Outstanding EUROPT Conference in Linz, Austria

I am writing this blogpost from Vienna, Austria, where I will soon be registering for the IFORS Conference.

This summer, as is my tradition, I enjoy speaking at conferences, and especially those in Europe.

The travel began on June 26, 2026, when I flew to Naples via Amsterdam to take part in the SING 21 Game Theory Conference, where I delivered the opening keynote on the following Monday morning. The conference was a joy, despite the heat, and I blogged about it: http://annanagurney.blogspot.com/2026/07/i-enjoyed-giving-keynote-at-game-theory.html

Then, last week, I spoke at the EUROPT Conference in Linz, Austria. Linz is the third biggest city in Austria, and it is quite industrial. It was my first time there. Below is a photo of the view from our hotel, which overlooked a nice courtyard.

The EUROPT Conference took place at the Johannes Kepler University, which has a beautiful, green campus, complete with a pond, that reminded me a bit of the UMass Amherst pond.

Many thanks to the organizers of the EUROPT 2026 Conference in Linz, Austria. It was an excellent conference, with great scientific presentations and discussions. Information on the conference can be found here: https://www.jku.at/en/institute-of-business-analytics-and-technology-transformation/conference-europt-2026/. It was wonderful to see Professors: Steven Gabriel of the US, Mauro Passacantando of Italy, Tamás Terlaky of the US, Gerhard-Wilhelm Weber of Poland, Bissan Ghaddar of Canada, Miguel Lejeune of the US, Oleg Prokopyev (now of Switzerland), Immanuel Bomze of Austria, and many others and to make new friends from Georgia (the country), Sweden, Brazil, Canada, and Hong Kong. The link to the slidedeck of my presentation on Ad Valorem Tariffs in Global Supply Chain Networks and Impacts on Labor, based on a recently co-authored published paper with my Isenberg School of Management, UMass Amherst PhD student Samira Samadi:  https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01605682.2025.2592758 is here: https://supernet.isenberg.umass.edu/visuals/EUROPT-2026.pdf

The 4 hour conference banquet in a beer hall in an indoor courtyard with a heavenly dessert of warm chocolate cake, cherries, and sorbet, we will all remember!

And, at the Linz train station yesterday, we saw Professor Tamas Terlaky, who was also heading to the IFORS Conference - https://www.ifors2026.at/home/

The Fall 2025 Supernetwork Center Newsletter is Now Online!

In the Fall 2026, we will be marking the 25th Anniversary of the Virtual Center for Supernetworks, an incredible milestone, which we hope to celebrate in an appropriate fashion. Since Fall 2001, a historic time, I might add, I have had the honor and pleasure of serving as the Director of  the Virtual Center for Supernetworks, which I founded.

In order to keep our supporters and the public informed as to the Center's activities, we publish a newsletter, now in Fall and Spring editions.

I am delighted that the Fall 2025 edition of The Supernetwork Sentinel, the newsletter of the Virtual Center for Supernetworks at the Isenberg School of Management, has now been published.

The Fall 2025 newsletter, along with all previous ones, going back to Fall 2003, can be accessed on the following link: https://supernet.isenberg.umass.edu/newsletters/sentinel.html

It has been a terrific couple of months, with outstanding conferences, significant recognition, as well as journal article acceptances and publications.

Wishing everyone a peaceful Holiday Season and a Great New 2026 Year!

Our Paper is Published in the Latest Issue of the Ukrainian Analytical Digest Focused On: Recovery, Resilience, and Resources

This past week our paper, "Rebuilding the Crossroads of Ukraine: Bridging the Gap Between Damage, Recovery and European Aspirations," co-authored by Oleh Nivievskyi and Dmytro Goriunov of the Kyiv School of Economics (KSE) and me, was published in the latest edition of the Ukrainian Analytical Digest. The issue is focused on: Recovery, Resilience, and Resources.

It is especially thrilling that our paper is the lead article in the issue. The issue is an excellent one and we acknowledge the assistance and guidance of its Editor, Eduard Klein, throughout the reviewing process.

The full issue is available for free and can be accessed here: https://css.ethz.ch/publikationen/uad/details.html?id=/n/o/1/4/no_14_recovery_resilience_and_resourcesn

And, just over a month ago, we had the pleasure of hosting Oleh Nivievskyi in our UMass Amherst INFORMS Speaker Series and he spoke on our paper!

Working with Ukrainian colleagues has been a bright light in Russia's horrific, illegal war on Ukraine, which continues. To-date, we have had the honor of collaborating (and publishing) with colleagues at KSE, at the Ukrainian Catholic University (UCU) in Lviv, and at the Odesa Law Academy. Their courage and dedication to their research as well as hard work in sustaining higher education during wartime is incredibly inspiring. Such collaborations are an outgrowth of the outstanding global partnership between UMass Amherst and KSE established through a series of MOUs shortly after the full-scale invasion of February 24, 2022.  We acknowledge the great work of the UMass Amherst Office of Global Partnerships and the Senior Vice Provost for Global Affairs Kalpen Trivedi.

