UMass Amherst INFORMS Student Chapter Shines at Award Ceremony at Annual Meeting in Philadelphia

I am back from the great INFORMS conference, which took place in Philadelphia, November 1-4, 2015.  It was an exceptional conference and one of the many highlights was the Student Chapter Award ceremony that took place this past Monday evening.

As readers of this blog know, our UMass Amherst INFORMS Student Chapter received the summa cum laude award for its activities and it was wonderful to see other chapters recognized with both the magna cum laude and cum laude awards. More information on the selection process is here.

The UMass Amherst INFORMS Student Chapter is now in its 12th year of operation and I have enjoyed serving as its Faculty Advisor during this period. The members (graduate students as well as some faculty) and officers hail primarily from the Isenberg School of Management (ISOM) (principally from the Department of Operations Management) and from the College of Engineering (mainly from the Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering (MIE)).

Needless to say, the students (and I) were so excited about the evening ceremony. The news had spread and quite a few of our alums, who are now professors at various colleges and universities,  also stopped by to help us celebrate.

Below are some photos that I took of the event.

Last year's UMass Amherst INFORMS Student Chapter President, Michael Prokle, received the Judith B. Liebman Award from INFORMS for his exceptional service to the chapter. I had nominated Michael for this award because he had worked tirelessly for the chapter and we had many terrific events, including our 10th anniversary celebration. Michael was given the award plaque by incoming INFORMS President, Professor Ed Kaplan of Yale University, and Dave Hunt, the VP of Chapters / Fora.

Michael is the 4th recipient of the Judith Liebman Award from the UMass Amherst INFORMS Student Chapter with the others being: Dr. Tina Wakolbinger, Dr. Patrick Qiang, and Dr. Amir H. Masoumi. The latter three were my PhD students in Management Science at the Isenberg School of Management, and they are now are very successful professors.

It was very exciting to see our student chapter receive the top award and to see the Chapter Officers (several present and past ones)  on the stage.

Joining David Hunt and Ed Kaplan on the stage were: this year's Chapter President, Zana Cranmer of MIE, Tulay Varol of ISOM (a former chapter officer), Michael Prokle, Pritha Dutta of ISOM, Shivani Shukla of ISOM and past President, Sara Saberi of ISOM, who has held many offices in the chapter, Heng Chen, also of ISOM and a past officer, and Amirhossein Alamdar Yazdi of ISOM and past chapter officer.

After the awards were given out, we posed with some of our alums and with Professor Hari Balasubramanian of MIE, and then it was time to go to the reception next door with sumptious food and fabulous desserts.

Joining me in the above photo are Isenberg School of Management PhD alums, who came to support our students, and they were all very active members of our student chapter: Dr. Ameera Ibrahim of St. Mary's College in CA, Dr. Farbod Farhadi of Roger Williams University in Rhode Island (they were both Professor Ahmed Ghoniem's doctoral students), and my former PhD students: Dr. Min Yu of the University of Portland in Oregon, Dr. Michelle Li of Arkansas State University, and Dr. Amir H. Masoumi of Manhattan College in NYC.

After a very special night, some of us got together the next morning for the Chapter and Fora breakfast. I always emphasize the importance of showing up to students!

Many thanks also to Courtney Biefeld of INFORMS and to the official photographer for all that they do to help us with making activities with our students a success! Also, many thanks to the administrators at the Isenberg School of Management and the College of Engineering for their support of the chapter.

Congratulations to everyone and keep up the terrific work!

Celebrating the Return of My Academic Daughter to the Isenberg School

When family members get together, whether for holidays or other occasions, these are, typically, special events.

Who isn't happy to see one's child return from college for a break, from a trip abroad, or even from summer camp?

Today, we hosted one of my former doctoral students at the Isenberg School of Management, Tina Wakolbinger, who received her PhD with a concentration in Management Science in 2007 from UMass Amherst. After receiving her PhD she became an Assistant Professor at the Fogelman College of Business and Economics at the University of Memphis in Tennessee and less than 4 years after, became a Full Professor at the Vienna University of Economics and Business in Austria. She is also the Head of the Research Institute on Supply Chain Management there. 

She skipped the "Associate Professor" part in the usual progression in academia of Assistant Professor to Associate Professor and then, hopefully, promotion to Full Professor.

Since I was the chair of Tina's doctoral dissertation committee, I am her academic "Mom." She was my 13th PhD student (in her case this was a very lucky number).

Tina was in Massachusetts for the Dynamics of Disasters Symposium that I organized for the AAAS Annual Meeting in Boston and she very much wanted to come back to her alma mater. So, yesterday we drove back from Boston and she checked into the Campus Center hotel in the middle of UMass Amherst. She really enjoyed the spaciousness and comfort of the room. We dined at Arigato in downtown Amherst, since that is where she went to celebrate after getting the job offer from the University of Memphis.

It was really pleasant to stroll through downtown Amherst and to see what had changed in the past 6 years since she received her PhD.

Today, we had a celebratory lunch in honor of her visit at the University Club.

We took some photos in the Supernetworks Lab, where Tina also had an office as a PhD student.

Then it was time for her seminar: The Value of Information Systems for Product Recovery Management, which was based on a paper that she had co-authored with Fuminori Toyasaki and William Kettinger and which was just published in the International Journal of Production Research.

Her talk was hosted by me and the UMass Amherst INFORMS Student Chapter and the attendance was great.Tina had been the former President of this Student Chapter and received the Judith Liebman Award from INFORMS for her terrific work. She also helped me with the Speaker Series and we used Room 112, which was the (revised) venue for her talk today, so the site was perfect.

We had a reception before the talk.

After her fabulous presentation, in which she discussed models that she and her co-authors developed that quantify under what conditions investments in Information-intensive Product Recovery Systems (IPRS) are economically justifiable for manufacturers and when policy-makers need to consider facilitating their implementation.She focused on PCs as an example and discussed different frameworks in different countries in Europe (whether centralized collection strategies were used or decentralized ones).

After the talk, we took some more photos and presented Professor Wakolbinger with a gift from the Isenberg School.

Then it was time to put Professor Wakolbinger on the Peter Pan bus since she was off to visit another former doctoral student of mine, Professor Jose Cruz, who is a tenured Associate Professor at the School of Business at UConn. She will be giving a talk there tomorrow.

The Fora Awards breakfast at INFORMS San Diego

I would be remiss not to share some photos taken at the Fora awards breakfast in San Diego at the INFORMS conference on October 13, 2009. Above I have posted some photos of those in attendance as well as several of the award recipients.

I, again, congratulate all the INFORMS student chapters on their awards, as well as those individuals who were honored with the Judith Liebman award and the Moving Spirit award for Fora and for chapters.

My colleague, Professor Ana Muriel of the Mechanical and Engineering Department at UMass Amherst, received the Moving Spirit Award for Fora for her work with WORMS as its former President. My former doctoral student, Dr. Patrick Qiang, was a recipient of a Judith Liebman award.

Please see my post below for some photos of the WORMS luncheon in San Diego.