Thanks to Dr. Les Servi for Speaking in Our UMass Amherst INFORMS Speaker Series

On April 10, 2026, we had the honor and pleasure of having Dr. Les Servi speak in our UMass Amherst INFORMS Speaker Series. We were very excited to have Dr. Servi back at UMass Amherst. 

The title of his presentation was: “Identifying Critical Nodes in Mission Systems: An Operations Research Framework.” 

Dr. Les Servi is an Operations Research Scientist and former Chief Scientist for Cyber Operations Research at The MITRE Corporation. Earlier, he conducted research at MIT Lincoln Laboratory, Bell Laboratories, and GTE Laboratories (now Verizon), and spent a sabbatical year as a visiting scientist at Harvard University and MIT.  He has served as an Associate Editor for the journals: Operations Research, Management Science, and the INFORMS Journal on Computing. He is also  a MORS Fellow, an INFORMS Fellow, and served six years on the INFORMS Board of Directors. Dr. Servi is an INFORMS VP Chapters and Forums Board member.

Dr. Servi's book, "Mission Dependency Network Analysis," was published by Springer in 2026 and he kindly presented me with a copy. It was nice to see one of my papers with Patrick Qiang cited therein.

We had a great discussion after his presentation and at lunch. Many thanks to the INFORMS Student Chapter for doing such a nice job in publicizing his presentation - the announcement even made the UMass Amherst homepage with special thanks to the Chapter President Samira Samadi.

And, after the delicious lunch at the UMass Commonwealth Restaurant, Dr. Servi was off to Logan Airport to catch a flight to DC for the INFORMS Analytics Conference, where I joined him on Sunday!

Panel at the Isenberg School to Mark the 4th Anniversary of Russia's Full-Scale Invasion of Ukraine

On February 27, 2026, a special panel of faculty from Amherst College and UMass Amherst and exchange students from the Kyiv School of Economics (KSE) , who recently arrived at UMass Amherst, will take place at the Isenberg School of Management.

The panel was organized to mark the 4th anniversary of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Below is the poster designed by this year's President of the UMass Amherst INFORMS Student Chapter, Samira Samadi, who is also my PhD student.

The panelists will consist of faculty: Professors Nataliia Bychkova and Myroslav Kryven of Amherst College and my colleague at the Isenberg School - Professor Bogdan Prokopovych as well as the KSE exchange students: Alisa Mikjieieva, Olesia Rozhanska, and Yuliia Zaitseva.

UMass Amherst signed a series of MOUs with KSE, shortly after the full-scale invasion on February 24, 2022, and, to-date, we have had two cohorts of Virtual Scholars in Ukraine working with faculty at UMass Amherst. The 2023-2024 cohort had 25 Virtual Scholars at various universities in Ukraine and the 2024-2025 consisted of 10 Virtual Scholars, all of whom were "matched" with faculty at the Isenberg School of Management.

And, since 2023, UMass Amherst has welcomed multiple exchange students from KSE. The students on the panel are now taking classes at UMass Amherst. One is majoring in psychology and two in business economics.

The panel, I am sure, will be very timely and informative.

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!

Wonderful Celebration of the UMass Amherst INFORMS Student Chapter's Cum Laude Award and My INFORMS President's Award

Last Friday, we had a delightful celebration at the Isenberg School of Management of two awards received recently at the INFORMS Annual Meeting in Atlanta.

Since I have been a Visiting Professor in Sweden, not only at KTH in Stockholm, but also over a multiyear period at the University of Gothenburg's School of Business, Economics and Law, I learned there the importance of celebrations! For example, at the latter, we would regularly meet, as a group, to enjoy a "fika" with delicious pastries, cakes, and coffee (and great conversations) to celebrate journal publications and other achievements.

Hence, the UMass Amherst INFORMS Student Chapter sent out invitations - and produced the nice poster below for the event last Friday.

This year's President, Samira Samadi (who is also my PhD student), ordered a fruit platter and various pastries plus coffee and the students surprised me with a Congratulations chocolate cake.

Earlier, I had blogged about my receipt of the INFORMS President's Award, an honor I am so deeply grateful for: https://annanagurney.blogspot.com/2025/10/deeply-honored-to-receive-informs.html and Samira wrote this lovely post on the Chapter Award received and my President's Award on the Chapter website: https://websites.umass.edu/umassinf/2025/11/02/two-awards-one-incredible-2025-informs-annual-meeting-experience/

It was wonderful to celebrate the Chapter's receipt of the Cum Laude Award from INFORMS plus my President's Award and below are a few photos from the event. Many thanks to all who support us. 

