Congratulations to the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University on its 25th Anniversary!

The Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard is truly a very special place. I had the great honor of being a Science Fellow in 2005-2006, just a few years after its founding in 1999. It was an incredible year for me with wonderful new friendships made, the writing of my Supply Chain Network Economics book, and many experiences plus collaborations, including with the now Dean of SEAS, David Parkes. Radcliffe also supported my collaborator Patrizia Daniele of Catania, Italy, and she wrote her Dynamic Networks book while at Radcliffe. She also worked with me and Parkes. The Science Fellows were housed at Putnam House and there were engineers, physicists, mathematicians, and computational linguists with us. Radcliffe, at that time, had several buildings for the Fellows. We joined one another for delicious lunches and talks as well as receptions and special events. Since that fabulous year, I have been back to visit many times, and have been a Summer Fellow at Radcliffe twice. I also co-organized with David Parkes an Exploratory Radcliffe Seminar focusing on dynamic networks. Radcliffe now has its own quad and all Fellows are housed in the same building. I love the garden and fountain and there are also often art exhibits.

So, when I heard that Radcliffe would be celebrating its 25th anniversary on September 26 and 27, I had to join, despite a busy teaching schedule, office hours, hosting of  a speaker, and also an All School Meeting of the Isenberg School! To-date, there have been about 1,200 Radcliffe Fellows. 

On September 26, Radcliffe, to kick off its 25th anniversary, hosted an outstanding panel. The session began with introductory remarks by Radcliffe Institute Dean Tomiko Brown-Nagin, who shared some of the history of the Radcliffe Institute and also noted her predecessors as Dean. When I was at Radcliffe, Drew Gilpin Faust was the Radcliffe Dean, and I told her that she would become the next President of Harvard and she did the year after my Fellowship year! The Science Dean my year was the outstanding, very inspiring computer scientist Barbara Grosz.  Brown-Nagin also shared a terrific video of an astronomy discovery by Radcliffe Fellows, which included Alyssa Goodman, whom I have met.

The panel, consisting of two Nobel laureates in Economic Sciences, Claudia Goldin and Oliver Hart, both of whom had been Radcliffe Fellows,  was moderated by the present President of Harvard, Alan Garber. Claudia was a Radcliffe Fellow the same year that I was and here you can see the full 2005-2006 list: https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2005/06/radcliffe-names-2005-06-fellows/

President Garber was an outstanding moderator and I was very impressed by his delightful sense of humor! He reminisced about carrying punch cards across campus, as a student, and always being worried about dropping them. When Claudia spoke, she brought back so many memories of that magical year. She mentioned Geraldine Brooks and her husband Tony Horwitz (who sadly passed away not that long ago) and said that Claudia Olivetti became her best friend. Coincidentally, Claudia is Italian as is my collaborator, Patrizia Daniele. I recall fondly many conversations over lunch together about Berlusconi. Claudia spoke beautifully about what economics is and noted that there are too few females majoring in economics. Male undergrads think econ is finance, so they major in it whereas females also think that econ is finance, so they shy away from it. She emphasized that economics is about people! That reminded me of the essay that I wrote for ORMS Today: In the End, It's All About People!   Oliver Hart, when asked about the influence of technology on his work, said that, as a theoretical economist, he just needs a yellow pad and pencil. He said that he does use technology to communicate with his collaborators but misses the trips that he would take to collaborate face to face. Claudia said that having access to AI would have saved her lots of drudgery type work.

Both Claudia and Oliver are so passionate about their research and that was incredibly energizing and inspiring to hear. 

Information on the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study and its Fellowship Program can be found here.

And here is a post on the 10th anniversary of Radcliffe in which I have several photos from our Fellowship year and in the photos are several individuals noted above.

A Big Thank You to the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University

This summer I had the great pleasure of being back at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University as a Summer Fellow. This program was made available to those who had been Fellows at Radcliffe and wanted to return. Having had an incredible year as a Science Fellow back in 2005-2006, and also having been a Summer Fellow in 2017, I knew that I wanted to return for numerous reasons.

