Very Excited About the IFORS Conference in Santiago (Where It Is Winter) and the Dynamics of Disasters Conference in Athens (Where It Is Summer)

Academics are quite good at conferencing and also in optimizing when it comes to packing, etc. Nevertheless, packing for essentially back to back conferences on different continents and seasons can be a challenge especially if the plan is to only have a single carryon as luggage.

In 2006, I spoke at successive conferences in Cyprus (Limassol), Iceland (Reykjavik), and then in Italy (Erice). Family members joined me in Iceland and brought some warm clothing since the temperature, while we were there and it was officially summer, never rose about 48 degrees F. Some reflections on packing for the stream of conferences.

Soon I will be flying to Athens, Greece for the Dynamics of Disasters conference that I co-organized, and then, via Madrid, to the IFORS Conference in Santiago, Chile.

I am thrilled to be delivering a keynote talk, entitled, "Agricultural Supply Chain Networks: From Trade to Resilience and How OR Can Help," at the IFORS Conference.

My keynote will highlight some of our research over the past decade on agricultural supply chain networks including recent work with collaborators in Ukraine. Information on this conference can be found here. I am very honored to be on the list of plenary and keynote speakers.

Also, at the IFORS conference, I'll be taking part in the "Meet the ITOR Editors" panel, which was organized by the outstanding Editor of the International Transactions in Operational Research (ITOR) journal Celso C. Ribeiro! Joining us on the panel is the previous President of IFORS Grazia Speranza and Mario Guajardo. ITOR recently celebrated its 30th anniversary with a special issue. I was delighted to have my tutorial paper on ``Fragile Networks," co-authored with Qiang "Patrick" Qiang included in this special issue. The tutorial paper was based on a tutorial that I gave at the ALIO INFORMS conference in Buenos Aires.

I am very much looking forward to seeing conferees from many continents at this IFORS conference, including my former Isenberg School of Management PhD student, Dmytro Matsypura, who will travel from Australia. He is Chair of the Business Analytics Department at the University of Sydney. The President of IFORS is now Janny Leung and she is traveling from Macao!

And, prior to the IFORS conference, I will be experiencing the warmth of a Mediterranean summer at the Dynamics of Disasters Conference. We have an outstanding lineup of plenary speakers and I thank them all for accepting our invitations. This is the 6th Dynamics of Disasters Conference! It was such a pleasure to work with Ilias S. Kotsireas, Panos M. Pardalos, and Chrys Vogiatzis on this conference.

My presentation at this conference will be on joint work with my PhD student Dana Hassani and colleagues in Ukraine at the Kyiv School of Economics: Oleg Nivievskyi and Pavlo Martyshev.

There is clearly and agricultural theme to my presentations at both these international conferences. In fact, at the Dynamics of Disasters one, we also a special Acknowledgment and Dedication.

Back to packing for the conferences with my new suitcase purchased after I wore out my favorite one!

Safe travels to all those heading to conferences!

A Big Thanks to Dr. George Karagiannis for His Brilliant Guest Lecture in My Humanitarian Logistics and Healthcare Class

This past week, we had the honor and pleasure of hosting Dr. George Karagiannis in my Humanitarian Logistics and Healthcare class, which, this year, is being taught remotely because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

An integral part of this course is having guest lecturers who are expert practitioners. Hearing from such experts reinforces the course material and provides for a rich educational experience for the students.

Now, for some background on Dr. Karagiannis, whom I met back in 2015, when I co-organized the Dynamics of Disasters conference in Kalamata, Greece, with Professors Ilias S. Kotsireas and Panos M. Pardalos, and Dr. Karagiannis was a speaker. We also hosted him for a seminar at the University of Massachusetts Amherst in the Fall of 2015.