Josh Gladstone is our chapter expert at cutting up cakes! Last year's Chapter President, Ismael Pour, is overseeing his progress in the photo above with Yongdong Chen providing support. 

The UMass Amherst INFORMS Student Chapter Celebrated the End of the Semester with a Great Party and Congratulations Cake

Yesterday, during the next to the final week of classes in the 2024-2025 academic year at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, we had our UMass Amherst INFORMS Student Chapter party. This is a tradition of this wonderful student chapter that brings both students and faculty together who work in the areas of Operations Research and the Management Sciences.

It has been a very busy week, with many additional events, that I even blogged about, including the 2025 OIM Awards Celebration just the evening before. And, yesterday morning, for the first time ever, the OIM Department Chair Professor Senay Solak organized a retreat for the department.

I left the retreat early, since, as is also the tradition, my husband and I always bring warm varenyky/pierogies, kielbasa, and desserts.

Some faculty mistakenly thought the party was at 4PM, although the poster circulated stated that the start time was 4:30PM. We appreciate the enthusiasm.

There was a kerfuffle - with all the events happening now at UMass Amherst, because of the end of the academic year, the order for food that the Chapter President Ismael Pour (one of my PhD students) put in got cancelled in the last minute. He scrambled then to get food orders from Atkins and from the famous Antonio's Pizza in downtown Amherst.

The food spread was fantastic and took up two large tables in Room N135 in the Business Innovation Hub at the Isenberg School of Management. Besides the Ukrainian food and the pizza, there were veggie and fruit trays, cold cuts and cheeses, and different types of sandwiches.

Josh Gladstone did a great job slicing the Congratulations cake. 

We brought both potato cheese varenyky and cabbage varenyky and the cake with Congratulations on it we bought at Whole Foods, along with a wide assortment of cookies. There were also various desserts from Atkins and even a spread of baklava pastries from Stop and Shop. It was appropriate to celebrate with a Congratulations cake since this chapter, in October, received the Magna Cum Laude Award from INFORMS at the Seattle Annual Meeting. Also, several of our PhD student members: Semih Boz, Dana Hassani (last year's Chapter President), Ismael Pour, and Samira Samadi have had journal articles published this past year and others are in press!

We have hosted a variety of events and speakers this past academic year. We were delighted that Lorraine Martinelle, of the Isenberg Marcomm Department, wrote an excellent article on our events associated with a panel with the Kyiv School of Economics (KSE) exchange students and the visit and talk of the KSE President Tymofiy Mylovanov from Ukraine:  https://www.isenberg.umass.edu/news/three-years-later-isenberg-reflects-umass-amherst-partnership-ukrainian-institution Two of the exchange students, Marharyta Nechytailo and Karyna Lutsenko, joined our party. Also, it was wonderful to see Dr. Natalia Bychkova from Ukraine, who has been teaching at Amherst College.

The student chapter aims to enhance networking, share scientific knowledge through seminars, and also to build community. The students also present their research in a tune-up before the INFORMS Annual Meeting each year. Lasting friendships are made (and even a few marriages) through the chapter. Its members come not only from the Isenberg School but also from the College of Engineering at UMass Amherst and from the Manning College of  Information and Computer Sciences.

I have been the Faculty Advisor of the UMass Amherst INFORMS Student Chapter since 2004.

To learn more about the Chapter, its Officers, and its activities, please, visit its website: https://websites.umass.edu/umassinf/

Higher Education in the US and Ukraine Panel - Meet the Exchange Students from the Kyiv School of Economics at UMass Amherst

Yesterday was a very special evening at UMass Amherst. The UMass Amherst INFORMS Student Chapter organized a special event, "Higher Education in the US and Ukraine Panel - Meet the Exchange Students from the Kyiv School of Economics."

The 4 exchange students from Ukraine, who are now studying at UMass Amherst, are taking courses in my Operations and Information Management (OIM) Department and in Economics, Resource Economics and Mathematics.

The exchange is part of an outstanding partnership between UMass Amherst and the Kyiv School of Economics (KSE), made possible through the International Programs Office at UMass Amherst and its Director, the Vice Provost for Global Affairs Kalpen Trivedi.

Below is a collage of photos from the panel, which took place at the Isenberg School of Management.

The UMass Amherst INFORMS Student Chapter Officers, under its President, Dana Hassani, did an excellent job of promoting the event and it was featured on the UMass Amherst webpage. They also secured the room for the panel and designed the nice poster below.

Assisting me with the moderation last evening was my great colleague from the Management Department, Bogdan Prokopovych.

In the presentation, background was provided about this unique partnership, which, in addition to the student exchange program, has helped to support 15 Virtual Scholars in Ukraine, who have been matched with faculty hosts at UMass Amherst.