I Had a Great Time Speaking on Agricultural Supply Chain Networks at the University of Louisville in Kentucky

I returned from Louisville, Kentucky, past midnight. Immediately after my Humanitarian Logistics & Healthcare class at the Isenberg School of Management this past Thursday, I headed to Bradley airport for my flight to Detroit, and onwards to Louisville. I was very excited to have been invited to speak at the Department of Industrial Engineering at the University of Louisville. I was invited by Professor Lihui Bai, who, along with Professor Monica Gentili, co-directs the Logistics and Distribution Institute there. Professor Bai's PhD advisor at the University of Florida was Don Hearn, who was a good friend of my PhD advisor, Stella Dafermos of Brown University. Both have passed away.

It was also wonderful to be in a warmer climate with even flowers, after a very long winter in New England. It was great to meet in the morning with Professors Yunmei Liu and Thomas Riedel (a University of Massachusetts Amherst PhD alumnus), and to hear Professor Bai's PhD students speak on their fascinating research! One of Dr. Bai's PhD students is now working with one of my former PhD students and Dr. Bai.  A feature of academia that I love is all the connections that we have across the miles. Thanks also to Professor Brian Yueshuai He for meeting with me and discussing congestion pricing in Manhattan. He has a PhD from the Tandon School at NYU.   I thoroughly enjoyed speaking about agricultural supply chain networks and the many challenges that exist today (including tariffs) and how we quantify resilience and robustness under disaster scenarios. I also spoke on making an impact and interacting with journalists and the media as well as legislators. The Q&A was excellent after my presentation and we took a nice group photo.

The lunch at the University Club with Interim School of Business Dean Jeff Guan, the Chair of Computer Science and Engineering Wei Zhang, and Dr. Bai, which included oysters, was delicious. Another highlight was a group discussion with the IE PhD students, from so many countries (Turkey, Iran, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh....). Their energy, enthusiasm, and passion for their research are uplifting. I was surprised by a beautiful gift of stunning coasters presented to me with Kentucky Derby artwork on them.  We will use them when we toast the derby in early May! 

Sincerest thanks to all and especially to Professor Lihui Bai for the exceptional hospitality extended to me and for the great attention to detail in organizing my visit.

Many thanks to Delta for terrific 4 flights and for upgrades! 

Tariffs and Trade - Some of Our Studies

Today has been quite the day. It is just mid-afternoon, and, in addition to a Kyiv School of Economics Board of Directors meeting on Zoom on various important issues, I managed, as of now, to do 4 interviews with the media on Trump, tariffs, and trade, because (we will see if this comes to pass), as of midnight tonight, Trump is to impose 25% tariffs on products from our neighbor Canada and 10% tariffs on products from China. The tariffs on Mexican products have been "paused" for 30 days, due to an agreement between the two Presidents. The situation is incredibly dynamic and volatile.

When I agree to interview requests, it is on topics that are not only timely but ones that we have conducted research on. I  remember fondly when we began to write on the impacts of tariffs (and there are several types, I might add). Colleagues, who were then at Cornell University, Charles F. Nicholson and Phillip M Bishop, were working on impacts of ad valorem tariffs on dairy products from Mexico, had reached out to me and then visited me at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. We published a series of papers, including one in the Annals of Operations Research. Since then, collaborations (and publications) have continued, many with a focus on agricultural products and the impacts of trade policies. Thanks to my co-authors: Dana Hassani, Oleg Nivievskyi, Pavel Martyshev, Deniz Besik, PhD, Michelle Li, June Dong, Ladimer Nagurney, and Mojtaba Salarpour for research that continues to resonate, with acknowledgment to journals, including: the Journal of Global Optimization, the European Journal of Operational Research, Transportation Research E, and the International Transactions in Operational Research, that have published our work on tariffs and other policy instruments (such as quotas and subsidies) and their impacts on commodity flows, producer and consumer prices, and consumer welfare! And for a recent podcast that I did on Talk The Talk with Bill Newman and Buz Eisenberg, for WHMP, on Trump, tariffs and tradeoffs, click here: https://soundcloud.com/whmp/umass-isenberg-school-prof

Below is a collage of first pages of several of our papers on tariffs.

You can find many preprints of the above articles and other ones on the Supernetwork Center website: https://supernet.isenberg.umass.edu/dart.html

Congratulations and Kudos for 2024

2024  was truly a remarkable year, despite challenges.

On December 5, 2024, I was deeply honored to present the Blackett Lecture at The Royal Society in London, England, thanks to the OR Society. It was an incredible event and I thank the OR Society President Dr. Gilbert Owusu for the warm introduction and for his great moderation of the Q&A following my lecture. It was extra special to have my husband, Professor Ladimer S. Nagurney, Isenberg School Dean Anne P. Massey and Associate Dean Bill Brown in attendance, as well as Diane Isenberg and Center Associate Dr. Stavros Siokos. Thanks to all who attended. The reception and dinner were fabulous and the OR Society has kindly posted a recoding of my Blackett Lecture on youtube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-LsIEsi-m0

And, in late December 2024, our latest Dynamics of Disasters: From Natural Phenomena to Human Activity volume was published by Springer Nature!  The book is a collection of 10 refereed chapters. I was delighted to work with my fellow Co-Editors: Ilias S. Kotsireas, Panos M. Pardalos, Stefan Pickl, and Chrys Vogiatzis on this volume. It is based on papers, and, also, invited ones, that were presented at our Dynamics of Disasters conference in Piraeus, Greece, in July 2023. Full information about the book can be found here: https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-74006-0 I'd like to take the opportunity to also thank the reviewers of the chapters. It was special to have a paper, co-authored with my Isenberg School PhD student Dana Hassani and with colleagues at the Kyiv School of Economics (KSE) in Ukraine: Oleg Nivievskyi and Pavlo Martyshev published in this volume:  https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-031-74006-0_7.