The past two months of being back at Radcliffe and living in Cambridge, at 83 Brattle Street, have been idyllic. My project theme this summer was entitled: Perishable Product Supply Chains from Food to Blood. During the Summer Fellowship not only did a tremendous amount of work get accomplished (my co-editors and I completed our edited volume: Dynamics of Disasters: Algorithmic Approaches and Applications,with Springer as the publisher, a paper on food supply chains was completed and submitted to a journal, and two other papers are nearing completion, with all acknowledging Radcliffe), but the interactions with the exceptional community of scholars, writers, artists, scientists, engineers, and human rights activists, made for excellent talks, conversations that lingered, new friendships made, and sustenance obtained that will support us in both present and future endeavors. Below are a few photos from the Summer Fellowship including several of the delicious lunches that we were served!

 

 

And, since Cambridge/Boston is such an attractive location globally, I had the pleasure of also hosting students, alums, and friends, with a highlight being dinner at the UMass Club in Boston at which we saw a rainbow over Boston  and the sun setting.

And no wonder I always feel so at home at Radcliffe, the library there has a bunch of my books!

A huge thank you to the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, its staff, and its amazing community, which recognizes the importance of multidisciplinary research in pushing the frontiers.

Wonderful to Be Back at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University

This Summer I am a Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study (RIAS)  at Harvard University. I was a Science Fellow at RIAS in 2005-2006, which was a momentous year since, that year, the Dean of Radcliffe, Dr. Drew Gilpin Faust, was named the first female President of Harvard University and succeeded Dr. Larry Summers. She has had a fabulous tenure as President of Harvard and the new Harvard President will be Dr. Larry Bacow.

Some faculty enjoy taking a break over the summer, I enjoy being challenged. Last summer, I also was a Fellow at RIAS and loved the experience. I was honored when I was invited back.

The Fellows have offices in Byerly Hall, which is situated in the beautiful Radcliffe Yard.

I must say that my experience this summer began when I returned to Radcliffe on May 25, 2018, for the truly special Radcliffe Day, at which Hillary Clinton was awarded the Radcliffe Medal and the day was filled with wonderful panels, talks, including speeches by Madeleine Albright and Hillary, of course,  and a delicious lunch, with the Dean of Radcliffe, Dr. Liz Cohen, officiating and she did a stupendous job!

I was delighted to see several of the Radcliffe Fellows in my 2005-2006 cohort at Radcliffe Day, including Science Fellows Rina Dechter of UC Irvine and Diane Souvaine of Tufts, both computer scientists, so we took the photo in the garden below as a memento. Diane is now the Chair of the National Science Board - very impressive!

During my Summer Fellowship at Harvard University, I am working on a project very near and dear to me: Perishable Product Supply Chains from Food to Blood.

I have a standing desk in my office, which I love

and, in addition, to interacting with other fellows and even meeting students working with fellows (today I had lunch with a female computer science major at Harvard who is from Amherst and went to Amherst High School!), I always enjoy hosting visitors since Cambridge/Boston is such an international magnet.

On May 28, 2018, I had the pleasure of showing Professor Kei May Lau, a distinguished professor from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST), who was in town attending a conference at MIT, the lovely sunken garden at Radcliffe. Kei May was a Professor at UMass Amherst before moving to HK and is a dear friend.

And, in just a short time, I have solved some problems, revised and resubmitted a paper to a journal with several co-authors from different countries, and have finalized the book: Dynamics of Disasters: Algorithmic Approaches and Applications, that I co-edited with Illias S. Kotsireas and Panos M. Pardalos, which is now in press with Springer Publishing International Switzerland. I also (and it was so convenient) had the pleasure of taking part in the Isenberg School's Business Leadership Awards gala at the Colonnade Hotel in Boston last Thursday. The photo below is with several of my former students (now alums) and colleagues, including the Isenberg School Dean Mark A. Fuller, who is stepping down after 9 years of terrific leadership of our business school at UMass Amherst.

More adventures await! Many thanks to the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study for the wonderful support of extraordinary intellectual life!

Great Time Speaking on Investing in Infrastructure on the Dr. Matt Townsend Show

Last April, I published an article in The Conversation, "Calculating where America should invest in its transportation and communication networks." 

The article was republished in multiple publications and in May I received an email from a very friendly segment producer of the Matt Townsend Show. The message stated that Dr. Townsend had read my article, liked it a lot, and would like to have me as a guest on his radio show. Multiple dates as options were provided, but, given my very busy conference schedule this summer, plus the fact that I am a Summer Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study (RIAS) at Harvard, we settled on today as the date!