The full slidedeck can be viewed here. The slidedeck contains background on KSE and the partnership and also includes a video provided by KSE Rector Tymofii Brik to welcome the exchange students from Ukraine.

In the slidedeck are also posted questions that our panelists responded to yesterday prior to the Q&A with the audience.

It was a very warm and inspirational evening. The questions began with some "lighter" ones concerning their favorite foods at the award-winning UMass Amherst Dining Commons, to questions on teaching styles of professors at KSE versus UMass Amherst. Questions were also asked on what they will bring back from UMass to KSE. The answers from our panelists were interesting and very informative. I was especially touched by the exchange students' dedication to help in the recovery and reconstruction of Ukraine and, hence, their desire to achieve the best education possible.

They delighted the audience with their expressions of joy at seeing a UMass hockey game and various sports; their enthusiasm at using our stunning Recreation Center; their enjoyment of the many student clubs at UMass Amherst, including our OIM Student Club!

Our exchange students from KSE appreciate the expansive size of our beautiful UMass Amherst campus, the lovely Amherst Town Center, the beauty of the surrounding nature and the peace.

In the slidedeck, administrators and faculty are thanked and also 3 special preceding events that we co-organized last year highlighted.

Thanks to all, who, in support of this partnership, have helped to reduce brain drain from Ukraine; have helped to forge new, impactful research collaborations across the miles in wartime, and these collaborations have led to sustained friendships, and are now educating and supporting students from Ukraine. I believe that we are learning even more from the students than they are from us.

Brilliant Lecture on Resilience by a Great Dane - Dr. Rasmus Dahlberg

Yesterday, we had the honor and pleasure of hosting Professor Rasmus Dahlberg of Denmark in our UMass Amherst INFORMS Speaker Series. His talk on "Resilience - the Danish Version" was brilliant. It is not often that one has the opportunity to hear from someone who is not only a disaster research scholar and a practitioner, with many fascinating experiences in a spectrum of emergency management exercises and events, including ones in the Arctic, but is also a novelist and media personality!

I had had the pleasure of hosting Dr. Dahlberg previously and met him when he presented a paper in the first Dynamics of Disasters conference that I co-organized in Kalamata, Greece. The paper that he delivered at this conference appears in the refereed conference proceedings.

Coincidentally, Dr. Dahberg delivered his talk yesterday in Isenberg's new Business Innovation Hub, which was designed by the award-winning Danish architect Bjarke Ingels. Last April, Ingels came and spoke at the unveiling of the hub and accompanying celebrations.

I gave some opening remarks and then Mojtaba Salarpour, the President of the UMass Amherst INFORMS Student Chapter, welcomed the speaker and the audience. It was great to have faculty and students from the Isenberg School, the UMass Amherst College of Engineering, and the College of Computer and Information Sciences in attendance, as well as faculty from other universities, and even several journalism students who were excited about covering the event!



Dr. Dahlberg is a faculty member at the Royal Danish Defence College and considers himself a "disaster historian." He has worked for the Danish Emergency Management Agency in the Department of Crisis Management.

He emphasized that there are no natural hazards in Denmark and that "all disasters are man-made." What is especially challenging now is that there are more risks from climate change and advanced technology. And many disasters have been the result of human error, due to complexities of advanced technology.  He also emphasized that Denmark is one of the most peaceful countries but is being faced with sea level rise, along with expansions of maritime routes, which can lead to more maritime accidents and disasters.

He noted that emergency management in Denmark has evolved from "civil protection" and that Denmark in the Anthropocene is seeing more and more extreme weather events with extreme rainfall.

He brought up numerous interesting points, including the need for  "zero responders," who are volunteers rising up to assist. He mentioned an incident of extreme rainfall and flooding in Denmark in 2013, for which multiple shelters were identified but very few citizens actually used them. The Danes, through social media, had informed the community that they had opened up their own residences to those needing shelter and, in effect, solved the disaster response effectively. People, for the first time, in Denmark, used one another and social media in this way. The peer to peer coordination and communication was very successful!

Dr. Dahlberg, on February 7, 2014, contributed to a Danish Emergency Management Association Workshop which he called "Resilience 101," in which he spoke about resilience as being the ability "to bounce forward" after a disturbance that disrupts normal operations. He noted the work of Dr. Tierney, who was also on his PhD dissertation committee, who defines "resilience as the obverse of risk" and the work of Dr. Alexander Augustine, who notes that "We need to build resilience to the uncertainties that lie ahead."

A more resilient Denmark is needed to tackle climate change. He also emphasized that "we cannot build our way out of everything" and mentioned the Rockefeller Foundation's 100 Resilient Cities program.

