Majestic Honorary Degree Celebrations Encaenia at Oxford University with Photos

It is an extraordinary experience to be a Visiting Fellow at All Souls College at Oxford University in England this Trinity term.

Yesterday, Fellows and many dignitaries were invited to take part and celebrate 9 honorary degree recipients. And what a tremendous list of awardees this is!

Below is a photo of the recipients, compliments of Oxford University.

I was absolutely thrilled to see the Nobel laureate in Economic Sciences Paul Krugman and also the National Medal of Science recipient Professor Mildred "Millie"  Dresselhaus of MIT plus the Spanish filmmaker Pedro Almodovar as well as Sir Jonathan Ive is Chief Design Officer of Apple Inc and designer of the iMac, PowerBook, iBook, iPod, iPhone, iPad, AppleWatch and MacBookat Oxford on the list! The opera singer Jessye Norman was not able to attend this year.

The day began with peaches, strawberries, and champagne, and a procession in Radcliffe Square to the Sheldonian where the ceremony took place.

After the Encaenia ceremony at the Sheldonian the Quad at All Souls College was the site for drinks before a lavish lunch that took place at the Codrington Library with tea and coffee out in the Quad afterwards. Magically, the skies cleared up so the outdoor events took place on the bright green lawn.

I was absolutely thrilled to be able to speak to Professor Millie Dresselhaus and to even meet one of her granddaughters. I had met Professor Millie when I was a Visiting Scholar and Associate Professor at MIT and we would take part in female get-togethers with Professor Lotte Bailyn of the Business School. She told me yesterday how important it is to have technical female professors at business schools and I agree. We also spoke about several of our well-known colleagues in Operations Research at MIT.

The lunch was fabulous and the seating arrangement very carefully thought out.

The dessert was also wonderful.

My husband was seated in front of the former principal of Hertford College at Oxford University, Dr. John Landers . Hertford used to have an exchange program with his university, the University of Hartford, so we took the following photo.

Seated across from me was the head of public affairs at Oxford University and next to me an amazing female entrepreneur. the conversations just flowed. I continue to be very impressed by Oxford's website and we talked about the importance of getting news on research out by faculty.

After lunch we chatted on the lawn. You can see Pedro Almodovar strolling on the lawn below in red.  I had to have a photo taken with Visiting Fellow Richard Vokes, an anthropologist from Australia. I also took the photo of him, my hsusband, and the brilliant nabal historian Nicholas Rodger.

And, if you take a look at the photo above, which I took because I very much like my Math Fellows Professors Francis Brown and Constantin Teleman, I also serendipitously snapped Pedro Almodovar on the right in the red gown!

Then it was time to walk to Merton College of Oxford University (the university  has 38 grand colleges) to attend the Vice Chancellor's garden party. The Vice Chancellor is Dr. Louise Richardson, who was the Executive Dean at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, when I was a Science Fellow there in 2005-2006. It was great to see her and to shake her hand and to congratulate her on becoming the first female VC in Oxford's 800 year history!

The lawns are beautiful at Merton and the spread of food plus orchestra were grand.

And, later that evening, the remaining Visiting Fellows got together at a pub for dinner and to finish off a truly special day! The full list of Visiting Fellows during this past year is here.

Thank you to All Souls College plus Oxford University for memories that I will always treasure and for friendships made across disciplines! My only disappointment was not being able to personally congratulate Paul Krugman despite trying to find him after the lunch!

A Historic Week for Oxford University and England

This is a truly momentous week and it is fascinating to be living in Oxford, England while history is going to be made. Since late April I have been a Visiting Fellow at All Souls College at Oxford University and I have been writing about the experience.

This Thursday, June 23,  England will be voting on the referendum on the European Union, that is, whether to Remain or to Leave.  The term Brexit, which has been top news not only in England, but also in the United States, refers to Britain exiting the European Union.

Many of the discussions at the luncheons that the Fellows attend at All Souls College have been around this issue with the majority of Fellows that I have been speaking with definitely favoring to Remain in the European Union. As someone whose passion is scientific research there are clear advantages to Remain. Researchers and scholars in England can avail themselves of European Union grants and collaborations. I have even served on the Advisory Board of a well-funded European Union grant. With Brexit, it would become much more difficult to secure research funding and to have multicountry research projects funded. Also, the free movement of those in the EU provides for a great vitality and energy and also spurs innovation and fresh ideas.

Lately, frankly, as I check out both CNN.com and BBC.com these websites' top stories tend to be identical so that I sometimes wonder whether I am in the US or in England. Now our hearts are breaking because of the horrific murder of Jo Cox, the MP (Member of Parliament) in broad daylight.as she was going about her work. The mother of two small children, ages 3 and 5, who had been elected in may 2015,  she had worked as the policy chief in Oxfam in Oxford and her husband works for Save the Children. To have a mentally ill individual kill such a shining light has created a pall over all of us. Her husband' tribute was incredibly touching and now every time that I walk along the Thames I will think of her since she lived with her family on the river in a house boat. She was for Remain. Even my neighbor from Amherst sent me an email yesterday expressing her shock and horror at this terrible tragedy.