Dr. George Karagiannis is Greece's Deputy Secretary-General for Civil Protection, the US equivalent of Deputy FEMA Administrator. From 2016 to 2019, he was a Technical Officer at the European Commission Joint Research Center, where his area of expertise revolved around emergency management, critical infrastructure protection and hybrid threats. Prior to joining the Joint Research Center, he was a Disaster Management Consultant. He has worked in four countries, developed two strategic national risk assessments, organized over 60 exercises, led the development of a dozen emergency operations plans and responded to disasters in the field. He also was a Research Scientist at the Technical University of Crete in Greece, where he his interdisciplinary research lay at the intersection of systems engineering and disaster resilience. George earned his Doctorate in Environmental Science and Engineering from Saint-Etienne School of Mines in France. He also holds degrees in Civil Engineering and in Disaster Management and Business Administration, and is a Certified Emergency Manager by the International Association of Emergency Managers.

Dr. Karagiannis's presentation title in my course was, "Humanitarian Needs Assessment & Information Management." He zoomed in from Athens, Greece, which was lovely since the students in this class are physically located not only in Massachusetts but across the US, with a student even enrolled, who is now in Turkey.

Due to multiple inquiries and requests, Dr. Karagiannis has given me permission to post the slide deck of his excellent presentation.

So many excellent insights and recommendation are contained in his presentation, which I urge you to study. Some of the takeaways that very much resonated with me and also reinforced the material that we have been covering in the class and will be addressing in subsequent weeks are the following:

1. Help flows were there are cameras. This statement demonstrates the importance of media in getting the news out but also emphasizes that, at times, people who are victims of disasters may not get the help that they need.

2. Goods may be donated and delivered that do not help the victims - such as fur coats from Greece following the Israel-Hezbollah war in 2006! The wrong goods create extra stressors (even if they are donated in good faith) since they require human resources to offload and also take up valuable storage space. In the case of the furs, they ultimately created a health hazard. I recall tuxedos being delivered to victims of Hurricane Katrina, and there are many other such incredible stories of the wrong goods.

3. When do you stop gathering data? How much data is "good enough" for needs assessment?

4. The recognition of the importance of time is paramount. If it takes a time t for needs assessment, it will take a time of 2t for making a decision.

5. One must distinguish primary data from secondary data.

6. Comparison over time is also essential in terms of the number of people displaced by the disaster.

7. One of the greatest challenges is learning to make decisions with only incomplete information when everything is at stake!

8. There is a shift of Emergency Management now in addressing infrastructure, which makes tremendous sense due to the negative impacts of climate change on infrastructure.

I very much like that he noted the UN Cluster Approach to support sector emergency functions, which we had emphasized in the course just a few days prior.

We also had a great discussion on how well Greece mitigated the spread of the coronavirus, starting their preparations already in early January! The country was very agile and reacted quickly.

The students were prepared with questions for the speaker. Dr. Karagiannis was so generous with his time - staying way past the class time window to answer questions.

And we honored him with a Professor for a Day certificate recognizing that his contributions.

Beginning of My Sabbatical and My Twelfth Year of Blogging

It is hard to believe that this month I am celebrating 11 years of writing on this blog. My first post  was on the New Year - New Administration - New Blog. In that post I also noted a Letter to the Editor that I had had published in The New York Times on the students in my Transportation and Logistics class that I teach at the Isenberg School.  It is quite interesting to look back at the posts. Many provide timely advice. Interestingly, my third post was on my interview with Linda Baker on the Braess Paradox, for an article that she wrote for the Scientific American. And, coincidentally, my most recent article is on The Braess Paradox, an invited chapter for The International Encyclopedia of Transportation.

My blog has over 1,600 posts that I have written!

I am about to start my sabbatical, which means that I will not be teaching this Spring 2020 semester. I must admit that I will miss not teaching Humanitarian Logistics and Healthcare and also my PhD Seminar but there are many projects to start and others to finish up and also numerous very exciting speaking engagements and visits. Some service activities to the Isenberg School (and beyond, of course), will still be on my plate.

I am very excited about the INFORMS Security Conference, which takes place next month in Monterey, California. The website is live and the speakers and talks look fabulous - I am especially delighted that all speakers get a 50 minute time slot, so one can really share insights and also gain some!

At this conference, I will be speaking on: Game Theory Network Models for Disaster Relief. Coincidentally, the first conference presentation that I ever gave was when I worked in the high tech sector for the Naval Underwater Systems Center in beautiful Newport, Rhode Island, and it was at an MIT/ONR Conference at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey! I was the only female presenter. In addition to working, I was also pursuing a Master's at Brown University at that time. It will be very special to be back there.