Dahlberg believes that one must stress the system for resiliency.

He also emphasized that it is expensive to invest in emergency management and singled out the "Arctic Response Force." He singled out the possibility of a cruise ship disaster in Arctic waters. He has even written up disaster scenarios, which were then used in Denmark for disaster preparedness and response exercises!

After his presentation, there was a terrific Q&A; we took a group photo of those who were still in attendance, followed by a delicious lunch at the University Club at UMass Amherst, at which the stimulating conversations continued.

And, at lunch, he told us how to escape from a car sinking in the water and provided us with advice to always wear hiking boots while flying (helps in climbing out should you need to evacuate while taking off or landing).

We thank Dr. Rasmus Dahlberg for his brilliant lecture on resilience and wish him much continuing professional and personal success! His work and energy inspired all of us.

We ended the perfect intellectual and social day with dinner at Judie's in Amherst, complete with their iconic item - popovers!

Congratulations and Kudos to the Supernetwork Team at the Isenberg School of Management for a Great 2019 Year!

Every year, at this time, as the Center Director of the Virtual Center for Supernetworks, I prepare a Congratulations and Kudos piece to the Supernetwork Team. 2019 was another extraordinary year for the Supernetwork Team, one in which we continued to make global impact through fundamental network research with a wide range of applications and activities! It is an honor to highlight some of the accomplishments and achievements of the Center Associates of the Virtual Center for Supernetwork in the past year.

The year began with a marvelous event. I had the great honor and pleasure of speaking at the extraordinary 2019 Congreso Futuro, which took place in Chile from January 14-20. I was invited to speak at this truly unique Congress last April via a formal letter from Senator (Senador) Guido Girardi Lavín, President, Future Challenges, Science, Technology and Innovation Commission, who was writing on behalf of the Chilean Congress, the Government of the Republic of Chile, and the Chilean Academy of Sciences. This year's Congress was the eight annual one and the Congress has become the most important free and open-access scientific forum in Latin America. The Futuro Congreso is unique in the region for providing Nobel laureates, scientists, researchers, artists, opinion leaders and citizens alike the opportunity to experience some of the world’s most cutting-edge research, participate in the understanding of emerging trends and actively engage in the innovation of ideas and debates that directly influence the globe. I had the pleasure of speaking in both Santiago and Valparaiso, and we were even hosted by the President of Chile for a dinner at the palace in Santiago.

On April 5, 2019, we marked an extraordinary milestone - the 50th anniversary of the PhD Program at the Isenberg School of Management, with alums, family members, present doctoral students, faculty, and guests convening for a special celebration. Center Associate Professor Tina Wakolbinger of the Vienna University of Economics and Business was one of the two keynoters at the banquet and Center Associates Professors Jose M. Cruz of UConn and Patrick Qiang of Penn State, and Dr. Padma Ramanujam of SAS, were panelists on the Management Science PhD panel that I had the pleasure of organizing. Center Associates: Professors Min Yu of the University of Portland, June Dong of SUNY Oswego, Michelle Li of Babson College, and Amir H. Masoumi of Manhattan College came back for this big event. Also, Doctoral Student Center Associates: Deniz Besik, Pritha Dutta, and Mojtaba Salarpour very much enjoyed this truly celebratory event. Pritha Dutta successfully defended her doctoral dissertation, graduated in May from UMass Amherst, and is now an Assistant Professor at Pace University in NYC.

The POMS conference took place in Washington DC, May 2-6, 2019. Doctoral Student Center Associate Deniz Besik presented some of her latest work, joint with Center Associate Professor Ladimer S. Nagurney of the University of Hartford and me, on tariff rate quotas and agricultural products. Pritha Dutta presented on research, also conducted with me, on competition for blood donations, a paper, which was recently published in the journal Omega. Dr. Dutta also had a paper published in Operations Research for Health Care in 2020. Center Associates had numerous journal article publications and it is important to recognize that Professor Dmytro Matsypura received the INFORMS ENRE (energy, natural resources and the environment) Best Publication Award in Environment and Sustainability for his paper on wildfires, Wildfire Fuel Management: Network-based Models and Optimization of Prescribed Burning, co-authored with Professor Oleg Prokopyev of the University of Pittsburgh, and Dr. Matsypura's student, Aizat Zahar, and published in the European Journal of Operational Research in 2018. Dr. Matsypura presented the paper and received the award certificate at the INFORMS conference in Seattle in October 2019.

I had the pleasure of being elected a Fellow of the Network Science Society. The award ceremony took place at a banquet during the International Conference on Network Science in Burlington, Vermont, May 29-31, 2019. The citation on my Fellow plaque reads: For sustained contributions to network science, including the formulation, analysis, and computation of solutions to engineered network systems, from congested urban transportation to supply chains, under varied decision-making behaviors.

