World Congress on Global Optimization in France and a Special Surprise

I returned last evening from Europe, having spent the past three weeks at conferences and transit points between. During this period I had the pleasure of being in 8 different countries. I delivered 2 conference presentations (in Dublin and in Kalamata, Greece), 1 tutorial (in Dublin), spoke on 2 panels (also in Dublin), presented at IBM Dublin, and also gave a plenary talk at the World Congress on Global Optimization (WCGO) in Metz, France. I blogged about the EURO 2019 Conference in Dublin and also about the Dynamics of Disasters conference that I had co-organized in Kalamata (yes, like the olives).

I thoroughly enjoyed all these conferences from the large, with over 2,000 delegates, EURO Dublin conference to the smaller Dynamics of Disasters conference and the mid-sized WCGO.

WCGO began with an opening remarks. The timetable for the conference can be downloaded here.

The plenary talk that I gave at  the WCGO was in the Constantin Caratheodory Prize session. This year I was tremendously honored and humbled and surprised to be the recipient of the 2019 Constantin Caratheodory Prize, along with Professor Anatoly Zhigljavsky of Cardiff University in Wales. More information about the prize and the previous recipients of this prize can be found on the International Society of Global Optimization website. As I said in my acceptance speech, I am standing on the shoulders of giants. I am very grateful to the Chair of the Prize Committee, Distinguished University Professor Panos M. Pardalos of the University of Florida (and former recipient of this and many other prizes), and to all the committee members for this truly distinctive honor. In the photo below, I am standing with, from l-r: Professor Yaroslav Sergeyev, a member of the prize committee, Professor Zhigljavsky, and Professor Panos M. Pardalos. Professor Sergeyev is also President of the International Society of Global Optimization.

A nice article on the prize was published by UMass Amherst - thank you! I very much appreciate the congratulatory messages that I have been receiving from faculty and staff  at my university and many other faculty and even former students from around the globe!

I have posted my plenary talk because it is on a very timely topic and on research conducted with one of my doctoral students, Deniz Besik, and other collaborators.

The WCGO was an intellectual (and social) feast with plenary talks given by renowned researchers, beginning on the first day with a breathtaking plenary by Pardalos on networks and brain research with applications to epilepsy and Parkinson's,  to a very dynamic, fascinating last day plenary by Professor Sergiy Butenko of Texas A&M University. Butenko, who is the Editor of the Journal of Global Optimization, spoke on his unifying framework for network analysis and cliques with applications ranging from social networks to material science! To have the opportunity to listen to these and such plenary speakers as Professor Ben-Tal of Israel, Professor Immmanuel Bomze of Austria (who is also the President of EURO and I had had the pleasure of seeing him at EURO Dublin), Professor Fukushima of Japan, and Professor Zhigljavsky of the UK, was simply fabulous!

Below I have posted a few photos from the talks of several of the plenary speakers.

Thanks to the organizers for taking the group photo of all the delegates below - a very happy group, I must say!

It was wonderful to have joint coffee breaks, delicious lunches served us, and a truly exceptional banquet, at which I had so much fun, I woke up twice the night afterwards laughing because of the stories and jokes exchanged.

I met researchers from so many different countries at WCGO, including: Botswana, Benin, Algeria, Israel, Morocco, Iran, Italy, Germany, Ireland, the UK, USA, Greece, Ukraine, Russia, Poland, India, Japan, among others, and even Kazakhstan! I had to take the group photo at the banquet with researchers from that country and a friend - so many women, which was great and even a rector of a university there!

It was also a delight to see Professor Christine Shoemaker, formerly of Cornell University, and a member of the National Academy of Engineering, who is now a faculty member in Singapore, at WCGO.

This was truly a World Congress on Global Optimization and I thank the organizers for an outstanding experience with new friendships made, and new research ideas generated. As a colleague from Germany said to me: this was a conference that we enjoyed not only great scientific exchanges but we also met wonderful new colleagues!

And, at the onset of the conference in France, the US women's soccer team won the World Cup - simply perfect!

Serving on Habilitation Dissertation (Higher than a PhD) Committee in France

Academics are always open to new experiences.  New experiences are interesting and valuable and help you to grow.

Today, I had the pleasure of taking part in a dissertation defense since I am on a habilitation dissertation committee of Dr. Patrick Maille.  Dr. Maille is an Associate Professor at Telecom Bretagne (part of Institut Mines-Telecom) in France and last year was a Visiting Scholar at the University of California Berkeley, working with Dr. Jean Walrand, whose work I am very much a fan of.

I agreed to be on Patrick's committee after I received an invitation from him last March since Patrick's work is very complementary to our NSF project research, both to our most recent ChoiceNet project and our new EAGER project.

