Happy Thanksgiving - The 2015 Fall Edition of The Supernetwork Sentinel is Now Online

This is the time of the year when families and friends are looking forward to the very special holiday that is Thanksgiving.

There is a lot to be thankful for and especially during times when there is so much strife and suffering in the world it is important to acknowledge those who make a difference in your life.

I very much enjoyed the OpEd in Sunday's New York Times by Arthur C. Brooks: Choose to Be Grateful. It Will Make You Happier,  in which he even cites studies of the benefits of being grateful.

Besides a wonderful family, colleagues, friends around the world, a great business school and university that I teach at, I very much enjoy working with my students and collaborators through the Virtual Center for Supernetworks. Three tines a year the Center produces a newsletter, The Supernetwork Sentinel,  which highlights our activities during that period.

I am pleased to announce that the 2015 Fall Supernetwork Sentinel is now online.

I marvel at how much the Supernetwork Team at the Isenberg School of Management manages to accomplish through great collaborations and support of one another. This is the  37th edition of the newsletter. All of them can be viewed on the Supernetwork Center site.

I wish all those celebrating Thanksgiving a wonderful, restful, and delicious holiday! Thanks for your encouragement throughout the year.

Latest News from the Supernetwork Center @IsenbergUMass

It's a very exciting time to be an operations researcher and analytics professional with so many fascinating problems to work on and to contribute to the solution of.

I have been so lucky to have had and to continue to have such fabulous students, both graduate and undergraduate ones, as well as collaborators from around the globe.

Much of our research is done through the Virtual Center of Supernetworks that I founded back in 2001.

What makes me so proud is the successes of my students, both present and former! It's always a delight to receive email messages or a phone call in which they share with me their accomplishments and, of course, to also share good news face to face!

Quite a few of my former PhD students are now Center Associates of the Supernetwork Center and, three times a year, we produce its newsletter -  The Supernetwork Sentinel.

We are pleased to report that the Summer 2015 edition of The Supernetwork Sentinel is now online and it reports news from the Center since the Winter 2015 edition and until the beginning of July. The newsletter can be downloaded here from the Supernetwork Center website.

 All the editions of The Supernetwork Sentinel, going back to the Fall of 2003, can be accessed here.

Collaborations are key to solving tough problems and I am so grateful for my wonderful Supernetwork Team.
 

The 2013 Summer Edition of the Supernetwork Newsletter is Now Online

It has been a fabulous couple of months at the Virtual Center for Supernetworks at the Isenberg School of Management. We are pleased to report that the 2013 Summer edition of our newsletter, The Supernetwork Sentinel,  is now available online. It highlights the many professional activities of the Center's Associates.

In it, you will find find a summary of the AAAS Dynamics of Disasters Symposium that I organized and which took place in Boston, Massachusetts and highlights of contributing to a Dream Course on Engineered Systems at the University of Oklahoma and to a panel at The New York Times EnergyforTomorrow Conference in NYC that I spoke at. You will also find information on awards and other recognitions received by the Center Associates, who are based on 3 different continents,  and who provide a wide reach for our activities in research, education, and outreach on topics ranging from supply chains to innovations on the Internet to financial networks and even humanitarian logistics.

In the 2013 summer edition, we also have news on our latest publications and notable conference presentations around the globe.

Supernetworks are networks of networks and the associated methodologies and applications continue to grow.

All editions of The Supernetwork Sentinel  can be downloaded from The Virtual center for Supernetworks website.

Enjoy and thanks for your support!

News from the Virtual Center for Supernetworks -- Fall 2012

Communications matter and that is one of the reasons of the growth and popularity of social media.

Being informed also matters as does getting the news out -- as researchers we know that if we don't publish our results and also present our research at seminars and conferences, noone will know what was accomplished and science and our disciplines will not grow.

In 2001, I established the Virtual Center for Supernetworks at the Isenberg School of Management at UMass Amherst. It  has been an amazing journey working with so many collaborators and students and seeing Center Associates, even undergraduates, contribute in such meaningful ways to both research and our many activities. We have also had the honor and pleasure of hosting international visitors and numerous guests in various Speaker Series.

I am pleased to announce that the Fall 2012 Supernetwork Sentinel is now available. The Supernetwork Sentinel is our newsletter and the latest issue can be downloaded in pdf format here.
It is published in Falll, Winter, and Summer editions and all of our newsletters, which provide quite a historical overview of our center activities can be viewed and downloaded here.