Center Associate Professor Patrizia Daniele of the University of Catania in Italy served as a Member of the Program Committee of EURO 2019 in Dublin, Ireland, which took place June 23-26, 2019. Several Center Associates, in addition to Professor Patrizia Daniele; notably, Professor Sara Saberi of WPI and Professor Dmytro Matsypura of the University of Sydney in Australia, spoke at this conference. I had the honor of giving a tutorial on: Game Theory and Variational Inequalities: From Transportation and Supply Chains to Financial Networks and the Internet and was a panelist on two panels: Women in OR and Making an Impact. It was a pleasure to present a paper on global trade and tariffs and quotas co-authored with Doctoral Student Center Associate Deniz Besik and Center Associate Professor Ladimer S. Nagurney of the University of Hartford.

I had the pleasure of being a keynote speaker at the CIIO 2019 logistics conference and also delivering a guest lecture. Both of these took place at the Naval Academy located on an island in Cartagena, Colombia. I also had the great honor of being a keynote speaker at the VIII Congreso de la Sociedad Mexicana de Investigacion de Operaciones (CSMIO 2019), ITAM Santa Teresa, Mexico, October 16-18, 2019.

The INFORMS Annual Conference had great representation by the Center Associates with Professors Dmytro Matsypura, Jose Cruz, Sara Saberi, Ke Ke of Central Washington University, Michelle Li, Shivani Shukla of the University of San Francisco, and Min Yu taking part, as well as Doctoral Student Center Associates Deniz Besik and Mojtaba Salarpour. Deniz Besik had the honor of being accepted and taking part in 3 Doctoral Colloquia this year: at POMS in Washington DC, INFORMS, and DSI in New Orleans. Also, congrats to Dr. Cruz on being appointed an Associate Dean of Graduate Programs at the School of Business at UConn!

It was also a fabulous year for the UMass Amherst INFORMS Student Chapter, which I have had the pleasure of serving as the Faculty Advisor of for an incredible 15 years. We hosted outstanding speakers from industry and academia in our Speaker Series. The speakers spoke on topics from smart cities to disaster management in the Arctic, and the optimization of refugee settlement placements, as well as energy, among other topics. On November 13, 2019, we were delighted that Center Associate Dr. Stavros Siokos, traveled from London, England, and spoke in the series. Dr. Siokos is Managing Partner of Astarte Capital Partners LLP, a private equity asset management firm based in London. His presentation title was:  “Investing in Private Markets: Social and Environmental Benefits.”

And, on December 5, 2019, I had the distinct honor of presenting to the Isenberg School's Senior Leadership Team on 18 (plus) years of the Virtual Center for Supernetworks and its activities. The presentation slides can be downloaded here.

Thanks for the support! We wish everyone a Fabulous New 2020 Year!

Below are links to examples of some of our recent publications.

Multitiered Blood Supply Chain Network Competition: Linking Blood Service Organizations, Hospitals, and Payers
Pritha Dutta and Anna Nagurney, Operations Research for Health Care, 23: (2019), 100230.

In Memoriam: Martin Beckmann (1924-2017)
David Boyce and Anna Nagurney, Transportation Science.

Quantifying Supply Chain Network Synergy for Humanitarian Organizations
Anna Nagurney and Qiang Qiang, to appear in IBM Journal of Research and Development.

Strict Quotas or Tariffs? Implications for Product Quality and Consumer Welfare in Differentiated Product Supply Chains
Anna Nagurney, Deniz Besik, and Dong Li, Transportation Research E 29: (2019), pp 136-161.

Global Supply Chain Networks and Tariff Rate Quotas: Equilibrium Analysis with Application to Agricultural Products
Anna Nagurney, Deniz Besik, and Ladimer S. Nagurney, Journal of Global Optimization 75: (2019) pp 439–460.

Competition for Blood Donations
Anna Nagurney and Pritha Dutta, Omega 212: (2019), pp 103-114.

An Integrated Financial and Logistical Game Theory Model for Humanitarian Organizations with Purchasing Costs, Multiple Freight Service Providers, and Budget, Capacity, and Demand Constraints
Anna Nagurney, Mojtaba Salarpour, and Patrizia Daniele, International Journal of Production Economics 212: (2019), pp 212-226.

Supply Chain Network Competition Among Blood Service Organizations: A Generalized Nash Equilibrium Framework
Anna Nagurney and Pritha Dutta, Annals of Operations Research 275(2): (2019), pp 551-586.