On Wednesday, we will be taking part in honorary degree celebrations at Oxford University, where 10 will be honored, including the Nobel laureate in Economic Sciences, Paul Krugman, whose Opeds in The New York Times on the potential impacts of a Brexit I have been reading, as well as Professor Millie Dresselhaus of MIT, whom I had met when I was a Visiting Scholar and Visiting Professor there.  It is  a tradition for All Souls College to host the luncheon after the ceremony, and I received the nice invitation below for it. I would have also marched but I did not bring my Brown University cap and gown with me since I already had a lot to carry for more than two months in England.

And this coming Friday, after we have the results of the vote on the referendum, we will be celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Visiting Fellows program at All Souls College with many Visiting Fellows returning to Oxford.  Below is a photo that the Visiting Fellows at All Souls College took recently after a delicious dinner and wonderful lecture. Included in the photo are also the Warden, Sir John Vickers, and the Dean of the Visiting Fellows, Professor Simon Hornblower. The photo was taken at the Codrington Library.  We are the Visiting Fellows for the Trinity Term this year. As a senior Fellow told me recently, he believes that the best part of All Souls College is its Visiting Fellows program and that the college admitted women as Fellow.s

The full day program next Friday is splendid and is featured below and I hope to share photos with you of both the honorary degree recipients and the Visiting Fellows program later in the week. Women were admitted as Fellows at All Souls College only in 1979.

 

Walter Isard Memorial Volume, Disaster Relief, and Humanitarian Logistics

Who has influenced you in your research and has had an impact on your academic and professional success?

Through membership in professional societies we get to meet luminaries in our fields and, have you noticed that, many of the "giants" are actually also super nice people. In order to build a field or discipline you need followers and charisma and kindness as well as vision are just some of the attributes that make great leaders.

And two scholarly giants that I had the privilege of meeting and interacting with who, sadly, are now deceased, but lived to over the age of ninety, are Professor George Dantzig, the operations research megastar, and Professor Walter Isard, the founder of regional science.  Coincidentally, they were both, more or less, physically, my height. Of course, my doctoral dissertation advisor, Professor Stella Dafermos, the second female PhD in operations research in the world, who also introduced me to regional science through the literature and conferences, was the third immense influence on me. She passed away at age 49.

And, speaking of operations research and regional science, my most recent conference was the INFORMS Conference in Minneapolis (I posted many photos here) and my next one will be the 60th Annual North American Meetings of the Regional Science Association International conference in Atlanta next month.  For the latter, I have organized a special session in honor of Professor David E. Boyce, another amazing scholar and gentleman,  to mark his 50th consecutive such conference -- incredible  and the conference program with my session can be viewed here.


I will also be presenting a paper in one of the special memorial sessions in honor of Professor Walter Isard. The paper is entitled, "An Integrated Disaster Relief Supply Chain Network Model with Time Targets and Demand Uncertainty,"  Anna Nagurney, Isenberg School of Management, University of Massachusetts; Amir H. Masoumi, Manhattan College; Min Yu, University of Portland, and it is also an invited paper for a special memorial volume in honor of Walter Isard.   Our motivation for this research stems from the fact that the number of natural disasters and their impacts are increasing across the globe, so there is a great  need for effective preparedness against such events. Also, we all remember Superstorm Sandy whose first anniversary we will sadly be marking later this month.

Manhattan without electric power October 30, 2012 as a result of the devastation wrought by Superstorm Sandy.

In our paper, we construct a supply chain network optimization model for a disaster relief organization in charge of obtaining, storing, transporting, and distributing relief goods to certain disaster-prone regions. The system-optimization approach minimizes the total operational costs on the links of the supply chain network subject to the uncertain demand for aid at the demand points being satisfied as closely as possible. A goal programming approach is utilized to enforce the timely delivery of relief items with respect to the pre-specified time targets at the demand points. Aspectrum  of numerical examples illustrates the modeling and computational framework, which integrates the two policies of pre-positioning relief supplies as well as their procurement once the disaster has occurred.

And, would you believe, the Nobel Laureate in Economic Sciences and proponent of economic geography and renowned scholar and OpEd writer, Paul Krugman, wrote a piece in The New York Times, while many of us were at the INFORMS conference, that  I just had a chance to catch up with. The OpEd is entitled: Trends in Interregional and International Trade. Krugman  begins it with: Well, I’ve just paid my first personal price for the shutdown; I’m trying to finish a paper for the Walter Isard memorial volume, and discovered that the International Trade Commission’s invaluable Dataweb is shut down. I know, people are missing essential medical care and more, and I’m complaining about a slight academic inconvenience. But it’s a symptom. 

What a small world and how cool is this?! I assume that Krugman is contibuting to the same Isard memorial volume as I am.

Also, speaking of disaster relief and humanitarian logistics, my former doctoral student, Tina Wakolbinger, who is now a Full Professor at the Vienna University of Economics and Business in Austria, and who took part with me in the AAAS Symposium on Dynamics of Disasters, along with Professors Panos M. Pardalos, Laura McLay, Jose Holguin-Veras, and David McLaughlin last February in Boston shared with me her recent great news: She is the recipient of a 180,000 euro grant from the Austrian Fund for the project: "Optimal Pricing Policies and Contracts of Outsourcing Humanitarian Logistics Activities."

I last saw Tina this past March when I taught a course at her university in Vienna on Humanitarian Logistics and Healthcare.  I think that I made an impact since one of the students in my course is now interested in applying for a PhD in this area and I will be writing him a letter of recommendation.