Celebrating 15 Years of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University

I received a stunning invitation in the mail yesterday, which brought back so many pleasant memories. The invitation was from the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study and the invitation was for a celebration of  15 years since its founding and also 135 years of Radcliffe.

In 2005-2006, I spent a sabbatical at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard and was one of 12 Science Fellows that year. I had an office in Putnam House on Brattle Street, one of my favorite streets in Cambridge, MA, because of its location next to Harvard Square and also its history. I loved working that year on my Supply Chain Network Economics book, talking with fellow residents of Putnam - an engineer, sister physicists, linguists, and a computer scientists, and a French mathematician (Pierrette and I still stay in touch). Radcliffe generously also supported two of my female collaborators that year for several months when they visited me.

I also so much enjoyed the lunches filled with conversation across disciplines because that year (and this is another aspect of the Radcliffe Institute experience that is so special) we had novelists, artists, historians, film-makers, a psychiatrist, and other trailblazers, among us. I also very much enjoyed the talks that the Fellows gave and the various formal and informal get-togethers around Harvard and Cambridge.

Radcliffe is very special and its Institute for Advanced Studies is a true gem of scholarship and collegiality.  ORMS Today featured my essay on that very special year - thank you, INFORMS, for the great support of your members! Dr Elane Chew, then of USC, followed in my footsteps, a few years after my Radcliffe year, and I believe that we are the only operations researchers to have been Science Fellows, thus far, and I hope that there will be many more!

Some of you may know that the present President of Harvard, who is also its first female President, Dr. Drew Gilpin Faust, was the Founding Dean of the Radcliffe Institute and she was its Dean when I was there. Dr. Barbara Grosz, a renowned computer scientist, was the Science Dean then.

To mark 15 years of the Radcliffe Institute and 135 years of Radcliffe,  there will be a celebration on May 30, 2014.  Also, Drew Gilpin Faust will be receiving the 2014 Radcliffe Medal.

I RSVPed my regrets - I will be in Sweden during Radcliffe Day 2014 - but through this post I wanted to reflect and reminisce and also to thank Radcliffe and the Institute for its support of interdisciplinary scholars and its vision!

Wishing everyone at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study much continued intellectual discourse and discoveries and, again, thanks for such a great year and for the friendships made!

Medical Nuclear Supply Chains -- Where Physics Meets Operations Research for Healthcare Security

I came across an interesting presentation given to a pharmaceutical audience on medical nuclear supply chains in which my book, Supply Chain Network Economics, was cited.

This topic very much intrigued me so I began to research it.

For some background:

Each day, 41,000 nuclear medical procedures are performed in the United States using Technetium-99m, a radioisotope obtained from the decay of Molybdenum-99. The Molybdenum is produced by irradiating primarily Highly Enriched Uranium (HEU) targets in research reactors. Surprisingly, for over two decades, no irradiation and subsequent Molybdenum processing has occurred in the United States. All of the Molybdenum necessary for our nuclear medical diagnostic procedures, which include diagnostics for two of the greatest killers, cancer and cardiac problems, comes from foreign sources. Since Molybdenum-99 has a half-life of only 66.7 hours, continuous production is needed to provide the supply for the medical procedures. Thus, the US is critically vulnerable to Molybdenum supply chain disruptions that could significantly affect our healthcare security and is completely at the mercy of foreign suppliers.

Currently, about 60% of the supply of Molybdenum-99 (Mo-99) for the United States comes from a Canadian reactor, with the remainder coming from Western Europe, with its production taking place in Western Europe, the former Eastern-Bloc States, and South Africa. Worldwide, there are only 9 reactors used for the target irradiation and only 6 major processing plants. The shutdown of any of the reactors or processing plants, due to routine maintenance, upgrades, or, as occurred during 2009 and 2010, for emergency repairs, could significantly disrupt our Molybdenum supply and impact our medical facilities' abilities to perform the necessary imaging for cardiac and cancer diagnoses. The number of processors that supply the global market, however, is only four, and they are located in Canada, Belgium, The Netherlands, and South Africa. Australia and Argentina produce bulk for their domestic markets but are expected to be exporting smaller amounts in the future.

Limitations in processing capabilities restrict the ability to produce the medical radioisotopes from regional reactors since long-distance transportation of the product raises safety and security risks, and also results in greater decay of the product. The number of generator manufacturers, in turn, with substantial processing capabilities, is under a dozen. In addition, several of the reactors currently used, including the Canadian one, are due to be retired by the end of this decade, with the majority of them being between 40 and 50 years of age.

Moreover, although most of the current production of Mo-99 uses HEU targets, all producing countries, where economically and technologically feasible, have agreed, in principle, to convert to low enriched uranium (LEU) according to the latest OECD Nuclear Energy Agency (2011) report. However, although the use of LEU targets for Mo-99 production has advantages over HEU, with proliferation resistance (and, hence, enhanced global security) being a primary one, along with easier availability of the target material and also easier compliance for its transportation and processing, the negatives, nonetheless, include: a lower production yield than HEU and a greater number of targets needed to be irradiated with associated increased volumes of waste. Hence, both production and processing pressures are raised as well as waste management issues.