Some other highlights of my sabbatical, in terms of conferences and visits are the following:

In March, I will have the honor of giving a plenary talk at the Netgcoop Conference in Corsica, France, while my PhD student, Deniz Besik, presents on our work on tariffs, quotas, and trade at the INFORMS Optimization Society Conference in Greenville, South Carolina.

In April, I will have the pleasure of being an invited speaker at an International Workshop at the University of Brescia in Italy on Variational Analysis and Applications for Modelling of Energy Exchange. There I will see many wonderful Italian colleagues!

In May, it will be time to fly to Iowa, a state that I have never been to. Many thanks to Professor Ann Campbell for inviting me to give a plenary talk at a very exciting 2-day workshop - Future BA (Business Analytics) Prof! This workshop will take place at the Tippie College of Business at the University of Iowa and all expenses for accepted applicants will be covered. The workshop is for advanced PhD students and post-docs —especially women and individuals from underrepresented groups — who are interested in academic careers in Business Analytics.

A huge highlight of my sabbatical will be the CORS Conference in Toronto in June. Also at this conference I will have the immense honor of delivering the Harold Larnder Prize plenary talk. The list of previous recipients of this prize can be found here. I am absolutely thrilled by this recognition and am the only the second female to receive this prize, which dates to 1986. The title of my Larnder lecture is: Trade Wars: OR in the Economic Battlefields.

I spoke at the CORS Conference in Halifax and had a tremendous time. Having been born in Canada, and having lived for a few years in Toronto, it will be great to be back. 

I will also be giving a seminar at the University of Toronto in March.

There will be other conferences in June and I will be busy also co-editing a new Dynamics of Disasters volume with Panos M. Pardalos and Ilias S. Kotsireas. We have received a contract from Springer and work has already begin with refereeing some of  the contributions, etc.

And, in late August, as my sabbatical is coming to a close, it will be time for the CLAIO 2020 Conference in Madrid, Spain. In 2019, I had the pleasure of speaking in Chile,  Colombia, and Mexico, and am so honored to have been selected the IFORS Distinguished Lecturer (IDL) at CLAIO. I will give my IDL plenary at this conference with the title: NetwORks: Changing Our WORld for the Better. This will be my first visit to Spain.

Of course, as my schedule and time permit, I will still be supporting the great UMass Amherst INFORMS Student Chapter and its Speaker Series and also directing the Virtual Center for Supernetworks and working with my PhD students! Updates on my sabbatical will certainly be posted on this blog.

Many thanks to everyone for 11 great years of support of this blog!

Thoroughly Enjoyed Giving the Opening Keynote at the Mexican OR Society Conference

I returned late Friday night from Mexico City where I had the honor and pleasure of delivering the opening keynote at the VIII Annual Conference of the Mexican Society of Operations Research (OR). The conference took place October 16-18, 2019 in México City at the Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México (ITAM). The title of my keynote was: Operations Research: The TransfORmative Discipline for the 21st Century.  I had been invited early last March to deliver the opening keynote by Dr. Moncayo Martínez and Dr. Erick Centeno-Moreno of Texas A&M University.

I was very intrigued by this invitation and eager to return to Mexico especially since I had lived in Tulancingo, Mexico the summer between high school and college. I had won a national Spanish exam in the US and was invited to go there and to live with a family as part of the Experiment in International Living.  The experience was very special, so I accepted the invitation to speak at this conference.

I headed to Bradley Airport at 5AM last Tuesday and had two very pleasant flights on Delta, with the connection in Atlanta. I was graciously met at the airport and driven to my hotel, which was very close to ITAM Santa Teresa, the venue of the conference.  The views from my hotel room, which was on the 29th floor, and the neighboring area by the elevators, were spectacular.

Shortly after my arrival, I made my way to the conference site in order to get my bearings and I liked the auditorium very much as well as the gardens and flowers.

