Some Tips on Networking - Terrific EURO WISDOM Panel in Copenhagen

Yesterday, I had the pleasure of speaking on a Networking panel at the start of the EURO 2024 Conference in Copenhagen. The panel was organized by Paula Carroll and Annunziata Esposito Amideo. Joining me on the panel was life coach Margaret Collins. The panel attracted an excellent audience, very enthusiastic and energetic.

The WISDOM Forum aims "to provide a platform to support, empower and encourage the participation of all genders in Operational Research within EURO." It is very active in organizing events, engaging in social media and has various terrific initiatives; more info on its website. Other related such forums include the WORMS forum of the professional society of INFORMS.

What we emphasized on the panel included the following:

1. The importance of networking.

2. Strategies for developing networks of visibility.

3. Communication skills to deliver your message.

4. How to deal with nerves or anxiety.

As an academic, who also has worked in high tech consulting in the defense sector, I noted the importance of being engaged with practice and the serendipity of meeting people and expanding your network, whether at conferences (a fabulous venue for networking) or even during travel, such as on planes. I spoke about reaching out to researchers that I admired, early on, in order to gather their wisdom and professional advice. I shared that George Dantzig, one of the founders of the field of OR, came to the first conference presentation that I ever gave, which was at the Mathematical Programming Symposium at MIT, and the kind words that he shared. I also acknowledged my PhD dissertation advisor, the late Stella Dafermos, in my presentation. I was her first PhD student. I showed the audience my academic genealogy, which includes Maxwell, Newton, and Galileo!

On our panel, the importance of social media was emphasized, which can create opportunities and invitations, and in keeping your profile up to date. In addition. Margaret, through her nicely interactive presentation, told the audience to have prepared a short introduction of yourself (perhaps several). One should also think about whom you might network with. Different people have distinct comfort zones, and it is important to acknowledge that some may be introverts or extroverts, or somewhere in between.

I focused on networking as your career progresses.

My presentation can be downloaded here. Early in one's career, one networks laterally and up, and it is important as one's career progresses to mentor and support others. Taking risks is also important since new experiences can help one to grow both personally and professionally. I also spoke about networking with journalists and decision-makers in order to have one's research make a greater impact. I emphasized the relevance of writing Letters to the Editor and OpEds to broaden one's reach.

Ultimately, networking is about people, and professional societies are playing a big role in bringing us together, through conferences, newsletters, opportunities for leadership, and various means of support and enhanced visibility.

Many thanks to the organizers of the EURO 2024 conference for the lovely city location venue of Copenhagen. More info on the conference here.

Also, early in my presentation, I congratulated both Paula and Annunziata on the publication of their discussion paper (the inaugural one): "Gender equality: opportunities and challenges for the OR community,"  in the Journal of the Operational Research Society. Their paper is now trending, along with the set of invited commentaries, which I contributed one to. These publications are open access and are very informative and relevant.   Relationships matter and networks do as well.

The Great 2018 INFORMS Business Analytics Conference with Some Photos

The 2018 INFORMS Business Analytics Conference, which took place in Baltimore, MD, April 15-17, 2018, was fantastic! The conference brought together over 1,000 leading analytics professionals and industry experts (executives, analysts, managers, researchers, data scientists, modelers, etc.) from around the globe to exchange ideas, network, and learn about the exciting results, insights, and opportunities generated by analytics. This is one of my favorite conferences to speak at and to attend because of the interactions with industry professionals, representatives from government, and fellow academics as well as numerous students. Below are the smiling faces of the speakers!

I flew in on Southwest on Sunday and returned back last night feeling energized and with my brain swimming with new ideas and I expect new collaborations as well. What I found especially delightful was seeing many fellow operations researchers and analytics professionals. I had very pleasant exchanges with conferees from the US, Sweden, Mexico, Turkey, Colombia, Serbia, Germany, and Japan. Honestly, I can't think of another conference that provides a better return on investment in terms of what you get out of it per unit time!

My room on the top floor of the Marriott Waterfront Baltimore had a fabulous view and it was very convenient since all the sessions and social events took place an elevator ride down.

The talk that I presented was on cybercrime and cybersecurity and it can be downloaded here.

