News from the Virtual Center for Supernetworks -- Fall 2012

Communications matter and that is one of the reasons of the growth and popularity of social media.

Being informed also matters as does getting the news out -- as researchers we know that if we don't publish our results and also present our research at seminars and conferences, noone will know what was accomplished and science and our disciplines will not grow.

In 2001, I established the Virtual Center for Supernetworks at the Isenberg School of Management at UMass Amherst. It  has been an amazing journey working with so many collaborators and students and seeing Center Associates, even undergraduates, contribute in such meaningful ways to both research and our many activities. We have also had the honor and pleasure of hosting international visitors and numerous guests in various Speaker Series.

I am pleased to announce that the Fall 2012 Supernetwork Sentinel is now available. The Supernetwork Sentinel is our newsletter and the latest issue can be downloaded in pdf format here.
It is published in Falll, Winter, and Summer editions and all of our newsletters, which provide quite a historical overview of our center activities can be viewed and downloaded here.

Thanks for the support!

News on the Supernetworks Center at the Isenberg School

With Fall around the corner, and students starting to arrive at colleges around the country, the 2010-2011 academic year will soon begin. There is always a lot of excitement and anticipation from the new and returning students, their families, as well as from the professors who will be teaching the courses that the students will be taking.

A new academic year brings new challenges, opportunities, experiences and adventures, friendships, and discoveries.

As Director of the Virtual Center for Supernetworks at the Isenberg School of Management at UMass Amherst, I edit the Supernetwork Sentinel, which is our newsletter, and which gets published in Fall, Spring, and Summer editions.

The Fall 2010 Supernetwork Sentinel is now online and I hope that you enjoy reading about our professional activities that, this past summer alone, took us to Argentina, China, Austria, and Ukraine! The research that the Center Associates are involved in include such timely topics as supply chain network design of critical needs products from pharmaceuticals to vaccines to sustainable supply chains and even fashion supply chain management (in which time vs. cost is also a big issue)!

We study network fragility and vulnerability in transportation, logistics (including humanitarian operations), the Internet, electric power and energy networks, and even in finance and model how human behavior affects such systems. We also construct metrics that can assess the performance of networks and identify potential synergies with applications as varied as corporate mergers and acquisitions and the teaming of organizations for disaster relief. We quantify, through advanced analytics, cooperative vs. competitive behavior and identify and explain where paradoxes such as the Braess paradox can (and cannot) occur.

Since supernetworks are networks of networks, their applications are very exciting and vast!

The methodologies that our researchers use to capture essential components of complex networks include: game theory, network optimization, nonlinear programming, multicriteria decision-making, risk management, variational inequalities, and projected dynamical systems.

We have been very busy this summer and are looking forward to a very special, productive, and fascinating new academic year!

All of our newsletters can be accessed here.

New Media, Supernetworks, and Giving my UCDavis Talk Breezing in from Amherst

In 2005, I opened up the Mesh Forum conference in Chicago, which was organized by Shannon Clark, with my lecture on Networks -- the Science that Spans Disciplines. The talk was recorded and is available for downloading and has been used in courses at, among other universities, Duke University, and now at New York University. I stumbled upon the Spring 2009 course at NYU on New Media that is using my Mesh Forum lecture, complete with slides, as Lecture 13 in the course syllabus and you can read the comments on this material here. Nice to see other universities and instructors making use of material that I have researched also as Director of the Virtual Center for Supernetworks.

Speaking of "New Media," I just completed giving a 90 minute lecture on global supply chain network vulnerabilities and synergies and what we can learn from 50 years of research in transportation that was streamed live to the University of California Davis. We used "breeze" technology from Room G12 in the Isenberg School of Management with three of my doctoral students providing me with a direct face-to-face audience. My hosts in California, Professors Mokhtarian and Fan, helped to check out the technology before my presentation and I had a small video clip of my talking head and my presentation on the computer monitor in front of me. This was definitely a new experience for me and we had a minor technical disruption midway, which resulted in me going over several of the preceding slides. Overall the experience was definitely interesting and with the growing number of swine flu cases (documented as well as suspected) this approach to delivering a talk definitely minimized the risk. Shortly before my talk, the news broke that a United flight from Munich to Dulles was diverted to Boston Logan airport becaise a female on the plane was exhibiting flu symptoms!

In my lecture today, I noted the impacts of automobile manufacturers' declining sales on shortages of supplies in pharmaceutical supply chains as well as the shortages of chassis negatively impacting the manufacture of ambulances. Here we see a direct example of supply chain versus supply chain competition and associated disruptions impacting industries that one would think are far -afield from one another! The lecture was videotaped and it will be interesting to see what the ultimate production looks like especially since I noted the delays in my voice streaming into the computer as well as delays in the projection of my slides.

I thank the UCDavis Professors Mokhtarian and Fan for being my virtual hosts for my lecture during this time of uncertainty surrounding travel because of the swine flu.

Traffic, Jack Smith, and the Supernetworks Center

As an academic, one of the highlights of a semester is being able to host speakers and to see how students, faculty, and guests in the audience react. As the Faculty Advisor to the UMass Amherst INFORMS (Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences) Student Chapter, I oversee its Speaker Series. Last term, we had a wonderful lineup, including the best-selling author of the book, "Traffic," Mr. Tom Vanderbilt, whose blog, How We Drive, is a terrific read. His visit was written up recently in the Winter 2009 edition of "The Commonwealth." The student chapter has posted photos of Vanderbilt's visit and of the visits of other invited speakers.
Also, last Fall, we helped to host "the" Jack Smith, the former CEO and Chairman of the Board of GM and Delta. Jack Smith is a UMass Amherst alum, class of '60. Read about his visit and Q&A.
Hosting speakers of the caliber of Jack Smith and Tom Vanderbilt is always a joy but as an academic doing research and running the Virtual Center for Supernetworks brings its own special challenges and rewards. Read up on our center, compliments of Mr. Lou Wigdor, and for all the exciting activities in the Isenberg School, see the full edition of the 2009 Winter Commonwealth.