Moreover, he is the co-author, with Dr. Bruno Tuffin, of the book: Telecommunication Network Economics,  published by Cambridge University Press, which I have read and reread.

I like it that in the book he cites my Supply Chain Network Economics book since I consistently see (and he does, as well) many behavioral similarities associated with decision-makers in the Internet space and in supply chains.

A habilitation is even "higher" than a PhD. According to Wikipedia, a  habilitation is "the highest academic qualification a scholar can achieve by his or her own pursuit in many countries in Europe, Central Asia, Egypt and the Caucasus." And it is usually earned after attaining a research doctorate.

This was a new experience for me since, although I have chaired 18 doctoral dissertations, and have served on committees as an external examiner for dissertations in Canada, Norway, and Sweden, this was my first habilitation experience.

In addition to reading the habilitation dissertation, I read quite a few papers of Dr. Maille's, and examined his professional dossier of accomplishments. I also had to complete a report on his publications provided to me one month before the defense date, which was today.

I was invited to the defense in Rennes, France, but, given all of my travel commitments this month, which I blogged about in a previous post, I asked whether I could teleconference in. Tough to turn down a trip to France during this beautiful time of year especially since another member of the committee, Dr. Eitan Altman, had been my host in Paris at the NetGCoop conference  4 years ago when I gave a keynote talk on supply chains. But, as I have written on this blog, this October is an extremely busy month for me.

Dr. Maille had received permission from his university to have me teleconference in for the defense. Yesterday, we checked out the technology, a new software I had never used before,  and Skype. The new software worked yesterday but not this morning, so good old reliable Skype was used and it worked great! I had been sent the presentation slides this morning. Last year, I Skyped in for Niklas Arvidsson's doctoral dissertation defense at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden. Niklas  received an international dissertation prize a few months ago for his thesis, which is terrific.

The habilitation this morning, for me, and the afternoon for my French colleagues, began with an introduction of the committee, followed by about a 45 minute presentation by the candidate. Then it was time for comments from the committee members, and questions from the committee, followed by more discussions. Overall, the defense took about 2 hours and then the committee members in France (with me, in the meantime, getting a virtual tour of the premises)  ambled with the computer with Skype to another room where we together prepared a report in French.  I am fluent in several languages but French is not one of them so this part was quite interesting. Luckily, some of my comments after Dr. Maille's presentation had been typed up so there was some translating and enhancing done and the report was completed. It was a very enjoyable part of a very pleasant habilitation experience!

The candidate successfully passed his habilitation so a BIG congratulations to Dr. Patrick Maille. He can now apply for a Full Professorship and can supervise doctoral students independently.

I toasted with a glass of champagne virtually!

Looking Forward to Speaking in Paris at the NetGCoop Conference

I will be giving a plenary talk at the 2011 NetGCoop International Conference on Network Games, Control, and Optimization, which takes place next month in Paris, France.

The title of my plenary is: Grand Challenges and Opportunities in Supply Chain Network Analysis and Design. Another plenary speaker will be my good colleague, Professor Asu Ozdaglar from MIT, whom we had hosted in our speaker series a while back.

Pretty cool that the organizers have selected several females as plenary speakers!

I am very much looking forward to this conference.

Above I have posted several photos from my trip to Paris 3 summers ago when I spoke at the Funding Transportation Infrastructure Conference and at the Computing in Economics and Finance Conference at the Sorbonne.

Professors and the World Cup

Being a professor means that one has students, colleagues, and friends from around the world.

During the 2010 World Cup that is taking place now in South Africa there has been a lot of drama, unexpected victories, and unexpected losses.

I have heard recently from friends who are from Chile, The Netherlands, Brazil, Argentina, Egypt, Italy, China, Cape Verde, Ukraine, and other countries, all of whom are intently following the various games and upsets (as well as dubious calls by the refs, the incidents of good sportsmanship and the opposite, and all the various trials and tribulations and the associated drama).

As I had mentioned in an earlier blogpost, the 2010 World Cup began while I was at a conference in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

At the finals of the previous World Cup, in 2006, I was at a conference in glorious Erice in Italy and we watched Italy beat France and then this entire town, which is on the island of Sicily, erupted in celebrations and fireworks. Amazingly, the morning after, I flew back to Boston safely on Alitalia from Naples without incident and enjoyed a delicious meal on the plane.

During the World Cup in 2002, my family and I were living in Innsbruck, Austria, while I was on a Fulbright.

Above are photos taken in Erice during the finals back in 2006.

What a difference 4 years make in terms of World Cup play!