Getting selected to speak involves a competitive screening process so I was thrilled to be able to speak on some of our latest research on this topic. The previous INFORMS Analytics Conference that  I had spoken at and also thoroughly enjoyed was in Boston in 2014.

The conference began for me with the super dynamic plenary talk by Bill Schmarzo, who, coincidentally, is also an Executive Fellow at the University of San Francisco, where my most recent Isenberg School PhD student alumna, Dr. Shivani Shukla, is now an Assistant Professor, and with whom I wrote several papers on cybersecurity. I took copious notes and enjoyed hearing him say that it's insight from data that matters and that one must start with the business. He spoke on the monetization of data and the leveraging of predictive and prescriptive analytics in order to optimize. I loved his discussion of data being an "unusual currency."

In our registration packets we were provided with a lot of nice conference "swag," including a beautiful blue notebook and a very cool conference bag.

Meals were provided, including the gala Edelman dinner on Monday night (more on this later).

The plenary talk by Bruce Greenstein, the CTO at the US Department of Health and Human Services, which he told us is the largest single government department in the world, was also excellent and took place bright and early on Tuesday morning at 8AM. His presentation was on: From Data to Analytics: How to Solve Complex Health Problems.

Greenstein spoke on Secretary Azar's focus, which includes combating the opiod crisis, bringing down the high cost of prescription drugs (and here he emphasized increasing competition, which is great), and transforming the healthcare system to a value-based system. He spoke of his unique position in connecting various departments and bridging the technical divide and also emphasized the improvement of analytics at HHS through the sharing of data, bringing in experts, and chipping away at the culture. There was even an opioid-code-athon that was very successful and I especially appreciated hearing about the "prevention track," which focused on predicting and analyzing the supply and movement of legal and illicit opioids (sounds like a network flow problem to me and probably even related to the network models that I spoke of on Monday at the conference). There is even now a Co-Lab at HHS, which is an enterprise data initiative, and led by Will Yang.

I had the pleasure of listening to Greenstein's plenary while seated next to Dr. Les Servi of MITRE and Professor Tamas Terlaky of Lehigh University.

Les and I go back to Brown University days and he was on the organizing committee of the conference and we hosted him recently in our UMass Amherst INFORMS Speaker Series. Professor Terlaky led the group that was awarded the 2017 Daniel H. Wagner Prize for Excellence in Operations Research Practice, for “The Inmate Assignment and Scheduling Problem and its Application in the PA Department of Corrections." I went to his talk on this outstanding project and enjoyed it thoroughly. Both Les and Tamas are INFORMS Fellows.

Other highlights at the conference, in addition to the outstanding talks that I attended, which were 50 minutes in length so you can really learn something, and which included those by Professor Jim Cochran of the University of Alabama and Dr. Mary Helander of IBM, was seeing Dr. Michael Prokle, a former doctoral student from UMass Amherst, now a data scientist at Phillips Research in Cambridge,  and taking part in "coffee with a member." Michael was the President of the UMass Amherst INFORMS Student Chapter and I nominated him for the INFORMS Judith Liebman Award, which he received. Coincidentally, we had both been at the Boston Analytics conference, where  the weather was also cold and rainy.

I very much enjoyed meeting and having coffee with Sarah Greenwood, who is pursuing a graduate degree in analytics, and already has several years of experience working in industry. It is thrilling to see such outstanding individuals excelling in STEM!

I would also like to point out and thank WORMS (Women in Operations Research and the Management Sciences), one of my absolutely favorite fora of INFORMS! And, would you believe that years ago I found out about WORMS from my male PhD students at the Isenberg School of Management, who told me that they loved many of the conference events organized by WORMS, so I joined!

The networking reception at which the COO of Google Cloud, Diane Bryant, spoke was standing room only and incredibly interesting. She is a former VP at Intel and was one of only 6% of female VPs until she, with others, started to emphasize being a sponsor/advocate of female employees. I loved some of the takeaways:

• If you are a good leader, you are advocating.
• Luck is manufactured: one has to be open to new ideas - we create our own luck.
• And, quoting Madeleine Albright: "there is a special place for women who don't help women."
• Also, from an HBS Review article:" Women have mentors; men have sponsors."
• Confidence is a core leadership skill. 
• Diversity is a fact: inclusion is a choice.