And, speaking of Ukraine, I continued to serve as the Co-Chair of the Board of Directors of KSE and on its International Academic Board, with many meetings, and important issues requiring thoughtful and intense decision-making. I was thrilled to have the University of Massachusetts Amherst announce the second cohort of Virtual Scholars, based in Ukraine, thanks to our great partnership. All ten of the Virtual Scholars have been matched with faculty at the Isenberg School of Management.  I am honored to be working with three of them - Professor Myroslava Kushnir at the Ukrainian Catholic University in Lviv,  Professor Borys Kormych at the Odesa Law Academy, and with Dr. Pavlo Martyshev of KSE, who was also part of our first cohort, as were Myroslava and Borys.  The Office of Global Affairs, led by Dr. Kalpen Trivedi, issued this nice press release: https://www.umass.edu/global-affairs/news/kyiv-school-economics-and-university-massachusetts-amherst-launch-second-round-virtual-scholar. Also, as part of this partnership, in Fall 2024, we had 5 exchange students from KSE studying at UMass Amherst and in the Spring 2025 semester we will have 4 staying on.

This was an amazing year for conferences with the 70th birthday conference in honor of Professor Panos Pardalos taking place in mid June in beautiful Halkidiki, Greece, with presentations by Center Associate Professor Dmytro Matsypura of the University of Sydney and me on joint work with Professor Ladimer S. Nagurney of the University of Hartford and my PhD student Ismael Pour. Both the EURO conference in Copenhagen this summer and the INFORMS conference in Seattle this past fall served as outstanding venues for many Center Associates to present their research. At the EURO conference, Center Associates: Professor Tina Wakolbinger of the Vienna University of Economic and Business, Professor Deniz Besik of the University of Richmond, and Professor Sara Saberi of WPI as well as Professor Ladimer S. Nagurney, and I, all took part. At the INFORMS conference, Center Associate Dmytro Matyspura, who had traveled all the way from the University of Sydney, was busy with editorial board meetings and recruiting, and we got together also with Center Associates Professor Pritha Dutta of Willamette University and Professor Ke "Grace" Ke of Central Washington University. Another highlight was to have two of my PhD students, Ismael Pour and Samira Samadi, who joined us as new Doctoral Student Center Associates, present for the first time at an INFORMS conference in Seattle. Dana Hassani also presented. And, our UMass Amherst INFORMS Student Chapter received the Magna Cum Laude award from INFORMS in Seattle. Hard to believe that I have served as the Chapter's Faculty Advisor since 2004. Many of the officers and members celebrated with us at the award ceremony.  Info on the chapter and its activities can be found here: https://websites.umass.edu/umassinf/. Ismael Pour is this year's Chapter President and Dana Hassani was last year's Chapter President.

This was a very busy year for seminar presentations, including at MIT and at the University of Maryland, and other presentations. I very much enjoyed giving a keynote at the Supply Chain Resilience SCRIPS Workshop in Washington DC in early October: https://annanagurney.blogspot.com/2024/10/the-supply-chain-resilience-scrips.html

We have been busy responding to numerous interview requests, including from Reuters, The New York Times, The Washington Post, AlJazeera, because of our expertise on supply chain networks. For some of the coverage by the media, see: https://supernet.isenberg.umass.edu/media/media.htm

For our recent journal articles, please visit the Supernetwork Center website:

https://supernet.isenberg.umass.edu/dart.html

For photos of many events that we were engaged in, please, see:

https://supernet.isenberg.umass.edu/cfoto/centerphotos.html

For additional news and updates, please, see the Spring 2024 and Fall 2024 Supernetwork Sentinel 

https://supernet.isenberg.umass.edu/newsletters/sentinel.html

Hoping for a 2025 New Year filled with peace, great research, conferences, and professional activities, robust health, and prosperity. Thank you for the support!

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.

Kudos to the Organizers of the First International Virtual Conference on Ukraine

Today we mark Ukraine's Independence Day (33 years of independence) and the past two days I had the distinct pleasure of taking part in the first International Virtual Conference on Ukraine. It was excellent and I wanted to express my thanks to Professors Almas Heshmati, Lars Hartvigson, and Olena Nizalova for putting together such a timely and interesting program. It was laudable how the scheduling was done with speakers and participants from Hawaii, California, Texas, Massachusetts, multiple European countries, including Ukraine, as well as Vietnam, Australia, and Morroco!

Jonkoping International Business School (JIBS) in Sweden was the host of this virtual conference, in collaboration with its partners.

I took a snapshot of the closing session, which is posted below.

Each day, the conference began at 3AM, my time; but, despite this, I thoroughly enjoyed the sessions that I managed to join and, of course, it was an honor to present our latest research with my PhD student Dana Hassani and Kyiv School of Economics colleagues Oleg Nivievski and Pavlo Martyshev.

The presentation was based on our paper, noted above, which will be published any day now in the INFORMS journal Transportation Science. The slide deck of our presentation can be downloaded here. I was delighted that all the co-authors of our paper were present! Plus, I enjoyed "seeing" colleagues in Ukraine, with whom I have also published: Elena Besedina of the Kyiv School of Economics and Myroslava Kushnir of the Ukrainian Catholic University in Lviv.

