Delightful Surprises During My Visit to Speak at RPI on Disaster Relief

This past Friday, I had the pleasure of speaking at RPI (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute) in Troy, New York, at 10AM, so the day began quite early with a two hour drive from Amherst, MA. I was hosted by two Engineering departments and had been invited to give a talk there a year ago but my schedule did not permit a visit until now.
                                                  
I had given my host, Professor David Mendonca, a list of topics that I could speak on and the one selected was: Game Theory Network Models for Disaster Relief.
 
My talk is available for download and it was exciting to polish it since, in just the past three weeks, three of our papers on the topic have been published in journals, including: An Integrated Financial and Logistical Game Theory Model for Humanitarian Organizations with Purchasing Costs, Multiple Freight Service Providers, and Budget, Capacity, and Demand Constraints,  Anna Nagurney, Mojtaba Salarpour, and Patrizia Daniele, International Journal of Production Economics 212: (2019), pp 212-226.

The drive on the Mass Pike was smooth, despite the rain, and my husband was the designated driver. He had not been to RPI since he had been accepted there for Grad School, but ended up matriculating at Brown University, so he was eager to go back. I had to check my cv to see when was the last time I had spoken at RPI and found that I had given a seminar at RPI at the Electrical, Computer, and Systems Engineering Department,  December 5, 2001! I recall a lavish holiday party with white roses and shrimp that I viewed in passing.

Once the technology for my presentation was set up, I heard some footsteps behind me and was absolutely thrilled to see one of my Operations and Information Management students from the Isenberg School of Management - Emily Agoglia! She had been a student in my Humanitarian Logistics and Healthcare class at Isenberg, is from Philadelphia, and is a world traveler, having most recently taken part in an academic program in Cuba! And she presented me with the lovely memento from Cuba below.

She had been in Cuba, when I was speaking and taking part in the amazing Congreso Futuro in Chile, so when we get together, we cannot stop comparing experiences. Her father is Professor Chris Agoglia, a renowned Accounting faculty member at Isenberg.

And, there was another delightful surprise - Professor William "Al" Wallace, who is now the Chair of the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering at RPI, came to my talk. He was the doctoral dissertation advisor of the incoming Isenberg School Dean - Dr. Anne P. Massey! Dr. Massey will be the first female Dean of the Isenberg School and it has an illustrious history of over 70 years. In fact, this coming Friday, we will be celebrating the 50th anniversary of our PhD program! I am very excited since many of my former PhD students will be coming back to campus. I am preparing a talk and have organized the Management Science PhD alumni panel for that day.

The photo below is of me with Professor Wallace and Emily.

After my talk, I had the pleasure of meeting with Professors Sergio Pequito, Thomas Sharkey, and Kristin Bennett. Sergio and I talked about our love of interdisciplinary work. With Thomas "Tom" we discussed his thrilling NSF project on the Arctic and he recently returned from Alaska, so I had to take the photo below. We also chatted about colleagues Dr. Renata Konrad of WPI (a fellow Ukrainian, whom we hosted in our UMass Amherst INFORMS Speaker Series) and Dr. Kayse Maas of Northeastern (and, of course, we then talked about the NSF workshop on human trafficking). Professor Bennett remembers me from way back when when she was in Amherst and from one of her first INFORMS conferences and thanked be for being an inspiration (that and many other surprises  made that rainy day a very bright one)! She received her PhD from University of Wisconsin Madison and Dr. Olvi Mangasarian was her PhD advisor.

The lunch was at the RPI Faculty Club where I enjoyed great conversations with Professors David Mendonca, Kristen Schell, and Cara Wang,  and ate a spicy lunch with purple rice!

Dr. Cara Wang is a Professor of transportation and her advisor was Professor Kara Kockelman of UT Austin. I know Kara from the regional science community. Interestingly, Cara had been at Bucknell University and then moved to RPI. Coincidentally, we recently hosted Dr. Thiago Serra in our UMass Amherst INFORMS Speaker Series and he is off to Bucknell University as an Assistant Professor in the Fall. Also, Dr. Kristen Schell is a relatively new faculty member of ISE at RPI and received her PhD from CMU in engineering policy. Our IE/OR doctoral student, Destenie Nock at UMass Amherst, defended her dissertation recently and will be joining that program as an Assistant Professor in the Fall.

