Congratulations to the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University on its 25th Anniversary!

The Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard is truly a very special place. I had the great honor of being a Science Fellow in 2005-2006, just a few years after its founding in 1999. It was an incredible year for me with wonderful new friendships made, the writing of my Supply Chain Network Economics book, and many experiences plus collaborations, including with the now Dean of SEAS, David Parkes. Radcliffe also supported my collaborator Patrizia Daniele of Catania, Italy, and she wrote her Dynamic Networks book while at Radcliffe. She also worked with me and Parkes. The Science Fellows were housed at Putnam House and there were engineers, physicists, mathematicians, and computational linguists with us. Radcliffe, at that time, had several buildings for the Fellows. We joined one another for delicious lunches and talks as well as receptions and special events. Since that fabulous year, I have been back to visit many times, and have been a Summer Fellow at Radcliffe twice. I also co-organized with David Parkes an Exploratory Radcliffe Seminar focusing on dynamic networks. Radcliffe now has its own quad and all Fellows are housed in the same building. I love the garden and fountain and there are also often art exhibits.

So, when I heard that Radcliffe would be celebrating its 25th anniversary on September 26 and 27, I had to join, despite a busy teaching schedule, office hours, hosting of  a speaker, and also an All School Meeting of the Isenberg School! To-date, there have been about 1,200 Radcliffe Fellows. 

On September 26, Radcliffe, to kick off its 25th anniversary, hosted an outstanding panel. The session began with introductory remarks by Radcliffe Institute Dean Tomiko Brown-Nagin, who shared some of the history of the Radcliffe Institute and also noted her predecessors as Dean. When I was at Radcliffe, Drew Gilpin Faust was the Radcliffe Dean, and I told her that she would become the next President of Harvard and she did the year after my Fellowship year! The Science Dean my year was the outstanding, very inspiring computer scientist Barbara Grosz.  Brown-Nagin also shared a terrific video of an astronomy discovery by Radcliffe Fellows, which included Alyssa Goodman, whom I have met.

The panel, consisting of two Nobel laureates in Economic Sciences, Claudia Goldin and Oliver Hart, both of whom had been Radcliffe Fellows,  was moderated by the present President of Harvard, Alan Garber. Claudia was a Radcliffe Fellow the same year that I was and here you can see the full 2005-2006 list: https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2005/06/radcliffe-names-2005-06-fellows/

President Garber was an outstanding moderator and I was very impressed by his delightful sense of humor! He reminisced about carrying punch cards across campus, as a student, and always being worried about dropping them. When Claudia spoke, she brought back so many memories of that magical year. She mentioned Geraldine Brooks and her husband Tony Horwitz (who sadly passed away not that long ago) and said that Claudia Olivetti became her best friend. Coincidentally, Claudia is Italian as is my collaborator, Patrizia Daniele. I recall fondly many conversations over lunch together about Berlusconi. Claudia spoke beautifully about what economics is and noted that there are too few females majoring in economics. Male undergrads think econ is finance, so they major in it whereas females also think that econ is finance, so they shy away from it. She emphasized that economics is about people! That reminded me of the essay that I wrote for ORMS Today: In the End, It's All About People!   Oliver Hart, when asked about the influence of technology on his work, said that, as a theoretical economist, he just needs a yellow pad and pencil. He said that he does use technology to communicate with his collaborators but misses the trips that he would take to collaborate face to face. Claudia said that having access to AI would have saved her lots of drudgery type work.

Both Claudia and Oliver are so passionate about their research and that was incredibly energizing and inspiring to hear. 

Information on the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study and its Fellowship Program can be found here.

And here is a post on the 10th anniversary of Radcliffe in which I have several photos from our Fellowship year and in the photos are several individuals noted above.

