Outstanding Guest Lecture by Mr. Seth Thayumanavan on Biotech in My Humanitarian Logistics Class

Last Thursday, I was delighted to welcome Mr. Seth Thayumanavan to my Humanitarian Logistics and Healthcare class at the Isenberg School of Management. His guest lecture was on the biotech industry, with a focus on background for the oncology startup that he co-founded with his father, Distinguished University Professor Thai Thayumanavan.  The name of the company is Nalam Technologies. 

The guest lecture was of great interest to my students in the class, who come from the Isenberg School, the Riccio College of Engineering at UMass Amherst, and also its School of Public Health.

His  presentation demonstrated the great passion that he has for the very important work of Nalam Therapeutics and its team. The students were captivated by the presentation that discussed the story of pharmaceutical cancer therapy and, in particular, targeted delivery systems to make cancer treatment safer and more effective plus the importance of the 4Ps: patients, payers, providers, and policy makers and the challenges associated with clinical trials and venture capital. The students appreciated Mr. Thayumanavan sharing his experiences from the valuable coursework at UPenn to the various positions that he has held. He highlighted that a career path need not be “linear” as well as the great value of networking, which I very much appreciated and agree with!

His presentation generated so many questions – always a sign of immense interest from the audience. I continue to receive comments from students who were both educated and very impressed by the guest lecture and work. We presented Mr. Thayumanavan with a framed Professor for a Day certificate, which had been signed by the Isenberg Dean Anne P. Massey!

Having expert practitioners speak to students provides for a very enriching educational experience.

I wish Nalam Technologies much success in their important work for humanity.

Some Great Books I am Reading this Summer

This has been quite the eventful (and wonderful) summer. After a glorious month at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden we returned to Amherst and, in just the past few days, we took part in the Isenberg Business Leadership Awards gala in Boston and also celebrated my doctoral student's Dong "Michelle" Li's completion of her PhD and acceptance of a tenure-track Assistant Professorship job offer. Michelle had 3 such job offers and made her decision after careful deliberations.

I am so proud of Michelle, who is my 18th PhD student, whose dissertation committee I have chaired. Below we are together after our dinner celebration at Judie's this past Monday evening.

This summer, in addition to spending a month in Sweden, doing research, co-organizing a conference in Greece, which takes place next week, and making preparations for the EURO conference, plus the fact that I am also writing a book, I have had the pleasure of reading some great books (all nonfiction and appearing in the photo below).

And to the authors and editors of these books there is a neat "connection."
 

All the volumes in the photo above I received from the author or editor, except for the first one, The Handbook of Global Logistics, edited by James H. Bookbinder, which I got from the publisher, Springer, since I had the pleasure of reviewing this 21 chapter handbook for the European Journal of Operational Research, and the review is now in press. Bookbinder's inspiration for the handbook came out of a special issue of  Transportation Research E, volume 41(6), 2005, on Global Logistics, that he guest edited. I admit I had a  paper in that special issue: Global Supply Chain Network Dynamics with Multicriteria Decision-Making Under Risk and Uncertainty,, Anna Nagurney and Dmytro Matsypura, Transportation Research E 41: (2005) pp 585-612. I did not, however, have an invited contribution in the handbook that I reviewed.

I read Bookbinder's magnum opus cover to cover and prepared the review of it while in Sweden (working many hours on it). I enjoyed the handbook a lot since the theme is of great interest to me and I also teach a course on Transportation and Logistics. The chapters are by different authors, some of whom I know very well.

The book, Forecasting Urban Travel, by Davie E. Bouce and Huw Williams, I am now reading and I have read several chapters. It is over 600 pages and is a historical rendition of transportation forecasting over a sixty year period from US and UK perspectives. It is a massive, extensive piece of scholarship. The book is my nightly reading now as a reward for a good day. I am eagerly looking forward to Chapter 7 on Transportation Network Equilibrium. Transportation Network Equilibrium is a topic that was my first research passion (and that my dissertation advisor, Stella Dafermos at Brown University, contributed so much to). It was  one of the themes of my dissertation at Brown University. I did get a preview of Chapter 7, since David Boyce, who has been a mentor and friend for many years, wanted my comments and feedback on it. This chapter, alone, I believe, is worth buying the book for since so many operations researchers and transportation scientists are noted there and their contributions. I am so honored to be cited in this book!

