My Interview on Italian Radio

I never thought that I would be on an Italian radio program.

Thanks to our session on Mathematics and Collective Behavior at the recent AAAS meeting in Washington DC, I was interviewed by a science journalist, Mr. Federico Pedrocchi, of Milan, Italy, who also taped our session. Mr. Pedrocchi has his own radio program in Italy that focuses on scientific subjects.

His report on my presentation about User-optimized and System-optimized Travel Behavior and the Braess paradox aired last week and you can listen to it online. The segment on traffic is the second one in his report and it begins at about 3:55 minutes and runs until about 7 minutes. In the meantime, you can enjoy the Italian spoken. Of course, there are excerpts in English from my interview.

More information on Mr. Pedrocchi and his science radio program is available here.

Listening to the program made me miss Italy so I looked back at some photos I took in Rome on my last trip there and I reminisced also about the traffic experiences I had there!

Luckily, both my husband and I have Italian colleagues so what we could not figure out will be translated for us soon.

Ciao!

Photos of Rome, Italy

This past week I was blogging about the NET2009 conference in Rome, Italy and my travel/transportation experiences. Since, sometimes, a picture may be worth one thousand words, I am posting some photos of Rome, with the proviso that I was not on a Roman holiday but at a conference.

Planes, Trains, Automobiles, and Bicycles

I returned yesterday from the NET2009 conference in Rome, Italy. Taking a taxi at 7:00AM on a Sunday to the Rome airport allowed me to experience free flow traffic in that usually very congested city. Rather than an hour trip between these two points as was my experience the previous Tuesday morning during rush hour traffic, the trip took only 20 minutes. There was congestion, however, in the Rome airport where the queues even at that time were sizable due to many departing international flights. Serendipitously, while standing in the line for security I started a conversation with a gentleman next to me who works for American Airlines and had received a PhD in industrial engineering from Purdue University several years back. So, of course, we talked about faculty and students that we both knew.

Our Air One flight (Alitalia and Air One have, in effect, merged) left an hour late but we still somehow managed to arrive on time at Logan in Boston. The food was terrific on the flight and the air crew and staff very gracious and friendly. The flight allowed me to reminisce about the experiences in Rome for the past several days, which included (over and above the conference experiences):

being asked by a nun in Italian for directions (for some reason, almost any place I have traveled to I have been asked for directions in the native tongue, including in Japan),

seeing the effects of a multi-hour transportation worker stoppage on a Saturday in Rome (busses, taxis, trains did not operate, with a consequence that some tourists were left to walk for miles since the tour busses that had deposited them would not move),

after consuming wonderful pastries, which, I suspect, had too much rum in them, ending up wandering "lost" in Rome, trying to find my hotel (luckily, the train and huge police stations are good central locations),

getting to know the staff at the Casa dell'Aviatore (the home for aviators) quite well since I had spent 5 nights there,

watching Italian news and television in the wee hours due to disco/rock bands playing "outside" my bedroom window and, hence, my inability to get to sleep (Italian TV can merit pages of blogging but it is incredibly entertaining from the news shows to the extravaganza song and dance shows with nuns usually getting front row seating),

finding a huge, simply magnificent cemetery next to La Sapienza where I walked in tranquility admiring the incredible mausoleums and memorials with mosaics and even photos of the deceased in ceramic and tile and decorated with flowers and plantings (another side benefit was that, while walking there, I came up with an interesting angle with which to tackle/unify two research problems on supply chains that I had been working on),

eating delicious meals at which people linger and enjoy the food, each other, and the conversations,

navigating the traffic as a pedestrian,

trying to decipher the graffiti (a huge problem and an eyesore in contrast to the glorious architecture),

and enjoying the elegance and charm of the people.

Thank you, Rome, for an experience unlike any other!

PS As for those of you who follow sports, yesterday, the Giro bicycle competition ended in Rome with Menchov the victor.

Plenary talk, Net2009, Rome, and the European Soccer Championship

This morning I gave my plenary talk on supply chain network oligopolies, coalitions, and the merger paradox at the NET2009 conference at La Sapienza in Rome, Italy. I managed to find the conference room in which I was speaking due to a nice custodian who understood sufficient English and knew where the conference was taking place. The audience consisted of physicists (primarily, judging from the show of hands), operations researchers and applied mathematicians, economists, computer scientists, and a few engineers. The talks have been excellent as have been the questions. The methodologies and models of networks differ in these fields and it is fascinating to see common themes of interest and application.

I just finished eating an exquisite lunch of sauteed porcini mushrooms with pasta seasoned with parmesan cheese and parsley, grilled fish, salad, and fruit. Luckily, there is time for a short siesta since the talks will continue until around 6PM today.

One of the conference participants is from Barcelona and he showed me his Barcelona and Manchester United banner from the European soccer final, which took place in Rome yesterday. I took a photo of the banner and will post photos after my return to the US. By the way, Barcelona beat Manchester 2 to 0. Now I understand why there were so many British as well as Spaniards yesterday in Rome wearing all sorts of soccer paraphernalia. Supposedly, 50,000 fans descended on Rome to cheer the teams and all the hotels were booked so many soccer fans have been camping out wherever they can find a spot.

La Sapienza, the university that is hosting the NET2009 conference, is a world-renowned university and this is my first time speaking at this university. Interestingly, I am the only speaker from the United States!

Rome and La Sapienza

I made it today to Rome, Italy and flew Alitalia out of Logan airport in Boston on Memorial Day. Amazingly, the turnpike traffic was minimal during the afternoon and we breezed through the toll booths. As a consequence I had several hours to spare at the airport but enjoyed seeing the Memorial Day holiday travelers. I had delightful companions on the Valley Transporter shuttle and got a chance to catch up with Smith College news since I shared the ride with a chair of a department at Smith and her husband who were traveling to Paris.

Alitalia provided excellent service and the dinner en flight was delicious -- salmon with green beans, a fresh salad, roasted potatos, and fresh fruit. My seatmates were a couple from New England who were traveling through Rome to Istanbul to meet a friend from Odessa there. I even managed to catch a few hours of sleep.

The taxi ride from the Rome airport allowed me to experience the morning commute traffic which was very congested but at least many of the highways are decorated with blooming flowers. Plus I had a delightful taxi driver. We communicated in my Spanish and his Italian with a bit of English here and there.

I am staying in a military hotel close to La Sapienza, the university that is the venue of the conference that I will be speaking at. The lunch today was incredible -- the salad with cherry tomatos and cheese plus the grilled fish simply delicious. This part of Rome is not touristy and very few people speak English, which makes the communications interesting.

The temperature here is very hot and humid -- so different from Amherst, Massachusetts this past week!

Rome, Italy and the Net2009 Conference

I had to, regretfully, not take part in the Erice, Sicily conference that was organized by my dear colleague, Professor Antonino Maugeri of the University of Catania in Italy, since I am on the search committee for the new Dean of the Isenberg School of Management. Italy's beauty is breathtaking and last year at this time I convened a conference at the Rockefeller Foundation's Bellagio Center on Lake Como (I hope that you enjoy the above photo that I took of that magical lake). Next week I will be back in Italy, in Rome, since I am an invited speaker at the Net2009 conference, whose theme on networks this year focuses on evolution and complexity. I am very excited about the interdisciplinarity of the network topics and speakers.

I will be speaking on my research on mergers and acquisitions and the merger paradox. The paper has been written. I am very much looking forward to speaking at this conference and to taking part in the exciting program that has been put together by the organizers. This will be a terrific end to an incredibly busy and interesting academic year!