Since Mo-99 decays with a 66.7 hour half-life, approximately 99.9% of the atoms decay in 27.5 days, making its production, transportation, and processing all extremely time-sensitive. In fact, its production is quantified in Six-day curies end of processing denoting the activity of the sample 6 days after it was irradiated to highlight this. In addition to the time-sensitivity, the irradiated targets are highly radioactive, significantly constraining transportation options between the reactor and the processing facilities to only trucks that can transport the heavily shielded transportation containers. While the extracted M0-99 continues to be constrained by its decay, its shielding requirements are reduced, allowing for transportation by modes other than trucks, including by air.

So what did we do?

We began to identify what a rigorous medical nuclear supply chain network model for this radioisotope should include.

For example, a proper model of this critical medical nuclear supply chain, which allows for appropriate economic cost quantification, heavily emphasized by policy-makers, must include the physics-based principles of the underlying radioactivity, and must incorporate multicriteria decision-making and optimization to capture the operational and waste management costs as well as risk management, subject to constraints of demand satisfaction at the hospitals and medical facilities. Moreover, it must be sufficiently flexible and robust in order to provide rigorous solutions as the technological landscape changes. Furthermore, it should enable the redesign of the supply chain network.

With the creation of such a medical nuclear supply chain network economic optimization model, decision-makers, policy-makers, as well as, healthcare providers, would have the ability to analyze the medical nuclear supply chain vulnerabilities, and synergies, as well as to explore the relevant costs and risks. In addition, the effects on costs and risks of changes in demand, which is expected to increase given the aging population, could be assessed. Moreover, the various stakeholders including the government, the medical firms, and the hospital and imaging facilities, through such a supply chain network economic optimization model, could determine the true costs of operating the reactors, and the same holds for the processing facilities, as well as the generator manufacturing facilities. Such a transparent framework would enhance healthcare security, would allow for more accurate pricing and cost recovery, and would enable the evaluation of disruptions to the medical nuclear supply chain.

We have developed such a model, which is a generalized network model, along with an algorithm, in the paper, Medical Nuclear Supply Chain Design: A Tractable Network Model and Computational Approach, which may be downloaded at:
http://supernet.som.umass.edu/articles/Medical_Nuclear_Supply_Chains.pdf

This paper, I co-authored with my husband, Professor Ladimer S. Nagurney, who holds a PhD in physics, so it represents a true meeting of physics and operations research.

I will be presenting this paper later this month at the Seventh Conference on Integrated Risk Management in Operations and Global Supply Chains. This year, this conference is being hosted by the Desautels Faculty of Management at McGill University, in Montreal, Canada, July 31st - August 1st, 2011. The goal of the conference is to bring together leading academic researchers and practitioners whose work strives to meet at the intersection of Finance, Economics, Operations, and Supply Chain Management. The conference web site is http://intrimatmcgill.wordpress.com.

According to the conference announcement, this two-day conference will feature a single track of presentations that combine technical presentations, industry practices, and discussions on relevant challenges and approaches in the topic area. There will be sixteen 90-minute sessions. Each session has two 30-minute presentations, followed by a discussant giving an overview of related research as well as facilitating a discussion with session participants. The format aims to stimulate discussion and interaction among speakers and participants.

I am very much looking forward to this conference and to presenting our work on medical nuclear supply chains.

Supply Chain Network Economics and Taking Risks

Yesterday, the Dean of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Dr. Barbara Grosz, launched the official recognition of the institute's tenth anniversary by delivering the Morning Prayers at Harvard University. In her speech, she quoted Genesis and overviewed the origins of the Radcliffe Institute. She spoke of the increasingly important roles that such institutes play in academia and even how Radcliffe is helping to crack glass ceilings and narrow recognition gaps at the highest levels of academia through its fellowship program, symposia, and other initiatives. As a Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study Fellow '06, I personally benefited from a glorious year there during which I was able to write the book, Supply Chain Network Economics: Dynamics of Prices, Flows, and Profits. Dean Grosz (who, by the way, was Radcliffe's Dean of Science when I was a Fellow) also stated that she hopes that Radcliffe will continue to inspire students, faculty, fellows, staff and institution leaders alike, so that, like Jacob, we have the courage to risk unknown roads and the strength to overcome the obstacles we encounter along the way. And, may our circumstances enable us to realize our dreams.

My Supply Chain Network Economics book is now being cited and used internationally. It is quoted in a recent United Nations report on the social life cycle assessment of products produced by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and has even been discussed in the context of diamond supply chains!

Thank you, Radcliffe, for giving me the time, the community, and the incredible intellectual ambience so that I could write this book!

Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study and Off to Italy

The 2009 - 2010 Fellows at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University have now been announced.

I am delighted that there is a Science Fellow in Mathematics from UMass Amherst and several terrific clusters as there were the year that I was a Science fellow at Radcliffe (2005-2006). The announcement brings back numerous memories. That year I made new friendships, wrote my "Supply Chain Network Economics" book, and formed new collaborations. I have included some photos in this post from that very special year at Radcliffe. The top photo was taken in my Radcliffe office in Putnam House. The middle photo was taken at the restaurant Casablanca in Cambridge on Brattle Street, and the bottom photo is from the Radcliffe Fellows "graduation" ceremony at which we received certificates. In that photo is Dr. Drew Gilpin Faust, who was then the Dean of Radcliffe and is now Harvard's President.

Today I am off to Italy to give a plenary talk. It will be interesting to travel to Logan airport in Boston especially since it is Memorial Day and the toll collectors may be having a slowdown as happened during a recent holiday.