the funding agency decides to award the grant, one, literally, with all the project co-investigators, glows with happiness and with renewed energy.

We heard the wonderful news this week (and it came after the onslaught of Hurricane Irene). Our multidisciplinary research project consisting of a team of engineers, computer scientists, and me (I will be providing the management science and network economics perspective to the project) has been funded and it is a three year project. It involves multiple institutions and a colleague of mine in the College of Engineering and I at the Isenberg School of Management will be leading the UMass Amherst effort.

A brief abstract of our project, which is being funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), is below.

Computer networks, in particular the Internet, represent essential infrastructure for business, government, military, and personal communication. Several recent trends in technology and network use have pushed the capabilities required of the Internet beyond what can be provided by the currently deployed infrastructure. This project develops a transformative shift in the design of networks that enables sustained innovation in the core of the network using economic principles. The core idea is that supporting choice is the key aspect of a network architecture that can adapt to emerging solutions for current and future challenges.

The network architecture designed and prototyped in this work aims to:

(1) encourage alternatives to allow users to choose among a range of services,

(2) let users vote with their wallet to reward superior and innovative services,

(3) provides the mechanisms to stay informed on available alternatives and their performances.

Solutions are approached from different directions reflecting the team’s multidisciplinary expertise in computer networking, network systems, management science, and network economics.

The broader impact of this project contributes to enhancing the functionality and usability of the next-generation Internet, which is expected to become an important piece of infrastructure. The project also integrates research and education of graduate and undergraduate students at the participating organizations, where current efforts to integrate underrepresented minorities are continued. Results from this work are disseminated in the form of an open-source prototype and publications.

Now the exciting research begins.

What wonderful news to receive just in time for the new academic 2011-2012 year!

Highlights and Photos -- The First Northeast Regional INFORMS Conference at UMass Amherst

It takes a lot of planning and hard work to put on a conference and any successful conference is a major collaborative effort that takes months of preparation and careful attention to detail and logistics.

The First Northeast Regional INFORMS Conference, which took place May 6-7, 2011, at UMass Amherst is now over and from all the comments that we have received, it was clearly a success.

Below I feature, through photos, some of the highlights of our conference.

Mornings at UMass Amherst Before the Sessions Began



Mary Magrogan and Tracy Byrnes of INFORMS with Some Members of the UMass Amherst INFORMS Student Chapter in the Registration Area

The Introductions by Dr. Hari Balasubramania, Chair of the Conference, and Dean Mark Fuller of the Isenberg School



The Plenary Talks by Dr. David Simchi-Levi of MIT, Dr. Alex "Sandy" Pentland of the Media Lab at MIT, and Dr. Brenda Dietrich of IBM




The Interesting Panels, Some of the Speakers, and Coffee Breaks






Poster Session, Reception, and Informal Get-Togethers






Special thanks to the institutions that provided financial support, including the Isenberg School and the College of Engineering at UMass Amherst, and to Dr. Hari Balasubramanian of the College of Engineering at UMass Amherst and to Dr. Les Servi of MITRE, for their extraordinary efforts in making this conference a success. It was such a pleasure to work with them.

Also, thanks to all those who traveled to our campus and gave such wonderful presentations and engaged everyone in stimulating conversations and discussions.

Thanks and applause to Mary Magrogan and Tracy Byrnes of INFORMS for spending several days at UMass Amherst and for doing so much before and doing the conference.

I would also like to thank the officers and members of the UMass Amherst INFORMS Student Chapter who helped out with the projectors, the session notices, by giving directions, etc. Plus, many of the members presented their research and some even were panelists!