I also thoroughly enjoyed being on a panel with: 

Pham Khanh NAM, UEH University Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

Hans LÖÖF, Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), Sweden

Vesa KANNIAINEN, University of Helsinki, Finland

Mykola TKACHENKO, CEO of SOE Prozorro (Transparency), Ukraine.

Yuriy BILAN, regrettably, could not make our panel, as scheduled.

A remarkable amount of information was exchanged and the discussions were terrific.

The keynote talks by Roman Sheremeta and Yuriy Gorodnichenko were excellent! I wish that all presentations could have been recorded and posted since with the different time zones it was challenging to hear all in real time.

Themes that resonated throughout included: the resilience of Ukrainians; the fact that Russia's war on Ukraine is a massive threat to global security; Ukraine needs immense support from its allies; economic & military aid to Ukraine is the best investment; agriculture and IT continue to be shining lights in Ukraine whereas steel production has essentially collapsed; investing in transportation routes is critical and keeping maritime routes safe and efficient; human capital must be brought back and nurtured; security is of the utmost importance; damages are immense to educational institutions, healthcare, critical infrastructure (energy, transportation, logistics, supply chains), and the environment, and so much more!

I was impressed how much researchers and practitioners and even PhD students who took part want to help. There was emphasis on the need to get research results in front of policy and decision-makers more quickly.

Information on this conference can be found here. 

The full program has been posted here.

The Outstanding Pardalos 70 Conference in Greece

It has been only a few days since the outstanding Pardalos 70 conference in Halkidiki, Greece and the aura continues.

Conferees gathered from 5 continents to celebrate Professor Panos M. Pardalos on his 70th birthday. The talks were excellent (clearly, everyone worked very hard to present their best work) with many including photos and comments on what Pardalos has meant to them as scholars and as a mentor and even a friend.

Panos has supervised the dissertations of over 60 PhD students and has received numerous well-deserved honors and recognitions, including election as INFORMS Fellow and the EURO Gold Medal plus the Constantin Caratheodory Prize. His impact on global optimization, operations research, and numerous applications is profound. The organizers of this conference: Sergiy Butenko, Athanasios (Sakis) Migdalas, and Oleg Prokopyev did an incredible job in site selection, banquet and activity organization, and overall theme selection plus logistics. 

Thanks also to the Program Committee: Vladimir Boginskii, Altannar Chinchuluun, Dalila Martins Fontes, Faruque Hasan, Pavlo Krokhmal, Foad Mahdavi Pajouh, Dmytro Matsypura, Leonidas Pitsoulis, Themistocles Rassias, Mauricio G. C. Resende, and Petros Xanthopoulos for putting together such a fascinating set of single track sessions on the conference theme of "Optimization, Analytics, and Decisions in the Big Data Era." I very much enjoyed also serving on the Program Committee.  The presentations were on topics ranging from sports analytics (quite relevant with the EURO Cup now) to machine learning, complex networks, various aspects of game theory, energy and supply chain applications, and so much more! It was heartwarming to hear in many of the talks how the presenters met Professor Panos Pardalos and his impact on their lives. 

A theme that permeated the conference is that of wonderful friendships, great collaborations, and experiences. Special thanks to Mauricio G. C. Resende for kicking off the conference with his talk on his 30+ years of collaboration with Professor Pardalos. I have been proud to collaborate with Panos for over three decades and we have a new edited Dynamics of Disasters volume going to press shortly with Co-Editors also Ilias Kotsireas, Stefan Pickl, and Chrysafis Vogiatzis. Warm acknowledgments to Professor Stefan Pickl for the presentation of lovely gifts to Panos at the banquet. A very moving part of this conference was seeing a proclamation from the Ukrainian National Academy of Sciences in honor of Panos in the presentation given by Tetyana Romanova on work with Petro Stetsyuk and Andreas Fischer.

Below is a collage of photos from the conference.

More information on the conference: https://sites.google.com/view/panos-70/home

And it was quite remarkable to have so many Ukrainians in attendance and as speakers. Although Ukraine lost its first Euro Cup match, it did win its second one against Slovakia and Sergiy Butenko was at the match in Germany with his family.

Below is a photo of the Ukrainians at the Pardalos conference.

Wishing Professor Panos M. Pardalos wonderful experiences on his new journeys!

Congratulations and Kudos - Virtual Center for Supernetworks in 2023

As the Founding Director of the Virtual Center for Supernetworks, which was established at the Isenberg School in 2001 (shortly before 9/11), I find it important, as another year draws to a close, to reflect upon the achievements of the Center and its Associates during these challenging times.

2023 was a remarkable year, in which we celebrated 15 Virtual Scholars in Ukraine, part of the UMass Amherst - Kyiv School of Economics (KSE) partnership. In the spring 2023, we had the honor and pleasure of helping to host the visit of the President of KSE, Dr. Tymofiy Mylovanov in February and the visit of the Rector of KSE, Dr. Tymofii Brik, in May, at which we also took part in a symposium featuring faculty hosts at UMass Amherst and the Virtual Scholars in Ukraine. Many thanks to the International Programs Office at UMass Amherst, including Vice Provost for Global Affairs Dr. Kalpen Trivedi, and to the Isenberg School and the Provost's Office for the outstanding support of this very important program that helps to reduce brain drain from Ukraine.