Welcoming remarks for the opening of the conference were made by Dr. David F. Muñoz Negrón of ITAM, the President of the Scientific Committee, and Dr. Elías Olivares Benítez, the President of the Mexican OR Society. I was introduced by Dr. Luis A. Moncayo Martínez of ITAM, who was President of the local Organizing Committee.

Interestingly, Dr. Moncayo Martínez had been to my Omega Rho Distinguished Lecture at the 2019 INFORMS Conference in Phoenix!

Many of the scientific talks were in Spanish so this gave me a great opportunity to practice a language that I love and, I must admit, I understood about 85% of what was said, and was even able to ask intelligent questions. What very much impressed me was the passion of the speakers, who clearly enjoy the research that they are doing and also enjoy in communicating it. It was wonderful to meet new professional colleagues and many students, as well. It was fun to be asked to be photographed with them, in addition.

In my keynote, which I have made publicly available, I included several photographs of luminaries in our profession, including one of Professor George Dantzig of Stanford, who has passed away, and who I so enjoyed conversing with during many conferences over the years. I hoped to energize and inspire the audience with my talk. I focused on advances in Operations Research in the form of networks and game theory for applications such as: congested urban transportation networks and the Braess paradox, perishable product supply chains from food to healthcare, cybersecurity, and disaster relief. The work on disaster relief was co-authored with a former student of mine, Emilio Alvarez Flores, an Isenberg School of Management and UMass Amherst Commonweath Honors College alumnus, who is originally from Mexico. He now works for Cisco and we communicate regularly. I also discussed some very recent research on global trade networks and the impacts of tariffs and quotas, with a case study on avocados from Mexico. The latter research was conducted with my doctoral student Deniz Besik. Deniz and I have, with co-authors, published a series of papers on the very timely topic of tariffs, quotas, and trade wars in such journals as the Journal of Global Optimization (the issue is to be featured at the Springer booth at the INFORMS 2019 conference that is now taking place in Seattle), Transportation Research E, and the European Journal of Operational Research.

I mentioned in my keynote that I became interested in trade policy instruments, when I was approached by a group of agricultural economists, researching the dairy industry, from Cornell University two decades ago, who wanted to collaborate on ad valorem tariffs focusing on Mexico! And, together, we published a series of paper. Hence, looking back, Mexico has permeated a nice amount of my research, spearheading both advances in methodologies as well as applications.

No conference would be complete without wonderful social engagement and, last Wednesday, after my keynote, I was treated to one of the most delicious lunches in my life at the restaurant Sylvestre. At the lunch were: Dr. Jose Blanchet of Stanford University (another keynote speaker and ITAM alum), Dr. David F. Muñoz Negrón and Dr. Luis A. Moncayo Martínez as well as Dr. Beatriz Rumboz, a Dean at ITAM who holds 2 PhDs, as well as Dr. Erick Centeno-Morena. The food, ambience, and conversations were all exquisite!

And we topped our delicious meals with a portfolio of desserts, which we shared.

I very much appreciate all the logistics arrangements for me and the outstanding hospitality.

It was also marvelous to hear from the conferees about many mutual friends in our profession, which is global in scale, but always feels local, because of the strength of ties.

I would like to wish all the members of the Mexican Society of Operations Research much continuing success in all of you endeavors and, again, I thank the society and the organizers of this conference for being such exemplary hosts! I returned to Massachusetts with many wonderful new ideas, powerful impressions, and new personal connections, which I value very much.

It was also great to hear that, while in Mexico, I received a book contract from Springer to edit another volume on Dynamics of Disasters, with a focus on risk and resilience, with my fellow co-editors, Professors Ilias S. Kotsireas and Panos M. Pardalos!

Very Excited About Speaking at Multiple Operations Research Conferences in Europe - from North to South!

Since returning from the fabulous NetSci conference in Burlington, Vermont, which I blogged about, I have been finalizing the talks that I will be giving at conferences over the next few weeks in Europe.

Next Sunday, the EURO Dublin 2019 conference begins, at University College Dublin. This conference will convene academics, practitioners, and students from around the globe and I can hardly contain my excitement. I am so looking forward to seeing many colleagues as well as former doctoral students, including Dr. Dmytro Matsypura, who will be traveling from the University of Sydney in Australia!