And I would be remiss to forget to mention that Professor David Mendonca is an undergrad alumnus of UMass Amherst, and my Management colleague, Professor Emeritus Art Elkins, had convinced him to go to CMU since the Nobel laureate in Economic Sciences Herbert Simon was there (I had had dinner with Dr. Simon in Amherst at the Lord Jeffery Inn a while ago.) Dr. Mendonca collaborates with a cognitive psychologist, Dr. Wayne Gray at RPI, who is a Lafayette College alumnus, from the same class as my husband, so he kindly kept my husband busy and very entertained while I was speaking and meeting with colleagues!

On our journey back, we turned on the radio, only to hear UMass Amherst hockey score its first goal in its game against Harvard University and they won 4-0; they repeated their amazing performance yesterday evening against Notre Dame University, also with a score of 4-0, and are now off to the NCAA Frozen Four for the first time in the history of UMass Amherst hockey! The first game in the final will be on April 11, right when we are having a special banquet at the Isenberg School for the $62 million Business Innovation Hub celebration with the official unveiling (although we have been using it already a lot since late January) on April 12.

The Best College Graduation Ever - My Daughter's

Last Thursday, I flew from London Heathrow to Newark to attend my daughter's college graduation and today I returned back to Oxford, England, where I am a Visiting Fellow at All Souls College for the trinity term.

This was a whirlwind trip but truly special - your child graduates college only once (although she may acquire additional degrees).

I have blogged about my daughter's graduation from Deerfield Academy as well as from The Bement School and, since many of my colleagues from around the world know Alexandra and are asking for highlights of her college graduation, I am writing this blogpost. She went to her first INFORMS conference in Boston when she was only 3 months old and one of her favorite conferences was when we were in Iceland. She has followed me on various academic appointments whether in Austria or in Sweden and soon will be joining me in England.

Her now alma mater is Lafayette College, which has a beautiful campus, very successful graduates,  and is one hour away from NYC; about an hour from Philadelphia, and about 2 hours from DC. Hence, there are many opportunities for great educational class field trips as well as internships.

The college was named after General Lafayette.

Although the graduation ceremony from Lafayette College in Easton, Pennsylvania, was on Saturday, May 21, 2016, already on Friday, May 20, we had many events to attend, beginning with a very special ceremony in the Department of Geology and Environmental Geosciences, from which Alexandra received a BS summa cum laude and graduated with honors in geology and environmental geosciences.

 The faculty that Alexandra has had at Lafayette College were mentors, supporters, and some, I believe, also became friends. She traveled with geology faculty to Hawaii, did a field trip to Wyoming and many more local ones to her college, and was a TA on the second Wyoming field trip. She also had an externship in Oklahoma. Her honors thesis was on Iceland and I Skyped in recently from England for her oral defense.

At the geology ceremony, each senior major received a gift and also a professor or two spoke about what made the student unique. This was very moving event and took place in the beautiful geology building. Dr. Kira Lawrence, the Chair of the Department, who received her PhD from Brown University, was the officiator.

Professor Larry Malinconico, Alexandra's advisor, and Professor Tamara Carley, her honors thesis supervisor, both spoke about Alexandra. I personally had to thank Professor Hovis, a Harvard PhD for his mentorship of Alexandra as well. Dr. Malinconico is a Dartmouth PhD and also a former member of the crew team there.

My husband and I are very grateful for the nurturing that Lafayette College provided in terms of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) education within a liberal arts college education. Her faculty also supported her when she submitted applications to various summer programs and graduate school. After her sophomore year, Alexandra did summer research on the environmental impact of fracking at the University of Colorado Boulder under an NSF REU (Research Experiences for Undergraduates)  program, and, after her junior year, she was a summer intern at the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston, Texas, working on moon rocks in a very competitive international program.


In August,  she will begin a PhD program in geology.

On Friday, there was also an honors convocation in which the first page of each thesis presentation was displayed in a slide show and each student recognized. My cousin, Andrew Yarosh, a fellow Brown University grad, traveled from Colorado to join us in the celebrations.

There were numerous receptions to attend, which were very festive and, luckily, the rain held off, so the graduation ceremony could take place outdoors.

It was great to see a fellow Deerfield Academy graduate, class of 2012, Brad Marshall, who also hails from western Massachusetts, receive a degree in engineering from Lafayette College.

