My PhD Students Had a Great Year So We Celebrated

One of the great pleasures of being at a research university is working with PhD students and also celebrating their accomplishments. Yesterday, we celebrated some of the accomplishments of my Isenberg School of Management Operations Management PhD students over this past year with a delicious lunch at The Commonwealth Restaurant at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

Highlights of an excellent academic year have included:

• Dana Hassani receiving the 2026 Isenberg School Outstanding Doctoral Student Teacher Award;
• Ismael Pour successfully teaching a full course, for the first time, and publishing the co-authored paper, "Integrated crop and cargo war risk insurance: application to Ukraine," co-authored with Professor Borys Kormych of Ukraine, and me, in the International Transactions in Operational Research: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/itor.70038
• Samira Samadi publishing the paper, "Fresh produce spatial price equilibrium on general networks: Capturing commodity quality deterioration through endogenous transportation time delay functions with capacities," with Professor Deniz Besik and me in the European Journal of Operational Research: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0377221726003759 and also the paper with me, "Ad valorem tariffs in global supply chain networks and impacts on labor," in the Journal of the Operational Research Society: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01605682.2025.2592758. In addition, Samira successfully taught a full course for the first time plus she served as the President of the UMass Amherst INFORMS Student Chapter!

These PhD students were also very active in presenting their research at conferences of the professional societies: INFORMS, POMS, and DSI. And, Sarvagya Jha had a terrific first year as a PhD student and recently submitted his first paper to a journal. We shared the five exquisite desserts in the photo below.

Wishing all PhD students and their faculty a fabulous and productive summer with great, impactful research.

My Isenberg School of Management PhD Student Dana Hassani Receives the Outstanding Doctoral Student Research Award

As the 2023-2024 academic year was growing to a close, there were many celebratory events including my department's award ceremony that  I had blogged about.

And, at the final All School Meeting of the Isenberg School on May 9, 2024, there were faculty and PhD students recognized for research and teaching as well as staff for their accomplishments.

I was thrilled to hear that my Isenberg School PhD student, Dana Hassani, who has completed almost two and a half years in our doctoral program in Operations Management, was the sole recipient of the 2024 Isenberg School Outstanding Doctoral Research Award! I had nominated Dana for this award.

Below is a collage of photos taken after the announcement and prior to the Senior Barbecue that followed.

Dana has already had two journal articles published, one in the European Journal of Operational Research, and the other one in the Journal of Global Optimization.

Both of these papers, Dana co-authored with me and with colleagues at the Kyiv School of Economics (KSE) in Ukraine, Professor Oleg Nivievskyi and Dr. Pavlo Martyshev. Preprints of these and other papers of ours can be found on the Supernetwork Center website: https://supernet.isenberg.umass.edu/dart.html These papers are reflective of a wonderful collaboration began through the UMass Amherst - KSE partnership, which was established after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine by Russia on February 24, 2022. Pavlo was one of 15 Virtual Scholars in our first round and was placed with me as a Faculty Host.

In addition, we, recently, heard that another joint paper of ours, "Quantification of International Trade Network Performance Under Disruptions to Supply, Transportation, and Demand Capacity, and Exchange Rates in Disasters," has been accepted for publication in: Dynamics of Disasters- From Natural Phenomena to Human Activity, I.S. Kotsireas, A. Nagurney, P.M. Pardalos, S. Pickl, C. Vogiatzis, Editors, Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

The achievement of Dana's receipt of this award is quite impressive since there are 7 departments in the Isenberg School of Management.

The research on international agricultural trade network equilibrium problems continues, with various policy interventions, analysis of disruptions due to the war, as well as impacts on food security. 

Our KSE colleagues inspire us as do all Ukrainians fighting for their freedom and that of democracies globally.

The Best Gifts for an Academic Mom on Mother's Day

I'd like to wish all mothers out there a very Happy Mother's Day and to acknowledge all those who are no longer with us.

It's been a truly fabulous week and I feel very lucky.