For the EJOR paper, "Multicommodity International Agricultural Trade Network Equilibrium: Competition for Limited Production and Transportation Capacity Under Disaster Scenarios with Implications for Food Security," Dana received the inaugural prize from my OIM department, for this A level publication with a monetary award of $750. In May, 2023, Center Associates Professors Deniz Besik and Pritha Dutta and I published the paper, "An Integrated Multitiered Supply Chain Network Model of Competing Agricultural Firms and Processing Firms: The Case of Fresh Produce and Quality," in EJOR.

And, with Professor Elena Besedina of KSE, we published a paper in Operations Research Forum. Much of our research with colleagues in Ukraine focuses on agricultural supply chains and impacts of Russia's war on them with the importance of alternative routes for exports quantified as well as the use of various policies for international trade enhancement.

We welcomed a new Center Associate, Dr. Gabriela Colajanni, with whom, and with Center Associates Professor Patrizia Daniele and Professor Ladimer S. Nagurney, we have been actively publishing on UAVs (drones).

Our research papers can be found on the Supernetwork Center website.

In addition, as part of the partnership, UMass Amherst welcomed 4 female undergraduate students from KSE! We hosted a special panel with them through the auspices of the UMass Amherst INFORMS Student Chapter and there is now even a video of an additional interview posted on the chapter's youtube channel. It has been an extraordinary experience interacting with these remarkable ambassadors for Ukraine as they enjoy their experiences at UMass Amherst very much. Our great Isenberg School Dean Anne P. Massey even hosted a lunch in their honor.

And, this past summer, I had the honor of co-organizing another Dynamics of Disasters (DOD) conference, which took place in Piraeus, Greece, and attracted conferees from many different countries. We are now in the process of editing the Proceedings volume. 

Speaking of books, I was thrilled that my Labor and Supply Chain Networks was published by Springer in 2023. It's wonderful to see al the libraries that now carry it.

Shortly after the DOD conference, and with a lovely meeting with Center Associate Professor Patrizia Daniele and her family in Madrid, I headed to the IFORS conference in Santiago, at which I delivered a keynote talk. It was wonderful to see colleagues from around the globe at this conference.

INFORMS in Phoenix served as a reunion for several of us, and it was wonderful to see Center Associates Professors Deniz Besik, Dmytro Matsypura, and Shivani Shukla there with Professor Zugang Liu also taking part. At this conference the UMass Amherst INFORMS Student Chapter was recognized with the Magna Cum Laude Award. I have had the honor of serving as the chapter's Faculty Advisor since 2004, whehn the chapter was established.

And big congratulations are in order to Center Associates Shivani Shukla and Dong "Michelle" Li, both of whom were recognized with promotion and tenure this year at their respective institutions of the University of San Francisco and Babson College.

Congratulations also to Center Associate Sara Saberi of  WPI, who was appointed the Norton Assistant Professor in 2023.

We continue to be very engaged with the media - some of our writings can be found here and interviews here.

For photos of various Center activities please see https://supernet.isenberg.umass.edu/cfoto/centerphotos.html

Thank you for the support. Let's work together to make 2024 a better year than 2023 with all the pain and suffering now on our planet.

Accomplishments of the Virtual Scholars in Ukraine Program 1 Year in - The Global Partnership Between UMass Amherst and the Kyiv School of Economics

The one year anniversary of the Virtual Welcome for Scholars in Ukraine supported by the outstanding partnership between the University of Massachusetts Amherst and the Kyiv School of Economics (KSE) is approaching. That event, held on November 30, 2022, featuring scholars in Ukraine and their faculty hosts at the Isenberg School of Management, was laudable and incredibly moving, with the scholars having to take part in the event for a time at the KSE bomb shelter.

The Virtual Welcome event jump started the research and collaborations of the scholars in Ukraine with their faculty hosts at the Isenberg School. To-date, a total of 15 Virtual Scholars have been supported, with 9 of them (Elena Besedina, Nina Chala, Yuriy Dyachenko, Iuliia Kuntsevych, Myroslava Kushnir, Pavlo Martyshev, Viktor Maziarchuk, Maksym Obrizan, Pavlo Prokopovych) placed with Isenberg School faculty, and 5 others (Petro Chorniy, Nadiia Koval, Borys Kormych, Anton Liagusha, Hanna Zaremba-Kosovych) with faculty in Social and Behavioral Sciences and 1 (Georgiy Shevchenko)  in Math/Stats at UMass Amherst.

Thanks to all the faculty hosts at the Isenberg School: Professors Alicia Johnson of Marketing, Anya Mkrtchyan of Finance, Nora Junaid of OIM, Muzzo Uysal of HTM, Ina Ganguli of Management, and yours truly, also of OIM.

The program is helping to reduce the Brain Drain of researchers from Ukraine and, to-date, has led to a remarkable outgrowth of brainstorming sessions, journal publications as well as submissions, conference presentations, and even engagement of students in accompanying research projects. Importantly, it has also enriched the understanding of Ukraine and challenges in wartime for researchers and higher education. The Virtual Scholars represent not just KSE but also other universities including the Ukrainian Catholic University and the National University Odesa Law Academy.