The book, Telecommunications Network Economics, I am taking with me on my upcoming European 3 week sojourn. Patrick Maille, one of the authors (with Bruno Tuffin), sent me a complimentary copy. Given that my great collaborator, Tilman Wolf, and our Co-PIs on a big NSF grant, Jim Griffioen, Ken Calvert, Rudra Dutta, and George Rouskas, with our students, have been working on the Future Internet Architecture project known as ChoiceNet, for 4 years, now, this book should be a great read. And, yes, I peeked -- I am cited - specifically, my Supply Chain Network Economics book is, which I wrote while at Harvard.  Patrick Maille  is an Associate Professor at Telecom Bretagne (part of Institut Mines-Telecom) in France. This year he is visiting Jean Walrand’s team at UC Berkeley (I am a huge fan of Walrand's work). Maille has asked me to serve on his habilitation (Habilitation à Diriger les Recherches, in French)  committee, that he will defending  in Rennes, France in October. I have agreed.

A habilitation, according to Wikipedia, is the highest academic qualification a scholar can achieve by his or her own pursuit in many countries in Europe, Central Asia, and Egypt^... Earned usually after obtaining a research doctorate, such as a PhD, the habilitation requires that the candidate write a professorial thesis (or habilitation thesis) based on independent scholarship.  I will also be reading his habilitation thesis this summer!

The book, Innovation Spaces in Asia, edited by Maurren McKelvey and Sharmistha Bagchi-Sen, I received as a gift from Maureen McKelvey at a lunch in Sjobaren in Gothenburg, Sweden 2 weeks ago. Maureen is a great friend and an exceptional scholar and served, for several years,  as the Dean of the Graduate School at the School of Business, Economics and Law at the University of Gothenburg. Her fellow co-editor, Sharmistha, was also a Visiting Professor at the school with me. Given the excitement surrounding innovation and entrepreneurship (and the Isenberg School received a gift of $10 million to fund the Berthiaume Center for Entrepreneurship, for example), this book I will be reading after returning from Europe.

You may have noticed that the bottom set of three books featured above in the photo has a Swedish connection. I already mentioned the book co-edited by McKelvey, which I carried back from Gothenburg less than 2 weeks ago. I also carried the volume edited by Jonas Floden, Sustainable Intermodal Biofuel Transport, and the dissertation, Essays on Performance Management Systems, Regulation and Change in Swedish Banks, by Viktor Elliott, who successfully defended his dissertation while I was in Gothenburg and I went to the party. The defense itself was in Swedish so I waited in my office for it to be over with and then we celebrated with champagne (see photo below)!

I have read parts of both of these books and have enjoyed them a lot. Jonas and I are obsessed with sustainability and supply chains and we have co-authored several papers together. At the EURO Conference in Glasgow, Scotland, in July I will be presenting our paper, Fashion Supply Chain Network Competition with Ecolabelling, Anna Nagurney, Min Yu, and Jonas Floden, Sustainable Fashion Supply Chain Management: From Sourcing to Retailing, T.-M. Choi and T.C.E. Cheng, Editors, Springer (2015) pp 61-84. Viktor's friendship I will always value. He was always ready and willing to give me lots of advice during my 4 year tenure as a Visiting Professor at the University of Gothenburg (including great restaurant recommendations) and for that I thank him!

Congratulations to all the authors and editors of the above books as well as to the contributors of the edited volumes! There is nothing like a great book!

Happy Summer Reading!

And to those who are writing book, Happy Writing!

Great Hackathon @UMassAmherst

This morning I visited the Hackathon at UMass Amherst, which is taking place April 11-12, 2015 at the stunning Integrated Learning Center.

The Hackathon is called HackUMass and is the largest hackathoon in the Pioneer Valley.

My husband and I were invited by Tom Kopec, who is an entrepreneur and a mentor to the hackers this year.

The host of this year's hackathon is the Berthiaume Center for Entrepreneurship at the Isenberg School of Management, which is under the managing directorship of my colleague in the Department of Management, Professor Bill Wooldridge.

We enjoyed seeing the students. some of whom were bright-eyed whereas others were fast asleep (on the floor, on couches, or on their keyboards).

We enjoyed talking to some of the teams, including a team of students from multiple universities (I had to take a photo since I am a Brown U. grad), who have known each other since they were students at Wayland High School.

I loved the drone with parts built by a 3-D printer, which also was used to construct the statue of my colleague, who is serving as a judge later today, Professor David McLaughlin of the College of Engineering.