After graduation, it was time for the Lafayette College crew barbecue which the senior crew team members organized for the families. Alexandra has been both a VP and President of the crew team and, together this amazing group of student athletes,  journeyed together to competitions in the Northeast, including the Head of the Charles regatta in Cambridge and the Dad Vails in Philadelphia, trained during every spring break in Florida, and numerous mornings on the river around 6AM.  My daughter was the cox for the men's 4s and 8s boats and the camaraderie of this team is extraordinary. Special thanks to the coach, Rick Kelliher. They even planned and organized a banquet each year, which President Alison Byerly attended once, raised lots of money for the team, and even hosted an Olympian gold medalist at one of the banquets. President Byerly has been an outstanding President of Lafayette College.

Thanks to Lafayette College for providing my daughter with both transformative educational experiences (even a trip to Costa Rica), nurturing her love of science and research, her love of history and art history, with great classes in environmental sciences, advanced calculus, economics, and statistics.

As an academic, I have been to many wonderful college and graduation ceremonies, not only in the US, such as at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where I teach, at Brown University and at Harvard University, but also abroad in Sweden, but when your daughter graduates, that will always be a very special one!

More photos from Lafayette's 181st commencement are available on the college's website. And, by the way, my husband, Alexandra's father, is also a Lafayette College grad and a very loyal alum. He still stays in touch with one of his former physics professors. Those are the special ties that bind.

Congratulations to the Class of 2016!

Dinner with a 1964 Olympic Gold Medalist on a Beautiful College Campus

I have met my share of Olympians, primarily, figure skaters, since that was one of my daughter's passions before college and she even skated in a performance with Johnny Weir at Lake Placid and we met Sarah Hughes and Todd Eldredge at the Mullins Center at UMass and Paul Wylie at a skating performance at Harvard when I was a Radcliffe Fellow.

Last weekend, I had a new experience - having dinner with an Olympic gold medalist, courtesy of my daughter, who has switched from figure skating to crew. Coincidentally, my Brown University room-mate for two years, Teresa Davila, had switched from being a ballerina in Chile to being  a member of the Brown University women's crew team when she matriculated there. I guess it is all about the muscle and the discipline!

The Olympian is Emory Clark, the author of  Olympic Odyssey.

The event was the Lafayette College crew banquet, which took place last Saturday. My daughter, as President of the Crew Club, got to officiate the lovely evening and we sat at the head table with the Olympian.

The beautiful campus was resplendent with blooming flowers (something not yet happening much in Massachusetts).

Now, how did an Olympian get to give the main speech? It's all because of those great school ties. The father of one of the rowers is Mr. Robert Hanke and he sent us the following explanatory message:

"Emory and I were fraternity brothers and classmates at Yale in 1960.  Emory was Captain of Yale’s Varsity Crew that year.  Following Yale, both Emory and I went on to serve as officers in the Marine Corps.  Emory then began rowing for Vesper Boat Club in Philadelphia, where he went on to win the 1964 National Championship in the coxed pair.  After that, rowing in the Vesper Eight, he went on to win the U.S. Olympic trials, beating heavily favored Harvard, Yale and a number of other top collage crews.  That marked the first time a non-collegiate eight-oar, or club boat, ever represented the United States in the Olympics.  In 1964, Emory and the Vesper Boat Club went on to the Tokyo Olympics, winning the Gold Medal and becoming Olympic Champions.  Emory continued competitive rowing most of his life, winning many more races, right up to his early 70s.  He book, Olympic Odyssey, has just been published."

See you at the races,

Robert Hanke

Col. USMC (Ret.)

The evening was magical and below are a few photos from the great event.  The Olympic gold medal is also featured below. I especially enjoyed hearing Mr. Emory Clark speak about his Olympic gold medal team-mates, who ranged in ages from 20 to 34, and the cox was a 46 year old Hungarian who had become a US citizen. He also spoke about Mr. John Kelly, the brother of the Princess of Monaco, Grace Kelly, who was affiliated with the Vesper Club. He emphasized how the team to beat at these Olympics (and many other races in that era) was the German team.

And, yes, both my daughter and Mr. Hanke's son were recognized for their leadership on the crew team. My daughter is the cox for two men's boats and if you can get a group of men to row fast as a team together, you are a born leader! The medals and trophies that they have been garnering this crew season plus the fun that they have been having, even with pre 6AM rowing practices, say it all.

From Presidencies of Liberal Arts Colleges to Leading Iconic NYC Cultural Institutions - Those School Ties

I was absolutely delighted to hear the announcement yesterday in The New York Times that the former President of Lafayette College (my husband's undergraduate alma mater), Dr. Dan Weiss, who is an art historian, with an MBA from Yale, was selected to be the next President of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC.