UMass Amherst also hosted the visit of the President of KSE - Tymofiy Mylovanov on February 2, 2023 and that of the Rector - Tymofii Brik on May 3, 2023. Rector Brik took part that day in a Virtual Symposium that we had organized featuring the Virtual Scholars in Ukraine and their faculty hosts and also delivered an excellent seminar. 

Deep gratitude is extended to the UMass Amherst International Programs Office under its Director Kalpen Trivedi, who was instrumental in making this partnership a reality, with Ukraine and its higher educational institutions dealing with many challenges, since the full-scale invasion by Russia on February 24, 2022. Thanks also to Isenberg Dean Anne P. Massey for her extremely meaningful support of the partnership and of the Virtual Scholars. Thanks to the Isenberg School Virtual Scholar Selection Committee that included Associate Deans George Milne and Nikunj Kapadia and Bogdan Prokopovych and to all the Department Chairs who have been very helpful including the OIM Chair Senay Solak, the Marketing Chair Elizabeth Miller, the former Management Chair Bruce Skaggs, and the former HTM Chair (and faculty host) Muzzo Uysal.

And, this academic year, UMass Amherst, as part of the partnership, is hosting 4 exchange students from the Kyiv School of Economics. Recently, we held a welcome event to introduce them to the community.

Some of the research that we have been involved in with Scholars in Ukraine can be found on the Virtual Center for Supernetworks website. I am thrilled that even one of my Isenberg School PhD students, Dana Hassani, has been engaged in research with us. To-date, our collaborations, have yielded publications in such journals as: European Journal of Operational Research, Journal of Global Optimization, and Operations Research Forum as well as in the Proceedings of a Workshop hosted by the Pontifical Academy of Sciences. The research continues as do the growing friendships across the miles.

Many OpEds and other publications in the media have also been written related to the research and partnership and interviews taken part in.

The Terrific UMass Amherst - Kyiv School of Economics (KSE) Partnership and Virtual Scholars in Ukraine

It has been almost two months since we held our welcome event for the Virtual Scholars in Ukraine who are being supported as part of the partnership established between the University of Massachusetts Amherst and the Kyiv School of Economics (KSE), with the Isenberg School of Management hosting the event. Below is a screenshot of our welcome event that took place on November 30, 2022. Many of the Virtual Scholars were in a bomb shelter at the Kyiv School of Economics. Impressively, the technology worked and the event was truly special. 

During the welcome event, we heard welcome remarks from Rector Tymofii Brik of KSE, the Vice Provost for Global Affairs at UMass Amherst Kalpen Trivedi, and the Isenberg School of Management Dean Anne P. Massey. I have posted the slide deck of my remarks.

The Isenberg School of Management presently has 8 Virtual Scholars in Ukraine working with Faculty Hosts with more Virtual Scholars on the horizon. The Isenberg School published this nice article on the welcome event. More information on the partnership, which, I believe, is an exceptional one and a model that other universities can emulate, can be found in the press release issues by UMass Amherst.

The PIE News - thanks to Maureen Manning - provided additional coverage of this partnership.

I am grateful to KSE Rector Brik and to UMass Amherst Provost Emeritus John McCarthy plus Vice Provost for Global Affairs Kalpen Trivedi and to Isenberg School Dean Anne P. Massey for providing the incredible support for this partnership. Thanks also to the Isenberg School Selection Committee: Associate Dean George Milne, Finance Department Chair Nikunj Kapadia, and Professor Bogdan Prokopovych for assistance with selecting the Virtual Scholars and helping with the Faculty Host "matches."

Special acknowledgment of my Isenberg School colleagues from Operations and Information Management (OIM), Finance, Management, Marketing, and Hospitality and Tourism Management (HTM) for being Faculty Hosts. They, along with the Virtual Scholars, are listed below with the projects also noted.

Elena Besedina, from KSE, will be researching non-tariff trade barriers and impacts on Ukrainian agriculture. Host: Anna Nagurney, OIM

Nina Chala, at the National University of the Kyiv Mohyla Academy, is working on the motivation of consumer choice when consumer goods are produced using green energy. Host: Alicia Johnson, Marketing

Yuriy Dyachenko is at the Volodymyr Dahl East Ukrainian National University (his university was bombed) and he also holds an appointment at the National University of the Kyiv Mohyla Academy. His project is on improving business and public security using behavioral economics. Host: Muzzo Uysal, HTM

Iuliia Kuntsevych, at KSE, will study how business processes can be better managed and enhanced for greater efficiency. Host: Nora Junaid, OIM

Pavlo Martyshev, at KSE, is working on measuring the economic efficiency of alternative ways of exporting agricultural products from Ukraine. Host: Anna Nagurney, OIM

Viktor Maziarchuk is an advisor to the chairman of the Accounting Chamber of Ukraine. His project is on the influence of the war in Ukraine on the state budget and peculiarities of MPs' (Members of Parliament) amendments to the state budget and budget efficiency. Host: Anya Mkrtchyan, Finance

Maksym Obrizan, at KSE, is using the household budget survey (HBS) of Ukraine for 2020 (and later years when they become available) in order to identify the determinants of catastrophic health expenditures before the war. Host: Ina Ganguli, Management and Economics

Pavlo Prokopovych, at KSE, will investigate whether his approach for the existence of equilibria in Bayesian games can be used in first price auctions with a reserve price. Host: Anna Nagurney, OIM.