A Big Thank You to the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University

This summer I had the great pleasure of being back at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University as a Summer Fellow. This program was made available to those who had been Fellows at Radcliffe and wanted to return. Having had an incredible year as a Science Fellow back in 2005-2006, and also having been a Summer Fellow in 2017, I knew that I wanted to return for numerous reasons.

The past two months of being back at Radcliffe and living in Cambridge, at 83 Brattle Street, have been idyllic. My project theme this summer was entitled: Perishable Product Supply Chains from Food to Blood. During the Summer Fellowship not only did a tremendous amount of work get accomplished (my co-editors and I completed our edited volume: Dynamics of Disasters: Algorithmic Approaches and Applications,with Springer as the publisher, a paper on food supply chains was completed and submitted to a journal, and two other papers are nearing completion, with all acknowledging Radcliffe), but the interactions with the exceptional community of scholars, writers, artists, scientists, engineers, and human rights activists, made for excellent talks, conversations that lingered, new friendships made, and sustenance obtained that will support us in both present and future endeavors. Below are a few photos from the Summer Fellowship including several of the delicious lunches that we were served!

 

 

And, since Cambridge/Boston is such an attractive location globally, I had the pleasure of also hosting students, alums, and friends, with a highlight being dinner at the UMass Club in Boston at which we saw a rainbow over Boston  and the sun setting.

And no wonder I always feel so at home at Radcliffe, the library there has a bunch of my books!

A huge thank you to the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, its staff, and its amazing community, which recognizes the importance of multidisciplinary research in pushing the frontiers.

Wonderful to Be Back at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University

This Summer I am a Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study (RIAS)  at Harvard University. I was a Science Fellow at RIAS in 2005-2006, which was a momentous year since, that year, the Dean of Radcliffe, Dr. Drew Gilpin Faust, was named the first female President of Harvard University and succeeded Dr. Larry Summers. She has had a fabulous tenure as President of Harvard and the new Harvard President will be Dr. Larry Bacow.

Some faculty enjoy taking a break over the summer, I enjoy being challenged. Last summer, I also was a Fellow at RIAS and loved the experience. I was honored when I was invited back.

The Fellows have offices in Byerly Hall, which is situated in the beautiful Radcliffe Yard.

I must say that my experience this summer began when I returned to Radcliffe on May 25, 2018, for the truly special Radcliffe Day, at which Hillary Clinton was awarded the Radcliffe Medal and the day was filled with wonderful panels, talks, including speeches by Madeleine Albright and Hillary, of course,  and a delicious lunch, with the Dean of Radcliffe, Dr. Liz Cohen, officiating and she did a stupendous job!

I was delighted to see several of the Radcliffe Fellows in my 2005-2006 cohort at Radcliffe Day, including Science Fellows Rina Dechter of UC Irvine and Diane Souvaine of Tufts, both computer scientists, so we took the photo in the garden below as a memento. Diane is now the Chair of the National Science Board - very impressive!

During my Summer Fellowship at Harvard University, I am working on a project very near and dear to me: Perishable Product Supply Chains from Food to Blood.

I have a standing desk in my office, which I love

and, in addition, to interacting with other fellows and even meeting students working with fellows (today I had lunch with a female computer science major at Harvard who is from Amherst and went to Amherst High School!), I always enjoy hosting visitors since Cambridge/Boston is such an international magnet.

On May 28, 2018, I had the pleasure of showing Professor Kei May Lau, a distinguished professor from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST), who was in town attending a conference at MIT, the lovely sunken garden at Radcliffe. Kei May was a Professor at UMass Amherst before moving to HK and is a dear friend.

And, in just a short time, I have solved some problems, revised and resubmitted a paper to a journal with several co-authors from different countries, and have finalized the book: Dynamics of Disasters: Algorithmic Approaches and Applications, that I co-edited with Illias S. Kotsireas and Panos M. Pardalos, which is now in press with Springer Publishing International Switzerland. I also (and it was so convenient) had the pleasure of taking part in the Isenberg School's Business Leadership Awards gala at the Colonnade Hotel in Boston last Thursday. The photo below is with several of my former students (now alums) and colleagues, including the Isenberg School Dean Mark A. Fuller, who is stepping down after 9 years of terrific leadership of our business school at UMass Amherst.