The Q&A session that followed was provocative and I told her that she should write a book and I would be more than willing to help her with it.

At this session, I was joined by truly special colleagues.

And, since Michael Prokle was the President of our UMass Amherst Student Chapter when we hosted INFORMS Fellow Dr. Radhika Kulkarni, VP of SAS, I had to have the photo below taken as a memento. Also in the photo is Dr. Mary Helander of IBM, who has also spoken in our Speaker Series!

Of course, going to exhibits is also enjoyable and it was great to see my book, Competing on Supply Chain Quality, co-authored with a former doctoral student of mine, Dr. Dong "Michelle" Li, on display at the Springer booth. Many thanks to the Senior Editor, Matt Amboy, for displaying it.

And, speaking of students, INFORMS hosted a student competition, and I spoke with groups from Turkey and Colombia, who were finalists.

I have not heard, yet, who received the first prize, since I had to leave the lunch early yesterday to catch my flight.

And, on Monday evening, those at the conference had the honor and pleasure of taking part in the Edelman gala banquet and awards ceremonies, hosted by Dr. Don Kleinmuntz of  Kleinmuntz Associates and the University of Notre Dame, who was a magnificent emcee! At the 2014 Boston conference, we had the pleasure of Dr. Anne Robinson being the emcee at that Edelman gala, at which the US CDC received the Edelman Award for the eradication of polio.

The food at the dinner was delicious as was the company at our table.

And a HUGE congratulations to the winners of the 2018 Edelman prize and to all the finalists! The award went to the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) for advancing wireless communications. The team included INFORMS Fellows: Dean Mike Trick of CMU and Professor Karla Hoffman of George Mason University! I can't help but mention that one of the coaches of the winning team was Dr. Irv Lustig of Princeton Consultants - I was his TA from the Operations Research course at Brown University when he was an undergraduate and I was a PhD student. Amazingly, two of the awards noted on Monday night have Brown University connections! Franz Edelman, after whom the Edelman Award is named, received his PhD in Applied Mathematics from Brown University (and so did I). Also, Daniel Wagner, after whom the Wagner Prize is named, received his PhD, also from Brown University, in mathematics! I enjoyed hearing my alma mater being noted twice at the gala dinner on Monday night and it is quite amazing that both Les Servi and Irv Lustig and I overlapped during part of our Brown U. days!

I would like to end this blogpost with a big thanks to the INFORMS staff for making this conference so enjoyable and rewarding.

I wish everyone safe travels back from the conference! When I landed at Bradley, my shuttle driver told me about the terrifying Southwest plane engine failure on the flight from LaGuardia to Dallas, which had an emergency landing in Philadelphia.   Thinking of those injured and the loss of life and the terror and fright  that all must have experienced.

Recognizing and Celebrating Outstanding Female Operations Researchers and Analytics Professionals

There are truly amazing female academicians and professionals in our field.

At the 2014 INFORMS conference, which finished yesterday, we had the opportunity to recognize and celebrate the accomplishments of several amazing women.

In recognizing and celebrating them, we provide support also to younger generations, in the form of wonderful role models.

This past Tuesday morning, I had the pleasure of attending the Fora/Chapters breakfast at which the Moving Spirit Award was given as well as the Judith B. Liebman Award.  The Liebman award was given out to great student leaders:  Michelle McGaha Alvarado and Kimia Ghobadi, and Ruixie Guo. The Moving Spirit Award was given to Dr. Laura McLay of the University of Wisconsin Madison. Laura is a superwoman and she was recognized for her contributions as an officer of WORMS (Women in Operations Research and the Management Sciences), having also served as this forum's President. Laura has promoted the activities of this forum and both women and men through innovative activities, blogging, and social media.  She has worked tirelessly in nominating women for awards, while also being a top educator, mother of 3, and even runner and knitter! As has been said multiple times, Laura is also a great ambassador for Operations Research.

I was so happy to see her on the podium and then we could not resist taking a joint photo. Laura is holding her award plaque.