As the Director of the Virtual Center for Supernetworks, I have the privilege and honor of working with a great team of faculty, industrial partners, and students. This past Friday, I sent out the following message to my team.  All of those recognized in the message below were or are my PhD students in Management Science at the Isenberg School with the exception of my great collaborator Professor Daniele in Italy and the "other Professor Nagurney," who is my husband.

Also, the photo below is of Professor Patrick Qiang with his lovely family taken shortly after his receipt of Promotion & Tenure.

  
Dear Supernetwork Center Associates:

I wanted to share with you some of the wonderful news and my CONGRATULATIONS! The next Supernetwork newsletter will be packed with Kudos.

1. I just heard from Dr. Patrick Qiang that he received a letter from the President of the Penn State University system, stating that he has been granted a promotion to Associate Professor with tenure! Congratulations to Dr. Qiang! (Plus, at yesterday's commencement on his campus, he was honored with the Campus Teaching Award!)

2. Dong "Michelle" Li successfully defended her doctoral dissertation on May 4, and, after many campus interviews and frequent flier miles, accepted a great offer from the AACSB accredited School of Business at Arkansas State University. She follows in the footsteps of Professor Tina Wakolbinger (since Memphis is only an hour away) and Professor Ke Ke, whose first academic position was at the University of Arkansas in Monticello. Congrats to Dr. Li! (Michelle is my 18th PhD student to receive the PhD.)

3. Professor Jose M. Cruz has received the UCONN School of Business  Faculty Service/Outreach Excellence Award.  This award is presented annually to a faculty member for outstanding achievement in service/outreach. Jose has received 2 Ackerman Scholar awards and two teaching awards in previous years, so UCONN should just start naming their awards after him.

4. Professor Tina Wakolbinger of the Vienna University of Economics and Business has been appointed Senior Editor for the premier journal, Production and Operations Management, in the Disaster Management Department.

5. Sara Saberi received the Isenberg School's Outstanding Doctoral Student Researcher Award - she follows in the footsteps of Professor Min Yu of the University of Portland  and Dong Li. Also, Sara is today at the POMS doctoral colloquium in Washington DC.

6. Professor Patrizia Daniele has organized sessions for the EURO Glasgow conference and I will be seeing her there as well as Professors Wakolbinger and Toyasaki, who will also be coming to the Dynamics of Disasters Conference that I am co-organizing in Greece. Professor Wakolbinger organized a stream and a session at Glasgow and Professor Amir Masoumi of Manhattan College will be speaking in the session.

7. Dr. Padma Ramanujam of SAS came back to campus to speak at an invited panel at an ISSR conference at which Shivani Shukla also had a poster on our latest cybersecurity research (with Professor Patrizia Daniele and the other Professor Nagurney, who will be on sabbatical this coming academic year).

Happy Mother's Day to everyone and keep the great news coming! I am a very proud Academic Mom.

The great news items above represent the best gifts that I could get as an Academic Mom!


Anna Nagurney, Ph.D.
John F. Smith Memorial Professor
Director, Virtual Center for Supernetworks
Department of Operations and Information Management
Isenberg School of Management
University of Massachusetts
Amherst, MA 01003

Great 10th Annual Faculty Convocation at UMass Amherst with Photos

Today is a picture perfect September day in beautiful Amherst, Massachusetts.

We just returned from the 10th Annual UMass Amherst Faculty Convocation at which our new Provost, Dr. Katherine Newman, gave her first speech and we honored 8 outstanding faculty members: with the Award for Outstanding Accomplishments in Research and Creative Activity.
Michael Ash, Economics; Center for Public Policy and Administration
W. Bruce Croft, Computer Science
David R. Evans, Educational Policy, Research, and Administration
Lyn Frazier, Linguistics
Panayotis Kevrekidis, Mathematics and Statistics
Barbara Krauthamer, History
Young Min Moon, Art, Architecture and Art History
Shelly Peyton, Chemical Engineering.

It was a wonderful ceremony with music, singing, a great speech by our new provost and remarks by our VCRE Dr. Michael Malone.

I took the photos below at the event and the delicious lunch that followed at the Campus Center. I was joined by my doctoral students in Management Science at the Isenberg School.

 Back in 2005, I was honored with the same award in the first group of recipients. The past decade has flown by!