More adventures await! Many thanks to the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study for the wonderful support of extraordinary intellectual life!

Serendipity of Academic Travel

As an academic I travel a lot from conferences to giving invited seminars to living abroad in various countries when an exciting opportunity arises.

Travel helps to sustain that sense of wonder, which I believe is very important to overall creativity, including research, and to the enjoyment of life.

Of course, when one goes to conferences, gives talks, and holds visiting appointments at various universities, one gets to see people that one would expect to and this is in itself wonderful.

However, this blogpost is about the unexpected meetings, which make for pleasant conversations as well as memories, and help to make the world smaller and people closer.

For example, as readers of this blog know, for the past two weeks I have been in conferences in Europe.

One morning, while strolling for breakfast in Vienna, Austria, where I was attending and speaking at the EURO Humanitarian Operations (HOpe) conference, I came across the gentleman below.

Since I am a faculty member at the Isenberg School of Management at UMass I had to stop to talk to him. He is from Silicon Valley and his son had just graduated in May 2017 with his MBA from the Isenberg School. The Dad was proudly wearing his Isenberg garb that his son had given him. We chatted pleasantly about his son's experiences in our program and even about his favorite professors and activities while enrolled. The meeting made for a wonderful day being even brighter.

That weekend, when between a followup visit to the Vienna University of Economics and Business (which had been the venue for the EURO HOpe conference) and travels to the next conference in Kalamata, Greece (which I had co-organized), it was time to visit a new country. A short train ride from Vienna and we were in Bratislava, Slovakia, where my husband and I enjoyed the eastern European cuisine, crossed the New Bridge over the Danube by foot and then headed to climb up to the castle in the photo below.

At the castle, we were stopped by a gentleman who had noticed my husband's college cap.

He had also graduated from my husband's alma mater, Lafayette College, and was on a European holiday with his family. He works at the SEC. We exchanged business cards.

Now back at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, where I am a Summer Fellow (and had been a Science Fellow in 2005-2006), I had the pleasure of seeing another Summer Fellow - Dr. Elaine Chew. She and I, we believe, are the only two Radcliffe Fellows ever  to have PhDs with a specialty in Operations Research. Moreover, she and I are academic relatives in that her doctoral dissertation advisor at MIT, Professor Georgia Perakis, had the same dissertation advisor at Brown University as I did - Professor Stella Dafermos, so, technically, I am Elaine's academic aunt.

Amazingly, last year, at this time, which is the Trinity Term, I was a Visiting Fellow at All Souls College in beautiful Oxford, England. There were about a dozen Visiting Fellows at that time, representing different fields, including Dr.  Su Fang Ng, who was a Fellow with me at Radcliffe in 2005-2006! The photo below was taken in the garden at Oxford outside our offices.

And, the other evening, while taking a walk with my husband in the Harvard Square area, we were greeted by a big Hello! It was a neighbor of ours, whose family lives on the same street in Amherst, MA, as we do. He is now a postdoc at Harvard University. It was wonderful to catch up since we had not spoken with him since he began his doctoral studies at Dartmouth!

This week, we will be off to the IFORS conference in Quebec City, Canada, where thousands of operations researchers from around the globe will be presenting their latest work. We will see whom we meet because of the serendipity of academic travel.

Celebrated Publication of Our Cybersecurity Investment Game Theory Paper at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University

Today, I had the pleasure of seeing my most recent PhD student from the Isenberg School of Management, Shivani Shukla, who successfully defended her dissertation in May, and is now Dr. Shivani Shukla. She will soon assume her new tenure track academic position in San Francisco - very exciting!

Shivani and I were celebrating the publication of our paper, which is on cybersecurity investments, and which appears in the July issue of the European Journal of Operational Research. 