Later that day, at the WORMS (Women in Operations Research and the Management Sciences) lunch, the 2014 WORMS Award recipient was announced - Professor Aleda Roth of Clemson University. Professor Kathryn Stecke of UTDallas, last year's award recipient, was the chair of this committee. Aleda has already achieved Fellow status of several professional organizations and is especially known for her empirical work in Operations Management. The list (with photos) of WORMS Award winners can be viewed here.

One of my former students, Professor June Dong, took the below photo of Professor Roth and me:

The WORMS lunch was sold out and the below photo was shared with me by Professor Christian Wernz of VT. Thanks to Professor Susan Martonosi of Harvey Mudd College, who is the President of WORMS, for being such a great emcee of this event!

On Monday, we recognized and celebrated the 2014 elected INFORMS Fellows. Only .015% of the over 11,000 INFORMS members are Fellows and the full list is here.

This year, 2 out of the 12 new Fellows are females: Dr. Candi Yano of UC Berkeley, who was the organizer of the INFORMS San Francisco conference, and Dr. Radhika Kulkarni of SAS.

I took the photo of Drs. Yano and Kulkarni below.

I have written about Dr. Kulkarni on this blog. One of my former PhD students, Dr. Padma Ramanujam, works for SAS and I have visited SAS in Cary, NC.

Below are photos of the desserts at our INFORMS Fellows lunch table as well as of my great companions at the lunch. Professor Panos Pardalos and I "hosted" several student award winners.

Congrats to all the remarkable women!

The WORMS (Women in Operations Research and the Management Sciences) Awards Lunch was Grand!

First, I would like to thank all the sponsors of the great WORMS Awards Luncheon which took place today at the INFORMS Conference in San Francisco.

I counted 4 males in attendance and all of them had UMass connections! Two - Dr. Patrick Qiang and Dr. Amir H. Masoumi, were my former PhD students in Management Science at the Isenberg School,  and are now, respectively, Assistant Professors at Penn State Malvern and Manhattan College. Also, two Presidents of our award-winning UMass Amherst INFORMS Student Chapter were also present: Dr. Christian Wernz, who is an Assistant Professor at VT, and Michael Prokle, this year's President of our Student Chapter.

Professor Min Yu, also an Isenberg PhD grad, who is now an Assistant Professor at the University of Portland, took most of the photos below.

I wrote a post about this great event on the #INFORMS2014 conference blog here.

Dr. Susan Martonosi, the WORMS President, did a great job as the emcee and we have so much to celebrate.

This year's WORMS Award winner is Professor Aleda Roth of Clemson University - congratulations!!!

It was fabulous to see so many of our Isenberg PHD grads in Management Science, and several students as well. Even Professor June Dong, my first female PhD student, who is now a Full Professor at the School of Business at SUNY Oswego, joined us at the table!

In the above photo, the Isenberg School of Management's support of the WORMS lunch is acknowledged and that of other donors.

Special thanks to our wonderful Isenberg Dean, Dr. Mark Fuller, for supporting the luncheon!

Thanks to WORMS for such a great INFORMS community!

Recognizing Female Talent in Tech, Welcome to the 21st Century, Mr. Nadella of Microsoft

The news came to me this morning from my husband who had received it in his ASEE (American Society for Engineering Education) daily email newsletter and he was shocked.

Yesterday, at the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing Conference, Satya Nadella, the Chief Executive of Microsoft,  suggested that women who do not ask for more money from their employers would be rewarded in the long run when their good work was recognized.

The New York Times had a great article on this "misspeaking"  complete with a video in which Dr. Maria Klawe, the President of Harvey Mudd College, and former Dean of Engineering at Princeton, completely disagrees with him. I have written about Dr. Klawe, since I am a big fan of hers and she has been very innovative in computing education and in breaking down barriers.

The Twittersphere lit up with Nadella's telling women not to ask for a raise but to wait for good karma - I kid you not! 

We are, last time that I checked, living in the 21st century, in which Lean In has become the mantra, Larry Summers is no longer President of Harvard University, but Drew Gilpin Faust is and she was the Dean of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study when I was a Science Fellow there 2005-2006.  Coincidentally, in the same Times article, Claudia Goldin, who was also a Radcliffe Fellow at Harvard my year,  is quoted.

