Excited About the 2nd Virtual Conference on Ukraine with Amazing Keynote Speakers!

The 2nd Virtual Conference on Ukraine (with free registration) will take place August 22-23, 2025.

Many thanks to the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) in Stockholm, Sweden for providing support.

Last year I was involved with the first such conference and, this year, I am honored to be on the conference Scientific Committee as well as to be one of the keynote speakers. This conference will also have 3 Nobel Laureates in Economics delivering keynotes: 

• Nobel Laureate Daron Acemoglu, MIT, USA
• Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman, City University of New York, USA
•  Roger Myerson, University of Chicago, USA

along with keynoters:

• Yuriy Gorodnichenko, UC Berkeley, USA
• Subal Kumbhakar, Binghamton University, USA.

I have the pleasure of working with Roger Myerson on the International Academic Board of the Kyiv School of Economics (KSE) and the same for Yuriy Gorodnichenko.

We are also organizing a panel on “Challenges of Ukraine’s Post-War Reconstruction.”

The deadline for full papers or extended abstracts is approaching, so, please, also visit the website at KTH: https://www.kth.se/ukraine-conference

And for some highlights of last year's conference, please see my blogpost: https://annanagurney.blogspot.com/2024/08/kudos-to-organizers-of-first.html

Teaching at Universities in Different Countries

Soon it will be spring break at UMass Amherst and, although it is still only February, the weather is milder and the days longer and quite pleasant in Massachusetts.

Rather than jetting somewhere warm during spring break for a nice holiday, like some of my students, most certainly, will be doing, I will be in England (and I  hope that the "beast from the east" has left by then and, along with it,  the snow and cold).

Last summer I received an invitation to teach a masterclass in England at Lancaster University and was able to arrange my masterclass, which is on Network Equilibrium, to coincide with my spring break. The masterclass consists of about 8 hours worth of lectures and will be given to Master's and PhD students in Operational (Operations Research) and Statistics. I was invited by Distinguished Professor of Operational Research Dr. Kevin Glazebrook and was honored and delighted that I could accept the invitation. I have been enjoying preparing my lectures and am very much looking forward to meeting students there and also seeing numerous fabulous colleagues in my field. STOR-i is the centre hosting my visit. I will be covering theory as well as numerous exciting applications in my masterclass!

The first time that I taught outside of the United States was back in 1996 when I received a Distinguished Visiting Professorship at KTH (the Royal Institute of Technology) in Stockholm, Sweden. One of the goals of that program was to increase the visibility of female academics. So, with family in tow, off we went to live in Sweden.  I thoroughly enjoyed having offices both in Systems Theory and Optimization and in Regional Planning. To get from one office to the other I hiked through the woods and crossed a river. I sometimes (actually, often) wondered what my daughter was doing in a Swedish daghes (daycare) while I taught a course and she dined on salmon and dilled potatoes and also learned how to climb trees and cliffs at a very young age! The 6 months we spent in Sweden were magical and I enjoyed teaching a class in optimization and networks. We returned to Stockholm, and lived at the Wenner Gren Centre, for extended periods multiple times. When an opportunity presented itself to be a Visiting Professor at the School of Business, Economics and Law at the University of Gothenburg (the second largest city in Sweden), I took it and in the last several years have had multiple visits there. I treasure my colleagues around the globe and the richness of the cultural experiences (plus food).

In 2002, I had a dream come true (my mother, who was a WW II refugee, always told me that if I had a chance to go to Innsbruck, Austria, that I should). I was offered a Distinguished Chaired Fulbright at SOWI at the University of Innsbruck, and, again, my family accompanied me since I not only did research (and elementary school children only go to school there for a few hours a day), but also taught a slew of courses.   The first time that the SOWI students hammered on their desks after a lecture of mine with their fists, I was wondering what I had done wrong. This is actually a sign that they enjoyed my lecture very much!

Tina Wakolbinger, who was one of my students there, graduated, worked for a year in Austria,  and then became my doctoral student at the Isenberg School of Management. She received her PhD in 2007, achieved Full Professor status in only 4 years and is now at the Vienna University of Economics and Business in Austria as a Professor of Supply Chain Services and Networks and Head of the Research Institute of Supply Chain Management.  Clearly, a big success story, and also an example of what can happen if you stretch your boundaries and teach in another country.  Tina invited me a few years ago to teach at her university, and I instructed an intense course on Humanitarian Logistics. A student in that course is now one of Tina's doctoral students.

From Sweden to Austria to Sweden and Austria and now soon off to England to teach and to acquire experiences that I share with my students back in the US!