Trying to find a landline was not easy but, thanks to RIAS, a nice quiet and comfortable office was found and I also had a cell phone as a backup. I had listened to several segments of the show and very much enjoyed the facility with which Dr. Townsend asked questions and kept the conversation going on numerous timely topics being addressed by those that he was interviewing.

I came prepared with a bottle of water and my latte from Peet's to keep myself hydrated and pumped, which was easy.

 

Critical infrastructure networks is a topic I am extremely passionate about and have done research on with wonderful doctoral students from the Isenberg School as well as collaborators from Harvard to many other universities; some of these are Supernetwork Center Associates. Most notably, I mention Dr. Patrick Qiang, with whom I wrote the Fragile Networks book, and which was featured in the interview.



The interview can be accessed online.

Many thanks to Dr. Matt Townsend for the invitation to be on his show and for his terrific questions as an interviewer! I enjoyed the experience a lot.

And, coincidentally, afterwards, I had lunch with Professor David Parkes, a chaired professor of computer science at Harvard. When I was a Science Fellow at RIAS in 2005-2006, he, Professor Patrizia Daniele of the University of Catania, and I co-authored a paper on the Internet and the Braess paradox, which was published. 

Of course, in my interview with Dr. Matt Townsend I had to speak on the Braess paradox!

Celebrated Publication of Our Cybersecurity Investment Game Theory Paper at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University

Today, I had the pleasure of seeing my most recent PhD student from the Isenberg School of Management, Shivani Shukla, who successfully defended her dissertation in May, and is now Dr. Shivani Shukla. She will soon assume her new tenure track academic position in San Francisco - very exciting!

Shivani and I were celebrating the publication of our paper, which is on cybersecurity investments, and which appears in the July issue of the European Journal of Operational Research. 

I also very much wanted to show Shivani the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study (RIAS) at Harvard University where I am spending the summer as a Fellow. I had been a Science Fellow at RIAS in 2005-2006, which was quite the historic year with Harvard's President at that time, Dr. Larry Summers, resigning, and the Dean of Radcliffe, Dr. Drew Gilpin Faust, becoming the first female President of Harvard. She announced her resignation recently, after serving for 10 years.

And, what serendipity, when Shivani and I entered the gorgeous RIAS Fellows  Building, Byerly Hall, we saw a UMass Amherst colleague, Dr. Andrea Nahmod of the Math/Stats Department, who is also a Summer Fellow and had just returned from a conference in France!

I gave Shivani a tour and emphasized all the features that make RIAS so special - from the focus on interdisciplinarity, to the ambience, the staff, the Fellows, and even the beautiful garden, where we posed in with our latest paper.

Of course, we also enjoyed a delicious lunch at Algiers and then treats at Burdick's.

As an academic, it gives me great joy to see my 20th PhD student begin on her new academic journey with a nice portfolio of journal articles already in hand! I hope that, one day, she will be a Fellow at RIAS!

My Talk on Game Theory for Disaster Relief and Blood Supply Chains at Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University

Today is the first day of summer and it is a glorious day in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

It is also a perfect day for my presentation on Game Theory Network Models for Disaster Relief and Blood Supply Chains.

I am at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study (RIAS) at Harvard University as a Summer Fellow (and was a Fellow 2005-2006). It is truly special to be back at RIAS, which now has Byerly Hall remodeled for all the Fellows which hail from around the globe and represent numerous disciplines. The energy, enthusiasm, and collegiality among the Fellows is truly special. In the summer there are talks given at lunches and the menu for mine is exquisite with two of my favorite food groups: salmon and baklava!

It is challenging to prepare a talk, which is on a technical subject, since I specialize in operations research and math modelling, to a general audience. I like such challenges and presented at RIAS back in 2005-2006. I have also done such presentations at the Rockefeller Foundation's Bellagio Center on Lake Como as well as at the World Science Festival in NYC  and at one of the New York Times' EnergyforTomorrow events. In addition, I enjoyed giving a Distinguished Faculty lecture at UMass Amherst a while back when I received the Chancellor's Medal.

My presentation can be downloaded here.

It was wonderful to have scientists, mathematicians, anthropologists, literature specialists, and others at my talk. Thanks to RIAS for such an amazing Fellowship Program!

Also, I could not resist taking a photo with a Radcliffe staff member who was here when I was a Science Fellow in 2005-2006.