Thanks for the support!

Latest News from the Supernetworks Center

The 2012 Summer edition of The Supernetwork Sentinel, the newsletter of the Virtual Center for Supernetworks, that I founded almost 11 years ago,  is now online.

It has been an amazing couple of months, with presentations given around the world, new grants awarded and research and teaching accolades received by the Center Associates.

I sometimes wonder how we manage to accomplish as much as we do -- clearly, we have a passion for what we do and we have a great team that enjoys collaborating and working together.


All of our newsletters can be found on this page.

Looking Forward to All the WORMS Activities at INFORMS Charlotte!

The President of WORMS (Women in Operations Research and the Management Sciences) had emailed me whether or not I had received the latest announcement about the newsletter and upcoming activities at the INFORMS Charlotte meeting and I had responded that I had not but since I had spoken at McGill last Friday only to return to what is being called the biggest snowstorm on record for October with power outages that left over 3 million people in the dark, I figured that perhaps it was an Internet or related problem. (By the way, some of our neighbors as well as colleagues in Amherst and surrounding communities still do not have electric power and have been without electricity since last Saturday night and this is Wednesday).

Further inquiries revealed that others also had not received the message so it was forwarded today and is reposted below.

WORMS activities are some of my favorites at the annual INFORMS meetings from the WORMS lunch to the panels. These forums serve as great get-together and networking events as well.

Dear WORMS members,

The latest WORMS newsletter is available here.

We're looking forward to seeing many of you at the INFORMS annual meeting in Charlotte in two weeks. WORMS has several great events happening, including our biggest event - the Tuesday luncheon - two panels of thoughtful and high-profile panelists and the first-ever "Best Of" session featuring influential publications by women in OR/MS. In chronological order:

Best of WORMS – Sunday November 13, 1:30 PM – 3 PM

Amy Ward, Dorothée Honhon and Waverly Ding present their highly influential papers published in INFORMS journals in 2010. References including coauthors available by link.

Panel Discussion: Can we do anything about women dropping out? – Sunday November 13, 4:30 PM – 6:00PM

Panelists: Mor Armony, Cynthia Barnhart, Cheryl Gaimon, Ann Marucheck, and Linda Whitaker

In 1979 women made up less than 1% of full-time tenured or tenure-track faculty in engineering. More than thirty years later, how much has this percentage increased?

Panel Discussion: Leaders offer professional advice to women and men – Monday November 14, 8:00 AM – 9:30 AM

Panelists: Mark Daskin, Radhika Kulkarni, Anna Nagurney, Les Servi, and Eric Wolman

Business Meeting – Monday November 14, 6:15 PM – 7:15 PM

Meeting in the Convention Center, Room 209A, we will vote on amendments to the by-laws. Refreshments will be served to sustain a quorum. Please bring your energy and ideas for WORMS in 2012.

Luncheon – Tuesday November 15, 12:30 PM – 1:30 PM

Held in the Westin, Grand C, the luncheon will include reports on WORMS activities in 2011 and plans for 2012, as well as the presentation of the 2011 WORMS Award for the Advancement of Women in OR/MS. The biggest WORMS event of the year, the luncheon is almost sold out, so buy your tickets if you haven't already ($15, $8 for students).

Please remember to renew your WORMS membership for 2011 and for 2012. Many of us (including me) tend to renew just in time for the annual meeting – over 3/4 of the way through the year. Starting in 2012, non-members will be removed from the WORMS mailing list early in the year, so in order to be able to post to the list and continue receiving e-mails from WORMS, you'll need to be a current member. There are (at least) three ways to renew:

1. Renew online at http://www.informs.org/Membership/Renew-Your-Membership and, check “Forum for Women in OR/MS (WORMS)” under Fora.
2. Renew by phone by calling INFORMS member services (800-446-3676). Old-fashioned, but fast and easy, you can state specifically what you want to pay for, and have your questions answered on the spot.
3. Renew by mail using the form you will receive by mail or by downloading the form and following the instructions at http://www.informs.org/Community/WORMS/Membership. Even more old-fashioned, but it works!

Best wishes,

Eva

Eva Regnier, Ph.D.