In addition to fabulous tutorials, plenary talks, and sessions, I am looking forward to a journal editorial board meeting next Monday for the journal International Transactions in Operational Research, expertly edited by Professor Celso Ribeiro  and a panel that day on Women in OR.

I was planning on attending a special banquet next Monday evening, but with my tutorial on Tuesday, bright and early at 8:30AM, I had to decline the invitation. I am thrilled to have the opportunity to deliver this tutorial and am very grateful to the EURO Dublin conference organizers!

Next Tuesday evening, there will be the conference banquet, and, on Wednesday morning (there is certainly a "bright and early" theme here), I agreed to be on another panel (just this morning) on Making and Impact with OR, as part of the stream on this theme. The invitation came from Dr. Joaquim Gromicho, and this panel will be chaired by Dr. Cathal MacSwiney Brugha. And, on Tuesday, afternoon, I will be speaking on some of our research on tariffs in a session that I organized.

Then, after giving a talk at IBM in Dublin on Thursday, which I am very much looking forward to, we will journey through several countries for the Dynamics of Disasters conference in Greece, that I co-organized with Professors Ilias S. Kotsireas and Panos M. Pardalos. At the Dynamics of Disasters conference, I will present some of our latest research on humanitarian logistics and disaster relief.The research was done with one of my doctoral students, Mojtaba Salarpour, and Professor Patrizia Daniele, who was on the organizing committee of the EURO Dublin conference!

The last conference that I will be speaking at in Europe over this three week period is the World Congress on Global Optimization (WCGO), where I have the honor of delivering a plenary talk (there is also some additional good news that will be officially announced at this conference).

 

And, coincidentally, when I will be at WCGO in France, my co-author, Dr. Ken Calvert, will be speaking on our Internet research with Professors Tilman Wolf and Jim Griffioen in Dallas at the ICDCS2019 conference.

So, for the non-academics out there, these are just some of the types of activities that faculty keep themselves very busy with during the summer months.

Now, I am working on optimizing the packing of a carry-on suitcase for all the professional  travel in both the north and south of Europe.

Sharing Successes and Thanks with Your Benefactor

I have been very lucky to not only have met the benefactor of my chaired professorship but to also have enough of a relationship with him that I can communicate and share experiences with him.

In 1998, I became the John F. Smith Memorial Professor at Operations Management at the Isenberg School of Management. I was the first female appointed to a chaired professorship in the University of Massachusetts system, consisting of 5 campuses, including the UMass Medical School in Worcester.

Part of having a chaired professorship, I believe, is stewardship, and that should entail not only, according to its definition, of:  responsible planning and management of resources, but also staying in touch with the benefactor/donor, if that is at all possible. The chaired professorship that I hold was made possible by John F. Smith Jr. or "Jack Smith," an alumnus of the Isenberg School of Management, class of 1960, who endowed the professorship in honor of his father, who was also a UMass Amherst alumnus, but of its Stockbridge School. Jack Smith Jr. was the chairman of the board of General Motors from 1996 to 2003 and the CEO from 1992 to 2000.  He has been a member of Delta's Board of Directors since 2000, so, clearly, transportation is in his "blood" and we have a common passion for operations management. What has always impressed me about Jack Smith, is his incredible intellect and memory as well as ideas for innovation.

Yesterday, I shipped off a package to Jack Smith, with two letters, one detailing some of the accomplishments of the Virtual Center for Supernetworks, that I founded and have directed since 2001, and our great students at the Isenberg School, and a holiday letter. I also enclosed in the package three books: Competing on Supply Chain Quality, co-authored with my former PhD student, Dr. Dong "Michelle" Li, Dynamics of Disasters: Key Concepts, Models, Algorithms, and Insights, co-edited with Professors Ilias S. Kotsireas and Panos M. Pardalos, and STEM Gems,  by Stephanie Espy, in which I was honored to be one of 44 inspiring female role models in STEM for my work on networks. All these books were published in 2016 so they should make for some pleasant holiday reading.