It was great to talk to Professor Wooldridge, who told me that he had slept in his office on an air mattress since he had to be available if there was an issue overnight.  That's the dedication of Isenberg faculty!

I look forward to hearing the results of the judging later today and the awarding of prizes. Given that 300 hackers showed up, according to Wooldridge,  and that there was even an entrant from USC, this was clearly a very successful event.

I was thrilled also to get t-shirst  from Professor Wooldridge!

I heard from Tom Kopec (in the above photo with me and Wooldridge) that last year's hackathon, which was hosted by the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, had mostly hardware entries - this year,  about 75% of the projects are are software projects. I was also delighted to see female students om the mix.

Thanks to the sponsors - some of my favorite companies, where I have both former students and great colleagues from INFORMS working.

Business Professors as the Ultimate Entrepreneurs

From investors to educators and the media there is a storm of attention being paid to entrepreneurship  with initiatives ranging from the much-publicized Venture for America, founded by a fellow Brown University alum, Andrew Yang,  to newly formed centers, even here at the Isenberg School of Management, which is headed by my colleague, Professor James Theroux (he is the brother of the award-winning travel writer, Paul Theroux). There are also well-established entrepreneurship programs, typically, at business schools.

The Center for Entrepreneurship is only of several centers at the Isenberg School. 

For example, back in 2001, I founded and continue to direct  the Virtual Center for Supernetworks.
 
So what is entrepreneurship?

Consider, as pointed out by Brett Nelson in Forbes, the following two definitions of “entrepreneur”: the first one from in Merriam-Webster’s dictionary, and the other from Dictionary.com:

• Merriam-Webster: “one who organizes, manages and assumes the risks of a business or enterprise.”

• Dictionary.com: “a person who organizes and manages any enterprise, especially a business, usually with considerable initiative and risk.”

We both agree that the latter definition, which considers any enterprise ... as being the relevant one today.

To survive and thrive in academia, including business schools, one must be entrepreneurial. One can't just sit back and leave the status quo, since the environment in both business and academia is much too dynamic, evolving, and changing. Entrepreneurship goes hand in hand with innovation.

Without entrepreneurship and innovation on the part of faculty:

• No new courses will be offered.
• No new programs and majors started.
• No new partnerships, including global ones, initiated.
• No frontier research conducted.
• No centers established nor grants obtained.
• An academic institution will fail to evolve and thrive.

Business professors, in particular, are great at seeking out new opportunities -- it is Darwinian -- if you don't take risks and initiate, you rot -- and the students and institutions suffer.

We are also quite good (thanks to the professors that we have had and, for some of us, actual industrial experience) in allocating our scarce resources in as optimal of a fashion as possible in order to get the highest return with some risk involved, of course. I think that this is part of our DNA.

If you don't have courage and take risks, nothing valuable or interesting happens -- Nothing ventured -- nothing gained.

Of course, companies have also been formed by business school profs and we in operations research and the manageement sciences can name a few easily off the tops of our heads.

As importantly, the students that we have educated and inspired go on to organize and manage their enterprises through their initiatives!  What is more entrepreneurial than an excellent doctoral dissertation?!

Isenberg Professorship for Innovation and Entrepreneurship

The Isenberg School of Management at UMass Amherst has received approval for a search for the Eugene M. Isenberg Professorship for Innovation and Entrepreneurship. The closing date for this chaired professorship is April 1, 2011 or until the position is filled. The Search Committee consists of Faculty from the Operations Management, Management, and Marketing disciplines since it is expected that the holder of this professorship will be in one of these areas, and the VCRE at UMass Amherst, Professor Michael Malone.

A link to the position description on the Isenberg School site is here. Ads for this position are expected to be placed in The Chronicle of Higher Education, ORMS Today (online), ASEE Prism, among other venues.

The previous holder of this chaired professorship was Dr. Soren Bisgaard, who passed away on December 14, 2009. Other holders of Isenberg chaired professorships are Dr. Michael "Mike" Malone, who is the Isenberg Distinguished Professor of Engineering, in addition to serving as the Vice Chancellor for Research and Engagement, and Dr. Lawrence M. Schwartz, who is the Isenberg Professor in Integrative Science, and who was named this past year. These professorships are endowed by Ronnie and Eugene M. Isenberg, after whom the Isenberg School of Management is named.

And the Winners Are!

Yesterday I had the distinct pleasure of attending the sixth annual Innovation Challenge at UMass Amherst in which 11 teams competed during this first phase in the 2010-2011 challenge. These 11 teams were the finalists out of 25.