Tariffs and Quotas in World Trade: A Unified Variational Inequality Framework
Anna Nagurney, Deniz Besik, and June Dong, European Journal of Operational Research 275(1): (2019), pp 347-360.

How to Increase the Impact of Disaster Relief: A Study of Transportation Rates, Framework Agreements and Product Distribution
Timo Gossler, Tina Wakolbinger, Anna Nagurney, and Patrizia Daniele, European Journal of Operational Research 274(1): (2019), pp 126-141.

It Was a Great Year for the UMass Amherst INFORMS Student Chapter!

It is hard to believe that I have been the Faculty Advisor to the UMass Amherst INFORMS Student Chapter for 15 years, which means 30 semesters of exciting activities, including our Speaker Series. Over the years we have hosted truly extraordinary speakers and luminaries in Operations Research / Management Science and in related fields and I am eternally grateful that the speakers have come to our campus to share with the students and audience members their expertise and collegiality.

Yesterday, we had the pleasure, as is our tradition, of hosting the end of the semester (which was the end of the academic year) party. The weather was ominous, with a lot of thunder and rain (including several downpours) in the afternoon and, given the logistics involved, of bringing all the food to the party (both hot and cold) too the Isenberg School of Management, I was a bit anxious. Also, with the weather being less than appealing, I was wondering whether students and faculty would show up. This Student Chapter attracts members not only from the Isenberg School of Management but also from the College of Engineering as well as from the College of Computer and Information Sciences at UMass Amherst (with the latter two being on the opposite side of campus from the Isenberg School).

The party was advertised through our email lists and even posted on the screens in the Isenberg School.

I had told the Chapter Officers that I would need assistance in helping me unload my van with the pierogies, kielbasy, and desserts, and they did not disappoint, bringing out umbrellas as well, when I arrived.

After parking my van, I entered the party venue at 4:45PM and was so happy to see that, despite the miserable weather, attendance was fabulous, with an alum even coming from Boston for the party,  an with an exchange student from France and a visiting PhD student from Florida, also joining us.

Since the students are studying and researching topics in operations research (and many are very much into logistics), they had budgeted nicely, and did the ordering and pickup and deliveries efficiently. The menu consisted of international cuisines, homemade food, pizza, chicken wings, fries, salads, and fruits. The food was great and the company and conversations even better!  I have been to about 60 of these parties by now, and, every time, I emerge energized and, frankly, thrilled by the fabulous community we have built. I also would like to thank the parent society INFORMS (Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences) for supporting student chapters nationally and even internationally (the Montreal one is amazing for example) through awards and some funds. Additional funds we work hard to acquire and I also provide funding since I very much believe in giving students leadership and networking opportunities and in building intellectual and social communities.

This year we hosted the following speakers: Professors Mike Knodler, Priyank Arora, Peter Haas, Aurora Liu, as well as Dr. Thiago Serra (soon to be a professor at Bucknell University) and Jurij Paraszczak of IBM. We heard about their fascinating research on topics ranging from traffic safety, serving distressed individuals, smart cities, knowledge networks, to machine leaning.  This semester, with the $62 million Business Innovation Hub completed for the Isenberg School, we have benefited from new rooms for the talks and events.

Also, a fabulous initiative that the students started and take part in as interviewers, videographers and editors, is interviews with the speakers. The edited interviews are then posted on the chapter's youtube channel.  There is excellent advice and pearls of wisdom in these, so do peruse.

This year, as the chapter's Faculty Advisor, I recognized, with framed certificates, the exceptional service of the Chapter Officers: Katerina Deliali (President), Mojtaba Salarpour (Treasurer and also expert videographer), Haris Sipetas (our amazing Webmaster who blogs each speaker with photos on the chapter website), Zhangchen Hu (Event Coordinator who posts our events on Isenberg and UMass websites), and Wei Wei (a first year doctoral student and Social Outreach officer who is always smiling).

Also, this year I did something different - four of our long-serving members and soon-to-be PhD alums, who were also all very active former Chapter Officers, were recognized with certificates as Lifetime Members of our Chapter! A special shoutout to Dr. Destenie Nock, soon to be joining the faculty of Carnegie Mellon University; to Dr. Pritha Dutta, off to be a faculty member at the Lubin School of Business at Pace University in NYC, and Ekin Koker - off to Phillips in Cambridge, MA, where he had interned last summer, and Rodrigo Mercado, who, like Ekin, will be defending his dissertation this summer. Destenie was behind the very successful STEM Slams which the chapter had organized several times. Pritha (my PhD student) was a former Chapter President, whose enthusiasm and positive outlook made every event brighter. Ekin redesigned the chapter website and provided so much support over his time as a PhD student at UMass and Rodrigo was our expert editor of the interview videos and so much more! The below photo, taken by my PhD student, Deniz Besik,  shows brilliantly what makes these four so special.