The challenges are immense now in Ukraine and that includes higher education with the missiles, blackouts, and Internet disruptions. Nevertheless, the research made possible through the support for the Virtual Scholars continues and it is heartwarming to see the friendships that are being made and the scientific investigations that are being conducted. I am delighted and inspired that already there are two papers completed and submitted to journals and a paper that will be presented at a conference next month. Other papers are being worked on and the excitement that the collaborations are generating are great to hear about! Plus, a Virtual Scholar, just this past week, spoke about his work at the Ukrainian Catholic University in Lviv and acknowledged support from the fellowship that he holds.

Support for higher education in Ukraine is essential in wartime and critical for the recovery and rebuilding of Ukraine. Research that the Virtual Scholars and their Faculty Hosts are conducting will be instrumental in rebuilding better and more sustainably and also giving us deeper insights on topics ranging from agricultural supply chains and Ukrainian exports, various trade policies, the impacts of war on science in Ukraine, financial budgeting during wartime, advances in game theory, and even how to teach better with Excel!

And there will be more news soon on 5 Virtual Scholars placed with Faculty Hosts at the School of Behavioral and Social Sciences at UMass Amherst, another Virtual Scholar for the Isenberg School, and one for the Math/Stats Department at UMass Amherst! This partnership program is providing support and strengthening networks of scientific collaborations across continents in wartime. I am so proud of my home university - the University of Massachusetts Amherst. This partnership is deeply meaningful to me since my first language is Ukrainian and, since the major invasion of Ukraine by Russia on February 24, 2022, I was elected Co-Chair of the Board of Directors of KSE.

Congratulations to the Supernetwork Team at the Isenberg School of Management for a Great Year!

As we begin the New 2022 Year, it is time to take stock and to reflect on the year that has passed.

2021 was a remarkable year in many respects, not the least of which was that it marked the second year of the COVID-19 pandemic.  As the Center Director, I feel it to be important to share with you reflections on this extraordinary year, and to highlight some of the accomplishments of ours at the Virtual Center for Supernetworks.

In 2021, the book, "Dynamics of Disasters - Impact, Risk, Resilience, and Solutions," that I co-edited with Professors  Ilias S. Kotsireas and  Panos M. Pardalos, and Dr.  Arsenios Tsokas was published by Springer. In it, you will find many fascinating contributions, all peer-reviewed, including co-authored work by Center Associates Professor Patrizia Daniele of the University of Catania in Italy and Professor Tina Wakolbinger on the Vienna University of Economics and Business in Austria. My paper - the very first on incorporating labor into supply chain networks, which was done in the context of perishable food supply chains, also appears therein. And, in July 2021, we, again, co-organized another Dynamics of Disasters conference, which this year, because of the pandemic, although based in Athens, Greece,  nevertheless, virtual. The conference included four plenary speakers and we were delighted to hear from all of them, including Center Associate Dr. Stavros Siokos of Astarte Capital, which he co-founded in London. Center Associates were very active at this conference and included presentations of work by Center Associates Professor Patrizia Daniele,  Professor Tina Wakolbinger, Professor Deniz Besik of the University of Richmond, Professor Pritha Dutta of Pace University, Professor Ladimer S. Nagurney of the University of Hartford,  and Isenberg Doctoral Student Center Associate Mojtaba Salarpour. Mojtaba successfully defended his doctoral dissertation in March 2021.

On June 7, 2021, I was deeply honored with the receipt of the 2020 Harold Larnder Prize from the Canadian Operational Research Society.  I delivered my talk, "Novel Supply Chain Network Models Inspired by the COVID-19 Pandemic: From Optimization to Game Theory," virtually and, remarkably, the prize certificate was delivered through express courier services around the same time!  The video of my prize lecture can be viewed here. I am only the second female in its 35 year history to receive this prize - the first one was Dr. Ailsa Land, who, sadly, died in 2021. I was honored to be a panelist to recognize her receipt of the Beale Medal, which I blogged about.

In the pandemic, our expertise on supply chains and various network systems continued to be sought after. Since part of the Center's focus is public outreach, in addition to our mission of research and education, we responded to numerous media interview requests from the print media, radio shows, as well as TV news programs, and podcasts.  Print media coverage can be viewed here. For various TV and radio interviews plus podcasts, see here,

Center Associates presented at the EURO Conference as well as the INFORMS Conference, which was in hybrid format, with Professor Deniz Besik presenting at this Anaheim conference in person as well as Center Associate Professor Sara Saberi of WPI and Mojtaba Salarpour. I had the honor and pleasure of giving a tutorial at the INFORMS conference, which was recorded - "Game Theory and the COVID-19 Pandemic," which is also an INFORMS publication in its tutorial series. I thank Professors John Carlsson and Doug Shier for their great assistance and support.

In addition, to other conference presentations, we took part in an interesting conclave in India and a workshop in  Nepal, demonstrating the reach of the research that we do.  Of particular focus this year, was researching various supply chain disruptions in the pandemic, continuing work on food supply chains, modeling various trade measures in the pandemic, expanding on disasters and game theory, and  including labor into various supply chain networks in a series of papers,  as well as constructing models of human migration and associated policies, and even building a model of convalescent plasma donations! I was deeply honored that my paper, "Supply Chain Game Theory Network Modeling Under Labor Constraints: Applications to the Covid-19 Pandemic," that was published in the European Journal of Operational Research, receive a 2021 Editor's Choice Award.