President, WORMS

Associate Professor • Naval Postgraduate School

1 University Circle • Monterey, CA 93943-5219

phone: 1 (831) 656-2912 • fax: 1 (831) 656-2595

The 2011 Summer Supernetwork Newsletter is Now Online!

It certainly has been an extraordinary semester with new initiatives, exciting research, as well as terrific conferences.

The 2011 Summer edition of The Supernetwork Sentinel, which is the newsletter of the Virtual Center for Supernetworks and its Laboratory for Computation and Visualization is now available and can be downloaded, in pdf format, here.

Thanks to all who have supported our research and activities!

The Winter 2011 Edition of The Supernetwork Sentinel is Now Online

The Winter 2011 edition of The Supernetwork Sentinel is now online. This is the newsletter of the Virtual Center for Supernetworks at the Isenberg School of UMass Amherst. This issue contains highlights of our activities over the past semester from participation at the INFORMS Conference in Austin, Texas to the I3P Consortium Meeting at MITRE Corporation. It also contains information about several conferences that will be taking place next year, which we are actively involved in organizing, and a list of our recent center publications.

This issue can be downloaded in pdf format here.

To access all the editions of this newsletter, please click here.

We wish everyone a happy holiday season and a wonderful New 2011 Year!

News on the Supernetworks Center at the Isenberg School

With Fall around the corner, and students starting to arrive at colleges around the country, the 2010-2011 academic year will soon begin. There is always a lot of excitement and anticipation from the new and returning students, their families, as well as from the professors who will be teaching the courses that the students will be taking.

A new academic year brings new challenges, opportunities, experiences and adventures, friendships, and discoveries.

As Director of the Virtual Center for Supernetworks at the Isenberg School of Management at UMass Amherst, I edit the Supernetwork Sentinel, which is our newsletter, and which gets published in Fall, Spring, and Summer editions.

The Fall 2010 Supernetwork Sentinel is now online and I hope that you enjoy reading about our professional activities that, this past summer alone, took us to Argentina, China, Austria, and Ukraine! The research that the Center Associates are involved in include such timely topics as supply chain network design of critical needs products from pharmaceuticals to vaccines to sustainable supply chains and even fashion supply chain management (in which time vs. cost is also a big issue)!

We study network fragility and vulnerability in transportation, logistics (including humanitarian operations), the Internet, electric power and energy networks, and even in finance and model how human behavior affects such systems. We also construct metrics that can assess the performance of networks and identify potential synergies with applications as varied as corporate mergers and acquisitions and the teaming of organizations for disaster relief. We quantify, through advanced analytics, cooperative vs. competitive behavior and identify and explain where paradoxes such as the Braess paradox can (and cannot) occur.

Since supernetworks are networks of networks, their applications are very exciting and vast!

The methodologies that our researchers use to capture essential components of complex networks include: game theory, network optimization, nonlinear programming, multicriteria decision-making, risk management, variational inequalities, and projected dynamical systems.

We have been very busy this summer and are looking forward to a very special, productive, and fascinating new academic year!

All of our newsletters can be accessed here.

Winter 2010 Newsletter -- Students and Colleagues Soaring

It's the time of the year when family members, friends, and colleagues send out cards and newsletters, which are always a treat to read and allow the reader to catch up. It is fascinating to see what is included in the writeups.

As we look forward to the New 2010 Year, I am pleased to share with you the new edition of the The Supernetwork Sentinel, which is the newsletter of the Virtual Center for Supernetworks.

This newsletter captures some of the wonderful activities of our Center Associates, who include students, academics, and leaders in industry.

You can access the latest edition and previous ones here.

Social Networking and Producing a Newsletter

Directing the Virtual Center for Supernetworks requires the production and dissemination of The Supernetwork Sentinel newsletter three times a year. We are pleased to announce that the Summer 2009 edition is now online (in pdf format). This newsletter contains an essay on highlights of recent presentations from Vienna to Rome, provides information on the just-published book, Fragile Networks, reflects on the World Science Festival in NYC, recalls the amazing speakers that visited the Isenberg School and UMass Amherst as part of our Speaker Series, and marks notable distinctions and awards received by Center Associates.

This newsletter serves as a unified vehicle in which to document and distribute news about activities of the Center and its Associates. It also further strengthens the social network ties of the researchers and students involved in the Virtual Center for Supernetworks.