Female talent in tech needs to be recognized and rewarded and having the right salary is one clear way in which to do this. Dr. Klawe regrets not speaking up when negotiating for her offer from Princeton and even more recently from Harvey Mudd College.

Another way to recognize females is through professional society awards.

For example, WORMS (Women in Operations Research and the Management Sciences),  a forum of INFORMS, started the WORMS Award 9 years ago.  The Award for the Advancement of Women in OR/MS celebrates and recognizes a person who has contributed significantly to the advancement and recognition of women in the field of Operations Research and the Management Sciences (OR/MS).

Several of the WORMS Award recipients have also been  elected  INFORMS Fellows: Cynthia Barnhart of MIT, Brenda Dietrich of IBM, Kathy Stecke of UT Dallas, yours truly in 2013, and, this year, we have two out of the twelve 2014 INFORMS Fellows being female and also previous WORMS Award winners: Dr. Candi Yano of UC Berkeley and Dr. Radhika Kulkarni of SAS. WORMS has had outstanding officers, including Laura McLay, now at the University of Wisconsin Madison, who served as President, and has done great work in advocating for female tech professionals - thanks!

Perhaps Nadella should come to the INFORMS Conference in San Francisco and meet some truly successful, wonderful female and male pioneers in tech.

Nadella might learn something from Ed Lazowska, who is a Brown University alum, as am I. In an article in USA Today it was stated:  Hiring women and minorities isn't about window dressing. It actually makes it a better and more profitable company, says Ed Lazowska, a professor of computer science and engineering at the University of Washington-Seattle. "Engineering (particularly of software) is a hugely creative endeavor. Greater diversity — more points of view — yields a better result," he said.

Indeed, and they should be fairly compensated!

Was This One the Best One Ever?! - Photos from the INFORMS Minneapolis Conference

Those of us who were at the INFORMS Annual Conference in Minneapolis, which took place October 6-9, 2013 will never forget it!

I have been going to INFORMS conferences since I graduated from Brown University but,  last year, since I was on sabbatical in Sweden, missed the Phoenix one -- my collaborators and students were there, though, in full force.

Not only was the venue of this year's conference at the Minneapolis Convention Center great with 8 miles of Sky Walks (warm, dry, and carpeted) to navigate through downtown from location to location, and with the beautiful Loring Park close by, but the talks and events kept us engaged, entertained, and informed. I would say that time was too short but that means that the conference was very successful.  I very much enjoyed such new initiatives as Coffee with a New Member and even the New Members Breakfast at which we could meet new INFORMS members.

Seeing friends and former students and colleagues from around the globe was the biggest plus and taking part in various awards ceremonies energizing and so pleasant.

The INFORMS staff and conference organizers did an outstanding job -- thank you, thank you, thank you!

Below I have posted some photos. I know that many of us arrived back home in the wee hours of the morning, but it was worth it!

The new members breakfast at which various fora (WORMS, JFIG) and societies networked

We had meetings within the meeting in the form of various journal editorial board meetings -- a great lunch hosted by Wiley for the International Transactions in Operational Research board

We interacted with the great INFORMS staff

And when the sun came out on Monday enjoyed some of the sights outdoors

We celebrated our students' achievements through various awards (student chapter, Judith Liebman, etc.)

We celebrated the recipients of various awards including the WORMS Award given to Dr. Kathryn Stecke by the President of WORMS, Dr. Laura McLay of the University of Wisconsin Madison,  and Dr. Susan Albin of Rutgers

We did more networking and catching up

We were very excited to see our latest book, Networks Against Time: Supply Chain Analytics for Perishable Products, on display at the Springer booth

We learned from fabulous plenary talk presenters  about the latest results in operations research and the management sciences and analytics

And members of my supernetworks team gave many talks

We dined together and had so much fun

As the President of INFORMS, Dr. Anne Robinson, who is also the Director of Supply Chain Strategy and Analytics at Verizon, wrote me, after I thanked her, Dr. Olga Raskina, and various members of the INFORMS staff for such a great conference: The energy level and interest in our community these days is breath-taking and I completely agree.

Until we all meet again in person (face time really matters), keep up the great work!

And for those that could not join us or just want to further reminisce and hear about other perspectives, events, and impressions, do check out the various blogsposts and social media.