I highlighted this competition in an earlier blogspost. What impressed me was the number of teams with green / social entrepreneurship themes.

In my humble opinion, ALL of the TEAMS are winners -- they delivered their 2 minute elevator pitches to a large audience and a panel of judges and were subject to intense questioning from the judges about their startup company ideas and business plans. There was at least one case of stage fright when the speaker could not go on. Another team-mate stepped in to save the team.

The event took place on the tenth floor of the UMass Campus Center with gorgeous views, even of the sun setting.

The teams that were selected to receive financial funding (all from private donations) for this phase are:

o 3D Therapeutics - $2,500
o Aha! Productions - $1,000
o Bacteriotix - $2,500
o Flexolyte - $2,500
o Posytive - $1,500.

Both the first and third teams above had ideas dealing with drug delivery (and testing) mechanisms as service providers. Flexolyte proposed a battery for electric cars that would not be sensitive to exploding (as lithium batteries can be). Posytive has developed software to assist in engineering design and Aha! Productions competed last year and also has potential engineering apps.

Note that out of all the "green" teams only Flexolyte received funding, at this stage.

I was impressed by GreenAgency with its potential to "jump over" the smart grid, and with GreenNav's thrust into determining optimal routes of travel using different criteria (but as someone who researches this topic I hope that a distinction is made between system-optimization and user-optimization). Climate Risk Planning has a potential partner already with an insurance company. I am interested in finding out which peer-reviewed climate models that group would actually be using at a high level of disagreggation. Safety Through Green proposed specially-treated bamboo and house designs so that cement would not be used in production and these structures would be more resilient to earthquakes (and their production more environmentally-friendly, apparently).

I also enjoyed listening to Last Mile Wireless with potential to bring broadband to parts of western MA which lack it now.

The last team, SHM, may give Groupon a run for the money, some day.

What also impressed me was that several teams mentioned the importance of algorithms to their proposed companies.

All can still compete in the second phase with the date of April 28, 2011.

Congrats to all the teams for their passion and ideas and best of luck!

Thanks to VCRE Dr. Mike Malone and to Ms. Heather Demers for a truly thrilling event!

It was an honor to serve as a Faculty Advisor for this competition.

Innovation Challenge Tomorrow!

I am very much looking forward to the Innovation Challenge that will take place tomorrow at UMass Amherst.

Eleven student teams will compete for $10,000 in prizes and support for their business ideas during the first stage of the sixth annual Innovation Challenge. The executive summary and elevator pitch competition will be held at 3:30 p.m. in Room 1009 in the Campus Center. The event is free and open to the public.

The teams are vying in a contest designed to inspire and reward the best entrepreneurial business plans from UMass Amherst students, recent alumni, and their faculty advisors. A second phase of the Innovation Challenge, featuring full business plans and investor presentations, is planned for April 28, 2011.

Over $350,000 has been awarded to 32 teams in previous years.

One of my favorite winners, thus far, was Bug Power, which won this phase 2 years ago (indeed, I am a bit biased since one of the team members was a doctoral student in Management Science, Xuan Huang, who is now an Assistant Professor at the University of Alabama). Bug Power's proposed product was a microbe-powered porta pottie. Specifically, this startup proposed a portable water closet that uses bacteria to clean up waste, eliminate odor and generate its own electricity! This team ended up second in the final round with the $25,000 prize and was quoted on nanotechwire.com as saying: Our first product is the eToilet—an eco-friendly, electricity-generating toilet that uses waste to power fans, lights and sensors that make portable toilets cleaner, brighter and odorless . We are confident that the eToilet will be a breath of fresh air for the $1 billion portable toilet rental industry.

There are 11 teams that are competing this year at this stage and each team also has a Faculty Advisor. I was approached by two teams to help them out but, according to the rules, can only advise one.

Here is the order in which the teams will be pitching tomorrow --

o 3D Therapeutics
o Aha! Productions
o Bacteriotix
o Climate Risk Planning
o Flexolyte
o GreenAgency
o GreenNav
o Last Mile Wireless
o Posytive
o Safety Through Green
o SHM.

What I find especially interesting is the number of teams with a "green" theme.

We expect to start a little after 3:30PM with opening remarks from VCRE Michael Malone. Dr. Malone, along with my former colleague, Dr. Soren Bisgaard, spearheaded this competition (Dr. Bisgaard died December 14, 2009 of lung cancer).

The full press release can be accessed here.