And a special surprise was seeing so many of my books on a shelf in the seminar room today!

Back at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard

It is great to be back at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University!

I was a Science Fellow in 2005-2006 at Radcliffe and am now back as a Summer Fellow. 2005-2006 was a dramatic year in which Larry Summers stepped down as President of Harvard and the Dean of Radcliffe, Drew Gilpin Faust, became the first female President of Harvard.

The Radcliffe Yard is beautiful and there is now a lovely building, Byerly Hall, in which all the Fellows have offices. Back in 2005-2006, many of the Science Fellows had offices in Putnam House on Brattle Street.

I have a view from my Harvard office of a fountain and garden that remind me of being back at Oxford University, where I was a Visiting Fellow at All Souls College last year during the Trinity term. 

While a Fellow at Radcliffe I am working on a project on game theory and disaster relief and also on blood supply chains. I will be presenting on my project at Radcliffe on June 21, the first day of summer!

I am very excited about meeting the other Summer Fellows and am delighted that my colleague, Andrea  Nahmod from UMass Amherst, is also a Summer Fellow!

I love interdisciplinary research and being in a truly special place such as the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, surrounded by scientists, novelists, artists, historians, sociologists, anthropologists, and even an archeologist, one can't help but be inspired.

Thank you, Radcliffe, for this great opportunity! It is terrific to be back. 

Getting Great News While on the Train - You are a Fellow!

When one gets some very good news (or bad), one remembers that very moment - from what you were doing when you heard the news to where you were when you received it.

Nowadays, much good news comes via email and, with smartphones, the messages can be received almost anywhere.

While on a recent trip to NYC, via the MetroNorth train from New Haven, I was engrossed in my New York Times and enjoying the journey. I love riding trains. My husband reached for my smartphone and decided to check my email and said, "You have a message from Oxford University."

I suspected that this was a decision on my application to be a Visiting Fellow at Oxford, a dream I had harbored for a while.

And indeed, it was!  The message said that a letter inviting me to take up a Visiting Fellowship had been posted and the sender stated that "I take great pleasure in attaching a pdf copy."

The letter, a hardcopy of which I also subsequently received via Royal Mail,  stated that I had been offered the fellowship for the 2015-2016 year for the trinity term, which is the term that I had requested.

I will be a Fellow at All Souls College at Oxford and will be researching supply chains and quality, a topic that I a very passionate about since it impacts so many products that affect consumers from pharmaceuticals and food to high tech and durable products.  Almost every day, one reads about quality failures of suppliers, some with devastating effects on human lives.

According to the letter, I will be provided with a workroom in the college, will have free accommodation at Oxford, and will have meals at Common Table (yes, capitalized). The atmosphere and support will be incredible.

One can become a Fellow of a professional society (for example, I was so honored to become a Fellow of INFORMS and also RSAI). One can also be a Visiting Fellow, as at Oxford, and other universities that have such programs, as well as at Institutes. For example, in 2005-2006 I was a Science Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, one of the best experiences that I have ever had, and where I wrote my Supply Chain Network Economics book.

I am so honored to have this great opportunity at one of the greatest universities in the world!

And, amazingly, On December 4, 2014, at our wonderful tribute to Gene Isenberg, after whom our School of Management at UMass Amherst is named, I had the pleasure of speaking with one of the grandsons, Stefan, who had recently graduated from Oxford! He told me about the unique place that All Souls College has at Oxford and its exceptional library. I know that I will be inspired tremendously and will do my utmost to contribute to research and the life of the college while I am there and afterwards. Also, Stefan told me that he has appeared in several recent episodes of the PBS Masterpiece Mystery Inspector Lewis series (a followup on the Inspector Morse series), which takes place in Oxford, with many of the characters affiliated (fictionally) with Oxford University,  I became captivated by this program while being a Visiting Professor in Gothenburg (the Swedes show a lot of British TV programs).

A list of the Visiting Fellows this year is comprised of an economist, lawyers, literature scholars, and an astronomer, to start, with renowned universities such as Harvard and Stanford represented. I thrive in interdisciplinary settings such as Radcliffe, so am so looking forward to experiences that I know will be truly special.