Jack Smith has come back to UMass and the Isenberg School on several occasions, since I became a chaired professor,  and we also have a classroom named in his honor. He, along with other luminaries, such as Ken Feinberg and Jack Welch, also UMass Amherst alums, serves as an honorary co-chair of the UMass Rising Campaign. A video for the campaign, in which I also speak, can be accessed here.

In fact, one of the seeds for supernetworks and our center germinated when Jack gave a talk at UMass and spoke about interfaces between telecommunications and transportation in the context of vehicle mobility and it was clear that networks of networks or supernetworks would be an area that would generate theory and applications for years to come, which it has! Our Supernetworks book, which I co-authored with Dr. June Dong was published in 2002.

Below are some photos taken on one of Jack's visits to the Isenberg School, when he visited the Supernetworks Lab. Many of the Center Associates featured in the photos, have since received their PhDs, and are now professors. Several, who were undergraduates then, such as David Soffer and Christina Calvaneso, are having fascinating professional careers in business.  A full list is available here.

This blogpost is also a thank you to Jack Smith, whose support has enabled us to have a thriving, award-winning  UMass Amherst INFORMS Student Chapter, a center that builds bridges and has collaborators from multiple continents, and a home where speakers and visitors always feel a warm welcome.

Great Seeing One's Book on Exhibit at a Conference

I enjoy writing books and all the books that I have written have an underlying theme of networks, whether the book is on supply chains, sustainable transportation, finance, or on methodologies, ranging from variational inequalities to projected dynamical systems.

Professor Dimitri Bertsekas of MIT gave me some great advice a while ago and he told me that if I have 5 to 10 papers on a theme then it makes sense to write a book.

I enjoy developing the outline, figuring out the organization of the chapters, and, of course, selecting a title is also always important. Writing a book takes a lot of time and extreme focus but having a book published and seeing it in print and, also, increasingly, nowadays, online as well, is always a very joyous occasion.

Last week, while at the INFORMS conference in Nashville, Tennessee, one of the highlights was visiting the exhibits in a great hall where you could view displays by various publishers as well as software companies and even of several organizations. It was also a good place to network and have some refreshments.

My book, Competing on Supply Chain Quality:  Network Economics Perspective, that I co-authored with my former PhD student and Isenberg School of Management alumna, Dr. Dong "Michelle" Li, and that was recently published by Springer, was on display at its booth at the INFORMS conference.

My co-author and I were delighted to see it there and also enjoyed viewing other recently published books.

Also, on display, in a preprint version was the book that I co-edited with Professor Ilias Kotsireas and Professor Panos M. Pardalos, Dynamics of Disasters: Key Concepts, Models, Algorithms, and Insights, which we have been told by Springer will be available online by the end of the month and in hardcopy format by mid December. The book consists of a preface and 18 refereed book chapters from both academics and practitioners. The photo below is of me with Matt Amboy of Springer, who has always been really responsive to any questions that I may have and for which I am very grateful.

Although I did not get a chance to take a photo with Pardalos and our book now in production I did dine with him at the INFORMS Fellow lunch and took the photo below prior to us being seated. We are with Dr. Suvrajeet Sen and Dr. Mauricio Resende of Amazon, whom I had nominated for the Fellows Award and he was inducted that day.

Also, it was so nice to have Professor Chris Tang of UCLA, who is the Editor of the new Springer Series on Supply Chain Management, in which our Competing on Supply Chain Quality book appears, be at our table at the INFORMS Fellows lunch!

Last year, at the INFORMS Conference in Philadelphia,  the book, Networks Against Time: Supply Chain Analytics for Perishable Products, that I co-authored with Professors Min Yu, Amir H. Masoumi, and Ladimer S. Nagurney (the "other Professor Nagurney), was on display at the Springer book, so we took the photo below of 3 of the co-authors.

The week prior to the INFORMS conference in Nashville, I gave a plenary talk at the Game Theory and Security conference at NYU, which I also blogged about. There I was delighted to see on display a book that I did not author but in which I had a chapter written with my doctoral student, Shivani Shukla, and Ladimer S. Nagurney.

Best to everyone with their Operations Research and Management Science and Analytics research and keep on writing and publishing!