Terrific Production and Operations Management Society (POMS) 2024 Conference in Minneapolis

I'd like to thank the organizers of the 2024 POMS Conference, which took place in Minneapolis, Minnesota, April 25-29. Full information on the program and associated activities can be found on the conference website: https://pomsmeetings.org/conf-2024/

Both my Isenberg School of Management PhD student, Dana Hassani, and I presented at this conference and Dana also took part on the Doctoral Colloquium as did another Operations Management Isenberg School PhD student, Busra Karkili. Dana shared with me the lovely group photo below taken at the colloquium.

Coincidentally, on our flight from Bradley Airport to Minneapolis, were both Busra and her PhD Advisor, Senay Solak, who is also chair of our OIM Department.

I presented my latest work on food security, international trade, and nutritional subsidies by governments, whereas Dana presented one of our papers on the quantification of international trade network performance under disruptions to supply, transportation, and demand capacity, and exchange rates in disasters, done with colleagues, Oleg Nivievskyi and Pavel Martyshev at the Kyiv School of Economics in Ukraine. The below collage was prepared as a memento from this great POMS conference.

My presentation was based on a paper that was recently published in the International Transactions in Operational Research and was recognized with an Editor's Choice Award.  Special thanks to Telesilla Kotsi for organizing a very interesting session and inviting me to speak

It was extra special, because of the serendipity at conferences, to see Tinglong Dai and Suresh Sethi plus Kathy Stecke and even Zihao Qu, who will be joining our Operations and Information Management Department, Isenberg School of Management, UMass Amherst.

It was delightful to see several of our Isenberg UMass PhD alums there, including recently promoted and tenured Michelle Li, and Heng Chen, and Sara Saberi also took part. My colleague, Ahmed Ghoniem, also was at the conference. It was lovely to meet many other conferees and to reconnect with others through such warm, fascinating conversations, including a great conversation with Andres F. Jola-Sanchez! As promised, I have posted our presentations on the Virtual Center for Supernetworks site: https://supernet.isenberg.umass.edu/visuals.html

Thanks also to Springer Nature Group Editor Matthew Amboy for displaying my Labor and Supply Chain Networks book at the Springer booth at the conference!

With best wishes to everyone as the end of the academic year comes to a close and with many summer conferences on the horizon!

Some of the Highlights of the Great POMS Conference in Orlando!

I hope that everyone who took part in the POMS Conference in Orlando, which took place May 22-25, 2023, has returned safely to their homes. It was wonderful to be at this in-person POMS conference, the first such one since the 2019 POMS Conference, which took place in Washington DC.

I thought it important to document some of the highlights of the 33th Annual POMS Conference in Orlando, albeit, of course, from a personal perspective. I am sure that each conferee has their own special memories and experiences. This was truly an international conference and I was delighted to see and meet colleagues from many countries, including from The Netherlands, Norway, Germany, Finland, and even Brazil. Asia was also well-represented. 

I arrived mid-afternoon on Monday and at the Exhibit Hall I was thrilled to see Springer Nature Editor Matt Amboy and the display of Springer books. And there, on display, was my newest book, "Labor and Supply Chain Networks," which was published in 2023.

The venue for the conference was stunning - the Hyatt on International Drive.  The full program for the conference can be accessed here. Below is a photo of a late afternoon view taken from the 26th floor.

I enjoyed the keynote talk by Scott Colloredo, the Director of the Engineering Directorate at NASA’s John F. Kennedy Space Center in Florida (but sadly missed the keynote by Dr. Nada Sanders since I was traveling). It was interesting that the 2 keynote talks were both scheduled for last Monday. 

The sessions that I attended were organized in the Humanitarian Operations and Crisis Management track and I especially appreciated the breadth of innovative problems that are being tackled and addressed. Below is a sample.

I thank Dr. Mohammad Arbabian for the invitation to speak in his session. Coincidentally, he is at the Pamplin School of Business at the University of Portland, where my former PhD student, now an Associate Professor there, Dr. Min Yu, is also on the faculty. It was wonderful that she came to our session. Below are photos of the speakers in our session, a group photo, and also a photo with some of the members of the audience. Thanks to all who joined us!

I also enjoyed a panel of editors of the POM journal.

Although there were many conferees that I did not got get a chance to see - the conference was quite large with over 2 dozen parallel sessions, I did, through pure serendipity, encounter and exchange pleasantries with Renzo Akkerman, whom I have cited in quite a few papers on perishable food supply chains co-authored with Min Yu and Deniz Besik (both of whom were in attendance at the conference).

It was also great to see Marianne Jahre of Norway and Sarah Schiffling, who is now at Hanken in Finland. I was with Marianne in Cartagena, Colombia, back in 2019, where we were both invited speakers at a logistics conference organized at the Escuela Naval. I blogged the conference and unique experiences there.

And, of course, sharing meals with Deniz Besik, who is now an Assistant Professor at the University of Richmond, was terrific and also with Min Yu. It was great to have Ladimer S. Nagurney accompany me to the conference!