I also very much wanted to show Shivani the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study (RIAS) at Harvard University where I am spending the summer as a Fellow. I had been a Science Fellow at RIAS in 2005-2006, which was quite the historic year with Harvard's President at that time, Dr. Larry Summers, resigning, and the Dean of Radcliffe, Dr. Drew Gilpin Faust, becoming the first female President of Harvard. She announced her resignation recently, after serving for 10 years.

And, what serendipity, when Shivani and I entered the gorgeous RIAS Fellows  Building, Byerly Hall, we saw a UMass Amherst colleague, Dr. Andrea Nahmod of the Math/Stats Department, who is also a Summer Fellow and had just returned from a conference in France!

I gave Shivani a tour and emphasized all the features that make RIAS so special - from the focus on interdisciplinarity, to the ambience, the staff, the Fellows, and even the beautiful garden, where we posed in with our latest paper.

Of course, we also enjoyed a delicious lunch at Algiers and then treats at Burdick's.

As an academic, it gives me great joy to see my 20th PhD student begin on her new academic journey with a nice portfolio of journal articles already in hand! I hope that, one day, she will be a Fellow at RIAS!

My Talk on Game Theory for Disaster Relief and Blood Supply Chains at Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University

Today is the first day of summer and it is a glorious day in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

It is also a perfect day for my presentation on Game Theory Network Models for Disaster Relief and Blood Supply Chains.

I am at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study (RIAS) at Harvard University as a Summer Fellow (and was a Fellow 2005-2006). It is truly special to be back at RIAS, which now has Byerly Hall remodeled for all the Fellows which hail from around the globe and represent numerous disciplines. The energy, enthusiasm, and collegiality among the Fellows is truly special. In the summer there are talks given at lunches and the menu for mine is exquisite with two of my favorite food groups: salmon and baklava!

It is challenging to prepare a talk, which is on a technical subject, since I specialize in operations research and math modelling, to a general audience. I like such challenges and presented at RIAS back in 2005-2006. I have also done such presentations at the Rockefeller Foundation's Bellagio Center on Lake Como as well as at the World Science Festival in NYC  and at one of the New York Times' EnergyforTomorrow events. In addition, I enjoyed giving a Distinguished Faculty lecture at UMass Amherst a while back when I received the Chancellor's Medal.

My presentation can be downloaded here.

It was wonderful to have scientists, mathematicians, anthropologists, literature specialists, and others at my talk. Thanks to RIAS for such an amazing Fellowship Program!

Also, I could not resist taking a photo with a Radcliffe staff member who was here when I was a Science Fellow in 2005-2006.

And a special surprise was seeing so many of my books on a shelf in the seminar room today!

Green Spaces At and Near Harvard University

It's been a terrific week and I am enjoying being back at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University very much. Byerly Hall is where the Fellows, including the Summer Fellows, have their offices, and my office overlooks a fountain and a garden.

Since I am a tree hugger and it is now June it is wonderful to discover and to enjoy special places in Cambridge and Boston that are green! I continue to do research on sustainability and have also published on the design of sustainable supply chains for sustainable cities.

Besides the Cambridge Common, featured below,

I find the Harvard Business School, with its lovely collection of buildings, surrounded by beautiful landscaping and flowers a true gem.

A favorite discovery of mine, while taking a walk on Brattle Street, is the Mount Auburn Cemetery, which is a national landmark, and not only the burial place of numerous historical figures, but also an expanse of lovely gardens, fountains, and architecture. I saw a turkey, a bunny, and multiple chipmunks and was serenaded by birds during a walk there last week.

Another favorite green space is the public garden in Boston, which is an absolute delight.

And, after explorations and soaking in the beauty of green spaces as well as the fragrant air, it is always terrific to come back to Radcliffe where the painting below hangs outside my office.

Green spaces add so much to the quality of life in cities.