Fortune 500 Companies Should Learn from the Ivy League and Have More Female CEOs

CNNMoney is celebrating that Fortune 500 women CEOs hit a milestone in that, as of January 1, 2013, there are now 21 female CEOs of Fortune 500 companies with recent female leaders heading up such high tech firms as Lockheed Martin, HP, Yahoo, and IBM and even General Dynamics.

Alright, so the fact that 21 of the Fortune 500 CEOs are now females is certainly reason to celebrate but this is still a measly 4.2%. And it is certainly terrific that there are now 20 female Senators in the US Congress.

Now, let's look at the Ivy League colleges -- that is where the representation at the top -- at the Presidential level -- reflects more the population at large in terms of gender and we should be celebrating that.

As we start off the New 2013 Year,  5 our of the 8 Ivy League universities are being led by females.

My alma mater, Brown University, has as its new President, Dr. Christina Paxson, who, just a few months ago, took over the Presidency of brown after the long leadership of Dr. Ruth Simmons. Very cool that Brown picked another female President!

Harvard University, also my alma mater since I was a Radcliffe Fellow, has at its helm, Dr. Drew Gilpin Faust, whom I have also blogged about. She was the Dean of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study while I was a Fellow there and took over after Dr. Larry Summers stepped down from the Presidency of Harvard.

Princeton University is still being led by Dr. Shirley Tilghman, but she will be stepping down soon -- will Princeton select another female is its new President?


Dr. Amy Gutmann has been the President of UPenn since 2004 and has done wonderful things for this Ivy League institution.

And Dr. Carol Folt is now the Interim President at Dartmouth College. She has this position until Dr. Philip Hanlon (male) assumes the Presidency of Dartmouth soon.  I have blogged about him since he is a mathematician and we have an intellectual connection since his dissertation advisor at CalTech was Dr. Olga Taussky-Todd and I used one of her theorems in my doctoral dissertation.

Columbia University, Yale University, and Cornell University, which complete the roster of eight Ivy League universities, are led by males and, as far as I know, have always had male Presidents. The incoming President of Yale will be male. Dr. Peter Salovey, Yale's Provost,  will replace Dr. Richard C. Levin who is stepping down.

So, for the here and now, we should celebrate that, when noone was paying attention, now the majority of Ivy League universities -- among the elite institutions  of higher education in the world -- are now being led by females!

Fortune 500 companies -- take notice!

When Favorite Restaurants in Harvard Square Close

A favorite restaurant is more than a place for good food. It is a place where memories are made and great times and conversations treasured.

On Friday, my family and I were in Boston, and we were very much looking forward to have dinner in Cambridge, after hours of walking.

Having spent a full year as a Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard on my previous sabbatical, and having also been at MIT for two years as a Visiting Scholar and Visiting Professor, earlier, I am very fond of Cambridge. Of course, I could even go back to my Brown University days when running track at the Harvard stadium was great fun. I used to do the two mile.

We were especially looking forward to dining at the Cafe of India, which has (and as we found out "had")  the best Indian food this side of the UK. In the summer, the windows of the restaurant would be open and the delicious smell of curry would permeate Brattle Street. It was located next door to Burdick's, with delicious chocolates and pastries. My year at Harvard I had an apartment on 83 Brattle Street and my office was in Putnam House where most of the other Science Fellows (only 12 of us that year) were based.

I had dined so many times while in Cambridge at the Cafe of India and even took my most recent PhD student, who is now an Assistant Professor, Dr. Min Yu, there after the NetSci 2010 conference at MIT in May. This was the first time she had ever eaten Indian food and she loved it. The photos above were taken at that dinner.


We were shocked to see that Cafe of India had closed, after two decades of operation,  and I found an article on its closure in the Boston Business Journal.

So up the street we marched only to find that Casablanca had also shuttered its doors and it had been an institution since 1955! Today's Boston Globe has an article on this closing.

Within a few months of one another, these two favorite restaurants of ours had shuttered their doors.

Below,  I have posted some photos of wonderful meals with great friends form the US, France, and even Italy, all with whom I had spent time during that great year at Harvard.

We are left with memories and, luckily, a few photos, and papers written as well as books. We'll have to find new places to meet and to make new traditions.

As for other favorite restaurants that have also left Harvard Square, perhaps some of you remember Cafe Paradiso for gelato and Italian cookies, Greenhouse for great breakfasts, and Swiss Alps, for delicious dinners.