The title of my presentation at the conference was: "Supply Chain Game Theory Network Modeling Under Labor Constraints: Applications to the COVID-19 Pandemic." The presentation was based on a paper that I authored that was published in the European Journal of Operational Research. I was deeply honored when it received an Editor's Choice Award.

The complete slide deck of my presentation can be downloaded here.

Kudos to the staff at the Hyatt. Their friendliness and professionalism were so appreciated. I very much enjoyed meeting Alexandra from Haiti and Natalia from Lviv, Ukraine, who are working at The Diner at the Hyatt. It was very moving to speak with Natalia in Ukrainian. She had arrived in the US only 6 months ago.

And, it so happens that, next Friday, I will be giving the opening talk at the Innovations in Immigration Analytics Conference at WPI. My talk will be on refugee networks and regulations. Many thanks to Andrew Trapp for inviting me to speak.

And, for those wishing to walk down Memory Lane, please visit my blogpost on the POMS Conference in Washington DC!

Many thanks to the organizers of the POMS Conference for such a rewarding conference both scientifically and socially!

Exciting POMS Conference in DC with Great Talks and Social Events

The 30th Production and Operations Management (POMS) Conference has now come to an end. It was a wonderful experience with over 2,000 conferees converging on Washington DC for the conference.

It started with some drama, because of the weather on Thursday, May 2, with big storms and temps in the 90s in DC. This resulted in flight delays for some including one of my doctoral students, Deniz Besik, who had a 4 hour delay from Bradley Airport to Reagan National Airport. The next morning, we had the first of a series of papers to present, beginning in the 8AM session. She made it to her hotel past 1AM and managed to register and to show up on time - clearly a sign of grit and success.  Some of us had taken earlier flights so we were spared delays. Also, Deniz was selected for and took part in the POMS Doctoral Colloquium on Saturday. Special congratulations to her since on Thursday afternoon, she was recognized by the Isenberg School of Management with the 2019 Outstanding Doctoral Student Researcher Award - quite the accomplishment, since our school has 7 different departments. I am very proud of her and very happy for her. Below is a photo that was shared on Twitter of Deniz with the award and with PhD friends: Rodrigo Mercado, Pritha Dutta, and Destenie Nock. Both Pritha and Destenie are receiving their PhDs at UMass Amherst ceremonies later this week and are off to academic careers. I am sure that they will be amazing professors at Pace University in NYC and at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, respectively!

Our papers at POMS were presented in sessions on economics and operations management; healthcare, and humanitarian operations. The second and third presentations below were based on papers recently published in the journals Omega and the International Journal of Production Economics, respectively.

We have posted our presentations on the Supernetwork Center website.

The quality of the presentations in all sessions that I attended was excellent (generating many ideas and even possible new collaborations). It was a delight to see colleagues from Canada, Turkey, the UK, and across the US. Because of the location and also timing of the conference, it was a draw for many first timers and also quite a few INFORMS members, which was great. As a memento, we had photos taken of the speakers at the first session and then of even the audience as well as speakers of the third.

It is truly fabulous to see the interest in a spectrum of highly relevant topics for both research and practice!

In the below photo I am standing with Pritha Dutta, who is my 21st PhD student. She has done fundamental work on game theory and blood supply chains.

Socializing and networking are important components of any conference, as is reconnecting, and I love the serendipity of encountering colleagues and friends.

Plus, is is always thrilling to see the great Springer editors and, in this case, Matt Amboy, at the exhibits.

Of course, what would a conference in DC be without some exploring from Georgetown to the fabulous art museums. Luckily, Saturday's weather was ideal for walking.

It was a delight to see Renoirs, Van Goghs, and Monets, as well as the portraits of President Obama and Michelle Obama. I was captivated by the audience viewing the latter - so many women!

My tradition at almost any conference is to treat a group that includes Supernetwork Center Associates, some of whom were my former doctoral students at the Isenberg School of Management, and friends to a dinner. On Saturday evening we enjoyed a scrumptious dinner at La Tomate, in proximity to the Hilton, which was the conference hotel. The food was magnificent and the company event better! We had an area just for us, which was very cozy.

After desserts, we took a group photo.

It is so rewarding to see my former PhD students, now professors at wonderful universities and colleges, thriving both professionally and personally.

And on a very rainy Sunday, the conferees and guests convened for a lavish awards luncheon and service was very prompt - extraordinarily efficient, but, then again, it was a POMS conference.

A special thanks to the "other" Professor Nagurney, for not only being a co-author of our first paper presentation at POMS, but for also helping me with the luggage and logistics.

Congratulations to the organizers of the 30th POMS Conference on its success!

Photos from POMS Conference in DC

In a previous post, I provided links to our presentations at the Production and Operations Management Society (POMS) Conference, which took place recently in Washington DC.

The photos below are of my present doctoral students, Sara Saberi and Shivani Shukla, along with my most recent PhD student at the Isenberg School, Dong "Michelle" Li, who successfully defended her PhD dissertation on May 4,  plus my former PhD student, Professor Min Yu of the Pamplin School of Business at the University of Portland in Oregon.

Nice to see members of the Supernetwork Team supporting one another professionally and personally.

Great job, present and future female academics, and thanks for forwarding the photos!