Head of the Research Institute for Supply Chain Management

Head of the Research Institute for Supply Chain Management

Off to Stockholm to Speak at the Royal Institute of Technology -- KTH

It is a wonderful time to be living in Sweden (although, regretfully, Sweden lost its recent Euro 2012 soccer match, and we were hoping for some major celebrations).

It is close to midsommer, when the Swedes recognize the beginning of summer and have many get-togethers with family and friends, often in their summer homes, which tend to be small red cottages with, if possible, views of the sea.

When the sun is out, the Swedes are out and I love the emphasis on being outdoors in this country. Even in Gothenburg, where I have been for several weeks, the cafes have blankets on the chairs to warm us up because it is great to be sitting outside to dine.

Today, I will be taking the train from Gothenburg to Stockholm. My family and I lived in Stockholm, and I could not resist an invitation to speak at the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), which had hosted me when my daughter was only 2 with visits back when she was 4 and 7. It will be wonderful to see former colleagues in transport, regional science, and optimization there. I also plan on going back to the Wenner Gren Center off of Haga Park, where we lived in Stockholm and made friends from around the globe  and which I have written about.

I will be speaking at KTH tomorrow on perishable product supply chains in health care and will be describing some of our recent research on oligopolistic competition in pharmaceuticals, blood supply chains, as well as medical nuclear supply chains, which combines operations research and network economics.

Sweden has always felt like my second home -- its natural beauty, architecture, emphasis on sustainability, elegant design, and its fascinating history and architecture plus its people and food captivate me.

A Thank You to Sweden

International conferences serve as a venue for scientific exchanges, reconnecting with colleagues from around the globe, and often bring back a flood of memories. I have written several posts on this blog about the ALIO-INFORMS conference, which took place recently in Buenos Aires, Argentina. The intensity of professional conferences, coupled with their fascinating locations, enrich one's professional and social networking experiences greatly.

At the Buenos Aires conference, one of my many highpoints was the international collaborations panel, sponsored by WORMS (Women in Operations Research and the Management Sciences), and organized by Professor Sadan Kulturel of Penn State Berks.

In preparing my presentation, it became clear how important it has been to my career to not only take active part in international conferences, but to also live abroad. Sweden, in particular, is a very special country to me since while living there I wrote two books, Financial Networks: Statics and Dynamics with Stavros Siokos, and Supernetworks: Decision-Making for the Information Age with June Dong.

The former book I wrote while I held a Distinguished Chaired Professorship at the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) in Stockholm, Sweden and the latter while I was a Visiting Professor there several years after. During the writing of both of these books, my family and I lived at the Wenner Gren Center on Sveavagen in Stockholm.

The Wenner Gren Center is an apartment complex for a community of 150 families from around the globe, consisting of researchers, scholars, and medical professionals. It borders the gorgeous Haga Park. While I worked at KTH, my husband held an appointment at the Department of Electrical Systems Construction in Kista, which is also part of KTH.

Our daughter was only 2 years old the first time we lived in Stockholm and we enrolled her in the local daycare. In her daycare group there were children from her age until 7 and the care that she received there was outstanding. The children spend tons of time outside (remember that the Swedes have a saying that there is no bad weather, only bad dress for the weather). They climb rocks and trees in neighboring parks (believe me this raised my anxiety level a bit, but I guess these are useful life skills), go on excursions, including to musems, play, and just thrive. The daycare cooks prepared meals that included salmon, carrots, and dilled potatoes; Swedish meatballs, and delicious soups, and every child's birthday was celebrated in a lavish way with ice cream and lit candles. (Coming back to the US and the local preschool was a bit of a shock to my almost 3 year old at the time, when she had to brown bag her lunch).

Several of the daycare providers spoke English and there was one child from Japan who also was living at the Wenner Gren Center in my daughter's group. A boy of 7 named Sebastian, who originally was from Colombia, took special care of my daughter and also would often greet me at the door when I would come to pick her up and would motion to me as to her whereabouts. We would run into the parents and children in Stockholm outside of daycare hours and that helped us to feel part of a larger community. We were even invited to the homes of several of our daughter's fellow "classmates" years afterwards.

Above I have posted photos of the Wenner Gren Center, Stockholm, and my daughter's former daycare in Sweden.

The New York Times recently had coverage about the excellent parental leave policies in Sweden (which we observed while living there) and fathers taking advantage of them in an article entitled, "In Sweden, Men Can Have it All." This blogpost was partially inspired by that terrific article (plus who could have missed the publicity surrounding Princess Victoria's wedding that took place in Stockholm yesterday).

Sweden, I thank you for creating a society and system in which those who live there (even if only for a few months) can better balance work and family!