Below, thanks to Haris Sipetas, is a photo of Rodrigo being recognized with his Lifetime Membership Award.

Special thanks to the faculty who came to support the chapter and the students (and thanks also to those who were sorry that they could not make it because they were out of town at conferences, etc.): Professor Iqbal Ali of the Isenberg School, Professors Hari Balasubramanian, Chaitra Gopalappa, Ana Muriel and Associate Dean Erin Baker, as well as Professors Eleni Christofa and Eric Gozales, all of the College of Engineering.

It was wonderful to have special treats also made by Katerina Deliali (including salads and Greek halvah) and a yummy lemon cake by Deniz Besik.

Katerina had the honor of cutting the cake from Stop and Shop, whose worker strike (luckily) had just recently ended.

I noticed that many of our PhD students had grown beards over the winter and some faculty have had beards for a while.

 We also took a group photo, since it was getting late, as a lovely memento of a great time and year.

Thanks, everyone, for a terrific Operations Research / Management Science year at UMass Amherst. Best of luck with projects and exams to students and faculty with the grading. I look forward to seeing several of you receive your graduate diplomas next month in the graduation ceremonies at UMass Amherst!

Congratulations on all of your achievements and Thank You!

Smarter Cities - A Company Expert Speaks

This past Friday, just before the official of the UMass Amherst Spring Break (one week recess), we had the great pleasure of hearing Dr. Jurij Paraszczak present in our UMass Amherst INFORMS Speaker Series. And the turnout for his talk in our beautiful new Business Innovation Hub at the Isenberg School was fantastic! I was especially delighted to see undergraduates in attendance as well as faculty and students not only from the Isenberg School but also from the College of Engineering and the College of Information and Computer Sciences! We even had guests from multiple other states! Thanks to the hard work of the UMass Amherst INFORMS Student Chapter the notice for Dr. Paraszczak's talk even made the UMass Amherst homepage under "Events!"

As is our tradition, as the Faculty Advisor to this great Student Chapter, I welcomed everyone and then this year's Chapter President, Katerina Deliali, did a formal introduction of our speaker. You can see from his bio in the above poster, the amazing career that he has had at IBM, with global impact!

Dr. Paraszczak, as the Director of IBM's Smarter Cities program (and he told us that IBM's Marketing Department deserves the credit for the coinage of the "Smarter" component), has had a wealth of experience. He took the lucky audience on a panoramic view of associated projects, highlighting several ones in greater depth, both in the US and in Europe.

He began his lecture very interactively, querying the audience, as to What is a Smart City? and then continued by asking us:

• Who decides on the objectives?
• What resources are available?
• Who makes the compromises?

He noted that a Smarter City is one that is "optimized around a set of goals," which is a fabulous definition.  He emphasized that there have been dramatic changes since 2013 in terms of the availability of data (sensors, social media, etc.) and Artificial Intelligence, with applications (some existing ones in certain countries in terms of traffic management and even social control and you can guess the country or countries as to the latter). One of my wonderful colleagues from Management (who also happens to be Ukrainian), Dr. Bogdan Prokopovych,  especially enjoyed the statement that: "data is the new oil."

I was delighted when Dr. Paraszczak mentioned Dr. Brenda Dietrich (formerly of IBM and now at Cornell University, who is an INFORMS Fellow). Brenda had spoken in our Speaker Series a few years ago and, coincidentally, was included in a wonderful article published recently in ORMS Today, an INFORMS publication, on ten pioneering women and a Rising Star.

Dr. Paraszczak  discussed the analysis of cities, from building simple models that relate physics to everyday activities, to statistical models, and, ultimately, predictive ones (and I would argue prescriptive ones). He spoke of the hierarchy of: analytics, data, models, and insights.

He also emphasized the competition for resources and Maslow's needs for a city and quality of life. At the Q&A I asked him which city does he think has the best quality of life and he said: Stockholm, Sweden, and both my colleague Bogdan and I agree (although I do love Gothenburg, where I have also lived). How does one do resource optimization, in terms of energy, water, traffic, etc., in a city, when many of the departments work and function as silos? He singled out Minneapolis as being an exemplar of a Smarter City in the US and mentioned that there is usually an individual/leader who has the correct vision and relationships to make things happen. I believe that the students in the audience very much appreciated his emphasis on not only technical skills, but also on soft skills.

