Photos from the Women in OR/MS Award Lunch in Austin, Texas

Above I share some photos with you taken at the Women in Operations Research and the Management Sciences (WORMS) Awards Luncheon this past Tuesday at the INFORMS conference in Austin, Texas.

Congratulations to Dr. Brenda Dietrich of IBM for being awarded the WORMS award for 2010! Dr. Candi Yano of the University of California Berkeley chaired this year's award committee.

For previous winners please see the WORMS website.

This event is always one of my favorite ones at the annual INFORMS conference.

See how many individuals you recognize in the above photos.

A Truly Terrific Tuesday at INFORMS in Austin, Texas

Today has been a truly terrific Tuesday at the INFORMS conference, which is taking place in Austin, Texas.

I have been taking part in this conference since Sunday that has attracted thousands of operations researchers and management scientists to this fascinating city.

Today, my day began with the Fora/Chapters Awards breakfast at which the INFORMS student chapter awards were given as well as the Judith Liebmane award, and the Moving Spirit award. Joining me at the table were Dr. Yupo Chan, Dr. Les Servi, and several past Presidents of the UMass Amherst INFORMS Student Chapter that I serve as the Faculty Advisor of -- Drs. Patrick Qiang, Zugang "Leo" Liu, and Min Yu.

It was terrific to see so many student officers from chapters throughout the US in attendance as well as their Faculty Advisors plus members of the Subdivisions Council. A great breakfast was had by all with a lot of enthusiasm and cameraderie. Congrats to all the winners!

Then I attended a keynote talk by Professor John Birge of the Booth School of Business at the University of Chicago. He spoke on risk management and what went wrong in such disasters as the mortgage crisis, the volcanic eruptions in Iceland, and the BP oil disaster. He emphasized incentives and system and mechanism design and how the former, if constructed properly, may have prevented the ramifications and perhaps the occurrence of such catastrophic events. His talk reminded me that in transportation we already are providing incentives for travelers to change their selfish behavior in the form of tolls that enable the system-optimizing solutions to prevail!

The keynote was followed by a wonderful set of presentations by Dr. Alice Smith and Dr. Candi Yano who spoke in a WORMS (Women in Operations Research and the Management Sciences) session. Dr. Smith talked about international collaborations with rich graphics and stories about her personal experiences. Dr. Yano, in turn, had interviewed 6 senior/veteran females in OR/MS to extract their experiences and lessons learned from the trenches. Their talks were fabulous and there was a lot of interesting discussion.

Afterwards, one of my favorite events of an INFORMS conference took place -- the WORMS award luncheon at which Dr. Brenda Dietrich of IBM received the award for 2010. She was also elected an INFORMS Fellow this year. The luncheon of salmon and risotto with vegetables and salad was delicious and was finished off by a multitiered chocolate, mocha torte. Joining me at the table were several former doctoral students of mine from the Isenberg School at UMass Amherst who are now professors and even a former undergrad from UMass Amherst who is now at NSF.

This has been a fabulous conference for seeing so many friends and colleagues.

Tonight is the general reception, which should be another great networking and reconnecting event.

Work and Life Balance Panel at INFORMS in Austin

In my previous post I wrote about the social networking panel that I was on yesterday morning at the INFORMS Conference that is taking place in Austin, Texas and provided some highlights of the discussions that took place. Thanks to Professor Laura McLay for organizing it!

My day "ended" yesterday by being on the Work and Life Balance panel at the conference which was organized by the JFIG and WORMS groups and spearheaded by Professors Sadan Kulturel-Konak and Burcu Keskin.

Joining me on the panel were: Professors Marty Wortman of Texas A&M, Larry Seiford of the University of Michigan, Professor Cindy Barnhart of MIT, and Ariela Sofer of George Mason University.

Some advice offered by the panelists:

Time management is extremely important but different people react differently to deadlines and managing stress so you should know what works best for you.

Throw money at the problem, if you can, from getting household help, to babysitters, etc.

Advocate at your university/college if it does not have proactive policies to support having children, etc. Work with the administration, other groups, and a faculty union, if relevant.

Rather than work and life "balance" it is more about "integration." One should have one's priorities, make lists, if that helps, and spend time on what matters to you. You should think of not only how to best allocate your scarce resources of time but also how to minimize regret. Spending time with your family is very important.

In terms of additional professional advice to junior faculty, do concentrate on research and prepare your teaching ahead of time. You can't afford to have a few years pass by without any research output and publications.

Make sure that you have single=authored papers before you are up for promotion and tenure.

Do enjoy the process -- our lives as academics are very full and take advantage of support networks!

Plus, go to conferences -- exchange ideas and meet new colleagues and make new friends!

Professor McLay who was in the audience for this panel was pleased that there were quite a few males attending this panel session. In contrast, and as we had noticed at our morning panel, there were only males in our social networking panel in the audience. Time for more females in technical areas to be blogging!