I am also very grateful to Isenberg Dean Anne P. Massey and to the UMass President Marty Meehan for appointing me  the Eugene M. Isenberg Chair in Integrative Studies in April 2021.  I am very appreciative of having held the John F. Smith Memorial Professorship of Operations Management from 1998 until that point and especially thank my wonderful benefactor - Jack Smith, the former CEO and Chairman of the Board of General Motors and a UMass Amherst alumnus. 

Center Associates achieved additional accolades. Professor Deniz Besik submitted a letter with testimony to Congress on food insecurity in the pandemic. Professor Pritha Dutta was interviewed by FOX on supply chain disruptions in the pandemic, and Professor Sara Saberi received a major NSF grant to help Massachusetts manufacturing prepare for future crises.

In addition, it was a great year - despite the pandemic - for the UMass Amherst INFORMS Student Chapter, which I have served as the Faulty Advisor of since 2004. We hosted several panels as well as Dr. Mauricio Resende of Amazon and Dr. Robin Lougee, formerly of IBM in our Speaker Series! The chapter was recognized by INFORMS with the Cum Laude Award at the Annual Meeting in Anaheim. Mojtaba Salarpour, continued to serve as the Chapter President until September 2021, completing two years of exceptional service.

Plus, it was uplifting to be the invited Faculty Speaker at the UMass Amherst Chancellor's Donor Breakfast in November. The title of my presentation was: "From Supernetworks to Supply Chain in the Pandemic."

We continued to write OpEds, several of which were published in The Conversation, including my article on the shipping container, that appeared on September 21, 2021, and, to-date, has over 315,000 reads!

And, to show the research that we are engaged in, below I highlight some of our recent publications:

Supply Chain Networks, Wages, and Labor Productivity: Insights from Lagrange Analysis and Computations
Anna Nagurney, to appear in Journal of Global Optimization.

A Multiperiod Supply Chain Network Optimization Model with Investments in Labor Productivity Enhancements in an Era of COVID-19 and Climate Change
Anna Nagurney, accepted for publication in Operations Research Forum.

Optimization of Investments in Labor Productivity in Supply Chain Networks
Anna Nagurney, accepted for publication in International Transactions in Operational Research.

Wage-Dependent Labor and Supply Chain Networks in the COVID-19 Pandemic and Beyond
Anna Nagurney, in press in Analysis, Geometry, Nonlinear Optimization and Applications, P.M. Pardalos and T. M. Rassias, Editors World Scientific Publishing, Singapore, October 2021.

Game Theory and the COVID-19 Pandemic
Anna Nagurney, in INFORMS TutORials in Operations Research, October 2021. Also presented at the INFORMS 2021 Annual Meeting.

Modeling of Covid-19 Trade Measures on Essential Products: A Multiproduct, Multicountry Spatial Price Equilibrium Framework
Anna Nagurney, Mojtaba Salarpour, and June Dong, International Transactions in Operational Research 29(1), 2022, pp 226-258.

A Multiclass, Multiproduct Covid-19 Convalescent Plasma Donor Equilibrium Model
Anna Nagurney and Pritha Dutta, Operations Research Forum 2, 31 (2021) Open Access on SpringerLink

Spatial Price Equilibrium, Perishable Products, and Trade Policies in the Covid-19 Pandemic
Anna Nagurney, Montes Taurus Journal of Pure and Applied Mathematics 4(3), 2022, 9-24.

A Multicountry, Multicommodity Stochastic Game Theory Network Model of Competition for Medical Supplies Inspired by the Covid-19 Pandemic
Mojtaba Salarpour and Anna Nagurney, International Journal of Production Economics 235: (2021), 108074.

Optimization of Supply Chain Networks with Inclusion of Labor: Applications to COVID-19 Pandemic Disruptions
Anna Nagurney, International Journal of Production Economics 235: (2021) 108080.

Perishable Food Supply Chain Networks with Labor in the Covid-19 Pandemic
Anna Nagurney, Dynamics of Disasters - Impact, Risk, Resilience, and Solutions, I.S. Kotsireas, A. Nagurney, P.M. Pardalos, and A. Tsokas, Editors, Springer Nature Switzerland AG, 2021, pp 173-193.

Capacitated Human Migration Networks and Subsidization
Anna Nagurney, Patrizia Daniele, and Giorgia Cappello, Dynamics of Disasters - Impact, Risk, Resilience, and Solutions, I.S. Kotsireas, A. Nagurney, P.M. Pardalos, and A. Tsokas, Editors, Springer Nature Switzerland AG, 2021, pp 195-217.

Preface to Dynamics of Disasters Impact, Risk, Resilience, and Solutions, Ilias S. Kotsireas, Anna Nagurney, Panos M. Pardalos and Arsenios Tsokas, Editors, Springer Nature Switzerland AG, 2021, pp v-xii.

International Human Migration Networks Under Regulations
Anna Nagurney and Patrizia Daniele, European Journal of Operational Research 291(3): (2021), pp 894-905.

Networks in Economics and Finance in Networks and Beyond: A Half Century Retrospective
Anna Nagurney, written for the Special 50th Anniversary Issue of Networks, Networks 77(1): (2021), pp 50-65.