Dr. Paraszczak said that cities need to anticipate problems, such as where there may be water breaks, or crime, or traffic gridlock (with a terrific animation of Istanbul, Turkey using cell phone data during the day). He also emphasized the need to sense, analyze, predict, and manage, and how resilience is built upon planning and operations. He noted that people want to be heard and you need to engage citizens.

He also spoke about how the lack of organization among city departments may lead to failure and the challenges of constructing a single objective for a city! Ultimately, it is desirable to "make things better" and to "improve the quality of life."

Needless to say, I was absolutely thrilled when he displayed a photo of Lviv, Ukraine (my parents hailed from that area) and spoke of his work there, which yielded successes.

And he stated that Singapore is the smartest city on the planet but still so siloed, and, coincidentally, back in October, I had the great pleasure of taking part in a Workshop at the Ivey School in Canada on Smart Cities and wrote a blogpost on it since it was amazing and we had a speaker who spoke on Singapore! That workshop was organized by Professors Joe  Naoum-Sawaya and Bissan Ghaddar.

The Q&A period was excellent (but much too short) and many lingered afterwards to chat. Katerina Deliali presented the speaker with a gift from the Isenberg School.

I took the group photo below and then off to lunch at the University Club we went!

The lunch was delicious and the conversations filled with a lot of wonderful exchanges and laughter.

Also, as we always like to do, we shared scrumptious desserts.

Afterwards, we escorted Dr. Jurij Paraszczak to the Supernetworks Lab at the Isenberg School, where Nazanin Khatami conducted an interview with him. We will let you know when the video gets posted on the Chapter's Youtube channel.

It was a great honor to be able to host Dr. Jurij Parazsczak at UMass Amherst - thanks to him and to the great audience!

And a special shoutout to Chapter officer Haris Sipetas, who maintains the chapter website, including the news, for the writeup with additional photos!

Wishing everyone a Very Happy Spring Break!

Very Exciting Talks in Our UMass Amherst INFORMS Speaker Series this Spring from Knowledge Networks to Machine Learning, and Smart Cities and Analytics

One of the favorite aspects of being the Faculty Advisor to the UMass Amherst INFORMS Student Chapter (and since I have had this role since 2004, I must really enjoy it) is helping the students organize the Speaker Series each semester.  There is a lot of planning that goes into this, as well as some serendipity. It is always wonderful to have speakers even reach out to us because they want to speak in our Series. Hosting speakers requires excellent logistics, attention to details, and warm hospitality because one wants to create a pleasant experience for all.

This semester has been extra exciting since we are now holding the talks in our new $62million Business Innovation Hub of the Isenberg School, which was opened "for business" in late January 2019.

Thus far, this semester, we have had the pleasure of hosting two speakers, Professor Aurora Liu of the Isenberg School, who spoke on February 1, and Professor Peter Haas of the UMass Amherst's College of Information and Computer Sciences, who spoke this past Friday.

The posters for their fabulous talks are below.

 

Next month we will be hosting two speakers, which we are also very excited about: Dr. Jurij Paraszczak and Dr. Thiago Serra. The posters announcing their talks are below.

Interestingly, all of our speakers this semester have had industrial experience - Dr. Liu was a management consultant focusing on mergers and acquisitions in pharma earlier in her career; Dr. Haas spent over 30 years at IBM and is both an INFORMS Fellow and an ACM Fellow (we believe he is the only individual to have earned this two major accolades). Dr. Jurij Paraszczak, is also a long-time IBMer, and Dr. Thiago Serra is now at the Mitsubishi Electric Research Labs in Cambridge, MA, before he joins the faculty of Bucknell University in the Fall 2019!

Both speakers, to-date, have emphasized networks and graphs (near and dear to my heart) and the solution of very large-scale problems on Big Data, including dynamic Twitter data.  They have attracted audiences from the Isenberg School of Engineering, the UMass Amherst College of Engineering, as well as the College of Computer and Information Sciences. The talks have demonstrated the need for the integration of a variety of methodological tools (helpful, if your team and co-authors have such skill sets) from probability and statistics, to graph analytics, optimization, network analysis and centrality measures, algorithm development, including for machine learning, and even stochastic dynamical systems (loved that part, too)!

Many thanks to the Chapter President, Katerina Deliali, for expertly constructing the above posters and introducing the speakers. Also, thanks to our amazing Chapter Webmaster, Haris Sipetas, who so promptly posts writeups and photos after the speakers' visits.

Plus, please visit the Chapter's Youtube channel, where interviews with our great speakers are posted - more coming soon!

And I can't resist also sharing with you a few photos from our first two talks!

Below are photos from Professor Aurora's talk and lunch afterwards.

 And below are a few photos from Professor Haas's presentation and lunch afterwards.

Of course, as is our tradition, we always share desserts!