Started My Spring Break By Speaking at the University of Buffalo

While many students and faculty were heading to warmer climates at the beginning of our spring break, I was off to speak at the University of Buffalo. I had been invited to give a Praxair Seminar in the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering.The title of my presentation was: Supply Chain Networks Against Time: From Food to Pharma.

My great host there was Professor Chase Murray, whose research involves drones and logistics, so how could I possibly refuse? Also, I know quite a few faculty who have spoken or will be speaking in this seminar series this year, including Professor Mike Trick of CMU, Professor Carolina Osorio from MIT, who was my host at MIT when I spoke there this past December, and even my neighbor and Engineering colleague at UMass Amherst, Professor Sundar Krishnamurty. who is the Chair of the Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering! Plus, I had never been to Buffalo before.

To get to Buffalo, I had to fly via Southwest to Baltimore and then onwards to Buffalo. Ridiculous to have to fly south to end up north eventually. I missed a nice dinner on Thursday night since there was a delay in Baltimore for my flight to Buffalo. Everything else worked smoothly and I had nice seat mates on all of my flights on Southwest. If I had continued on the same plane that I flew from Bradley to Baltimore I could have gone on to Orlando and probably seen at least one of my students who was off to Disney for spring break.  My students had hoped that I could arrange a class trip there since operations research is very important at Disney.

The logistics for my talk were incredibly well-done. Having a nice lunch was pleasant after my talk and meeting very bright students was also a highlight. Special thanks to Professor Jamie Kang for picking me up at the Ramada Inn on Friday and for driving me to the University and for also meeting with me. I was honored when she asked me to autograph her copy of the Supernetworks book that I co-authored with Professor June Dong and, of course, I did so. It was also wonderful to meet with Professor Chi Zhou who is doing fascinating research on biological (tissue) 3D printing and with Professor Alex Nikolaev, who is a good friend of Professor Vladimir Boginskii's in Florida, whom I also know quite well. Accompanying us to lunch was Professor Jun Zhuang. Afterwards I met with Professor Jose Walteros, who was Professor Panos Pardalos' PhD student at the University of Florida and who is from Colombia.

I even got to fly a drone, courtesy of Professor Chase Murray, who is a great instructor. Another highlight was meeting the new Chair of the Department of Computer Science, who knows my collaborators on the NSF Future Internet Architecture project and our NSF EAGER grant, including my UMass colleague, Associate Dean Professor Tilman Wolf.

I was very impressed by the outstanding research at the University of Buffalo and thank so many for coming to my presentation, although it was also the Friday before their spring break. Although I did not see Professor Rajan Batta since I had missed the dinner and he was off to Chile, I had a great time speaking with his students on topics that included global health.

I did not have time to cover all the material in the slides that I had prepared. Hence, I have posted them for those who would like to look over them at their leisure.

There was no snow in Buffalo and the temperature was about 50 degrees. Of course, we reminisced about last winter, which was the worst one in 180 years in the northeast, and, thank goodness, this one was so easy on us.

Thanks to the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering for the wonderful hospitality! I was even presented with the gift below.

Happy spring break!

Today I will be speaking at the MITRE Corporation in Bedford, MA on an entirely different topic - that of cyber crime and cybersecurity.

What if Your Plane Was Hit by Lightning and a Highly Perishable Product

This past Tuesday, April 2, I was trying to get back from Oklahoma City to Amherst, Massachusetts.

I had had a fabulous stay at the University of Oklahoma in Norman, during which I gave two  lectures as part of a Dream Course there. I wrote about the outstanding hospitality of my hosts in a post.

The weather in Oklahoma on April 1 was delightful -- warm and sunny,  but,  on my flying day back, it was fray and stormy, and I had heard thunder since about 4AM that night.

When I got to the Oklahoma City airport, courtesy of my wonderful host, Professor Janet K. Allen, I saw that my flight to Dallas was delayed and that I would not be able to make the connecting flight to Bradley airport in Hartford/Springfield.

So I agreed to be rerouted to Chicago O'Hare.

The lightning was continuing and as I stood in line waiting to get a sandwich I started a conversation with the lady in front of me who asked where I was flying to. She then told me that a plane that had just flown in from Chicago had been struck by lightning.

I wandered over to my gate and saw no plane, but, given my endless academic curiosity, I proceeded to investigate. She had also told me that there were long lines and that the airline was offering vouchers (I would not mind seeing Hawaii again).

The Southwest plane below was the one that had been struck by lightning as it was descending into the Oklahoma City Airport, and the mechanics could not start working and checking it out until the lightning was more than three miles away, for safety reasons.

The passengers had seen a bright flash of light in the plane when the lightning struck.

Many nervous passengers that were scheduled to fly on the above plane to Chicago were milling around Gate 18 whereas others were being rerouted.

A woman with an infant against her chest approached the gate agent.  I was going to talk to him since as a professor,  who teaches a course in transportation and logistics, among other operations-type courses, I wanted to gather more information that I could share with my students. I dug up this article from Scientific American on what can happen when lightning strikes a plane.

The woman said that she was traveling, via Chicago, on Southwest,  to Manchester, New Hampshire, where she was relocating to, and on the plane above, with the other cargo, was about a 4 month supply of breast milk.

Breast milk is a perishable product and, I thought to myself, having just had our latest book, Networks Against Time: Supply Chain Analytics for Perishable Products, published, that this "product" has similar characteristics to that of human blood -- you have to give it willingly and it is ingested into another human body. Blood supply chains are one of the case studies in our book.

The mother was panicky. She had done her homework and had about a 10 hour time window in which to get her very valuable packages back into the freezer.  I could really empathize and, being a problem-solver, I offered some suggestions.

In about 40 minutes or so, the plane was cleared for flying and the passengers had boarded (but two who were having lunch were not let back on board once the doors were shut).

And  I went to thank the Southwest gate agents when I heard that the plane from Chicago to Manchester would be held for the mother, her baby, and their valuable cargo!

In my research, I came upon this interesting post about shipping perishables, including blood and breast milk, in disasters, such as Haiti.

About an hour later, I got on my American Airlines flight to Chicago and eventually made it back to Massachusetts. On my leg from O'Hare to Bradley I was seated next to an executive and we talked non-stop. He had been to 116 countries and was in Vienna, Austria when I had been there in March. We discussed everything from our favorite cities to the US healthcare system and how he, at age 72, cannot even think of retiring since work is so interesting. He works in the international insurance business so we also talked about trust, reputation, and the importance of meeting people face-to-face -- and, hence, one of the reasons we fly so much!