Dr. Weiss had served as Lafayette's President from 2005 - 2013 and I had the pleasure of meeting him and his wife at the college at a lovely event hosted by them in the Fall of 2012 at Lafayette. It was a pleasure to chat with them. They were so personable and pleasant and the conversations just flowed. The new college arts theater will be named after him and his wife, Sandra.

Weiss has been the President of Haverford College, another liberal arts college in Pennsylvania, since 2013,  and will be leaving after less than 2 years to become President of the Met, probably the top job for an art historian on our planet, so congratulations are in order!

In addition, the NYC Public Library is headed by Dr. Tony Marx, the former President of Amherst College, located  in the town that I live in. I last saw Dr. Marx when he gave the commencement speech at the Deerfield Academy graduation on May 27, 2012. Both his son and my daughter graduated Deerfield that day and the ceremonies were truly special and elegant.  Dr. Marx was part of the carpool on our block - impressive. And he did the driving when he was President of Amherst College, one of the top liberal arts colleges in the country!

Both the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the NYC Public Library, two iconic NYC institutions, are located on 5th Avenue about 40 blocks apart.

As Weiss said in The New York Times interview, he began going to the Metropolitan Museum of Art when he was a teenager and fell in love with it and so did I. The same holds for the NYC Public Library where I spent many a winter break from Brown University doing research and writing papers, as an undergraduate.

And, speaking of Lafayette, it has been quite the year for not only arts but also sports with the 150th anniversary football game played against Lehigh University at Yankee Stadium (Lafayette won) plus Lafayette's win last night in men's basketball against American University so now they are off to the big dance of the NCAA and garnered the Patriot League Championship. Congratulations!

Historic College Rivalry Takes Over NYC

There are many college rivalries - you probably have your favorite - from Harvard vs. Yale, Army vs. Navy,  Amherst College vs. Williams College, or USC vs. UCLA, but I will be writing about another one - a truly historic one and, yes, indeed, it has been played out in sports, especially football.

The past 3 days I spent in NYC taking part in the iconic #rivalry150 events surrounding the 150th meeting of  Lafayette College and Lehigh University in a football game in none other  than Yankee Stadium to a sold out audience on Saturday of over 48,200 ticket holders!

I admit my husband is a very loyal Lafayette College alum. He received his undergrad degree in physics there before moving on to his graduate degrees, including the PhD, from Brown University. I am a Brown U. alum (4 times over) and a Harvard one as well since I was a Science Fellow at Radcliffe.

Very often one's  loyalties lie with one's undergraduate alma mater since the undergraduate years provide such formative experiences.

Lafayette and Lehigh are part of the Patriot League, a Division 1 athletics league. Both schools also have outstanding academic reputations and I especially respect their excellence in STEM fields.

The New York Times had great coverage of this rivalry with the first meeting of the two football teams in 1884.  Both schools had worked very hard to generate interest and  the activities in NYC were tremendous. Spoiler alert for those who have not heard - Lafayette "routed" (New York Times' choice of words) Lehigh with a score of 27-7 and this they accomplished with a third string quarterback, Zach Zweizig, whose name will go down in his college's history.  

Zach has overcome injuries plus the death of his father and it was only last week that he was called on by his coach to take on the incredible challenge of playing quarterback at Yankee Stadium!

We took the MetroNorth train from New Haven and, in walking to our favorite hotel in NYC, The Excelsior, on 81st Street, through Central Park, on Friday, we heard a band playing, so with our suitcases we investigated and it was the Lehigh band practicing along with cheerleaders.

That morning there was coverage of the rivalry on both the Today Show and GMA.

The Presidents of the two academic institutions, President Alison Byerly of Lafayette College and President Kevin J. Clayton of Lehigh, got to ring the closing bell at the New York Stock Exchange on Friday with the college mascots of a lepoard and a mountain hawk to accompany them.

 Courtesy of the Associated Press

Friday evening we were treated to a gala event with scrumptious desserts at the Museum of Natural History, and I felt as though I was in the movie Night at the Museum.

On Saturday morning, before going to the game, we saw several Lafayette College students walking on Broadway in leopard prints, of course!

The below photos were taken at the football game at Yankee Stadium. It was great to see the two college bands perform together at halftime!

And, as the sun was setting, the Empire State building was lit up in the rival school colors, maroon and white, and brown and white!

And, no wonder why we all love NYC, after the game on Saturday at Yankee Stadium, because of the crowds trying to get on the subway, everyone was allowed to just pass through!

More great coverage of the game and events from USAToday to NPR can be found here.

The terrific memories are what build great school spirit!