From Sustainability to Cybersecurity - Looking Forward to INFORMS in Philadelphia

I am so looking forward to the INFORMS conference, which is taking place in Philadelphia, November 1-4, 2015. I am heading out on Sunday. There will be great talks there and sessions, wonderful events, various professional meetings, serendipitous get-togethers, terrific colleagues from around the globe, and, of course, announcements of various awards and celebrations.

This annual conference also serves as a great venue to see many of my former doctoral students who are thriving as either academics or leaders in industry.
 
Plus, the INFORMS annual conference is a great forum at which to present your latest research!

This time around, we will be presenting on topics ranging from sustainability to cybersecurity with our work on identifying most important suppliers in supply chains, and also quality competition in freight service provision, also being presented.

Since the talks are ready, below you can get a preview of them. It's been fascinating working on a diversity of topics but all with an underlying networks theme. Many thanks to my great students and collaborators, from near and far and for the synergies created through the Virtual Center for Supernetworks!

The first presentation, highlighted below, is on the theme of sustainability.  It will be presented at a session on networks organized by Professor Vladimir Boginski of the University of Florida.

The ecolabelling presentation can be downloaded here  It is based on the recently published paper:  Fashion Supply Chain Network Competition with Ecolabelling, Anna Nagurney, Min Yu, and Jonas Floden, in Sustainable Fashion Supply Chain Management: From Sourcing to Retailing, T.-M. Choi and T.C.E. Cheng, Editors, Springer (2015) pp 61-84.

The second presentation is on work with my most recent PhD student to graduate, Dr. Dong Li.

This presentation can be downloaded here.  We are very excited about the results, which also appear in the paper:  Supply Chain Performance Assessment and Supplier and Component Importance Identification in a General Competitive Multitiered Supply Chain Network Model, Dong Li and Anna Nagurney, accepted for publication in the Journal of Global Optimization.

The third presentation is on joint research, also with my great collaborator in Sweden, Professor Jonas Floden, and two of my doctoral students, Sara Saberi and Shivani Shukla.

 The full presentation can be downloaded here. The presentation is based on a paper recently published: Supply Chain Network Competition in Price and Quality with Multiple Manufacturers and Freight Service Providers, Anna Nagurney, Sara Saberi, Shivani Shukla, and Jonas Floden, Transportation Research E 77: (2015) pp 248-267.

Finally, some of our research on cybersecurity will also be presented  in a session organized by Professor Laura McLay on the topic.

This talk is availabele for download here. This presentation is based on the paper:  A Supply Chain Game Theory Framework for Cybersecurity Investments Under Network Vulnerability, Anna Nagurney, Ladimer S. Nagurney, and Shivani Shukla, in Computation, Cryptography, and Network Security, N.J. Daras and M.T. Rassias, Editors, Springer International Publishing Switzerland (2015) pp 381-398.

I will also be blogging from the conference, so do come back and visit this blog!

Congrats to the 2015 INFORMS Student Chapter Award Recipients!

I received the wonderful news last Thursday, just after I landed at O'Har Airport in Chicago. I was en route to Northwestern Unviversity to take part in a new book launch that I have since blogged about.

The message arrived via email and it was thrilling. The message said:

Dear Student Chapter Officers,

Congratulations! The Chapters/Fora Committee is delighted to notify you that your student chapter has been selected as a winner of the INFORMS 2015 Student Chapter Annual Award at the level shown below. The purpose of these awards is to recognize the achievements of student chapters. The award will be presented at the Student Awards Ceremony at the upcoming INFORMS Annual Meeting in Philadelphia, PA. If you are at the meeting, we hope you will join us and be recognized at this event. It will be held on Monday, November 2nd at 7:00 p.m. in the Downtown Marriott, Salon E&F. If you cannot attend, we will mail the award to you.

Thank you for your commitment to INFORMS student chapters!  I look forward to seeing you in Philadelphia!

Best regards,

David Hunt

Vice President for Chapters/Fora   

Summa Cum Laude

University of Massachusetts

University of Toronto

Magna Cum Laude

Lehigh University

Northwestern University

Purdue University

Stanford University

University of South Florida

Cum Laude

Arizona State University

Mississippi State University

North Carolina State-Raleigh

Ohio State University

Oklahoma State University

Texas A&M University

University of Florida

University of Michigan

University of Pittsburgh.

To have the UMass Amherst INFORMS Student Chapter get the top award this year is simply thrilling. I could not be happier since last year the chapter celebrated 10 years!  I have been the chapter's Faculty Advisor throughout this period. We have been bringing in great speakers, having educational (and other) field trips, and various social activities and other professional activities. Most importantly, we have built a wonderful community that bridges operations research and management science at the Isenberg School of Management and the College of Engineering at UMass Amherst.

In addition, the INFORMS Philadelphia conference will be extra special since last year's Chapter Presient, Michael Prokle, who was simply outstanding, will be receiving at the same event the Judith B. Liebman Award from INFORMS for his terrific service to the chapter.

Michael is the 4th recipient of this award from the chapter and the first from the Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering.  The other three recipients were: Dr. Tina Wakolbinger, Dr. Patrick Qiang, and Dr. Amir H. Maoumi. Coincidentally, these three were my PhD students. Tina is a Full Professor at the Vienna University of Economic and Business in Austria. Patrick is a tenured Associate Professor at Penn State Malvern. Amir is an Assistant Professor at Manhattan College. 

I expect a big turnout of both our present members and alums at this celebratory event next week at INFORMS.

Many thanks to David Hunt for the wonderful news and congratulations to all the chapters on their awards and kudos to the Chapter Officers and members.