Looking Forward to the 2025 INFORMS Conference in Atlanta!

All five presentations are now done! The 2025 INFORMS  conference will definitely be a whirlwind conference. It will take place October 26 -29, 2025. I am so looking forward to the talks, the social events, serendipitous encounters, the exhibits, and the various business meetings and special luncheons.

Detailed information on the conference is available here:https://meetings.informs.org/wordpress/annual/

Three of my PhD students will be coming - Ismael Pour, Samira Samadi, and Dana Hassani. 

Ismael will present our latest paper on integrated crop and cargo war risk insurance, co-authored with Borys Kormych of the Odesa Law Academy, which was recently published in the January 2026 issue of the International Transaction in Operational Research, and is available free access: 

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/itor.70038?af=R. 

I will speak on the panel in honor of Hani Mahmassani, who passed away on July 15, 2025. The panel is chaired by Karen Smilowitz, the Editor of Transportation Science and fellow panelists are: Srinivas Peeta, Michael Hyland, and Marco Nie. The panel will be a moving tribute to a leading scholar, educator, mentor, and friend, who is deeply missed.

Samira will present two of our papers (because my schedule is loaded with many meetings and conference events) - a paper, co-authored with Deniz Besik of the University of Richmond on a continuing passion of ours - impact on fresh produce quality of various supply chain disruptions - and the  paper, "Multicommodity Trade, Tariffs, and Rerouting," that is forthcoming in a very special edited volume: Convex and Variational Analysis with Applications: In Honor of Terry Rockafellar’s 90th Birthday, with Themistocles M. Rassias and Panos M. Pardalos as Editors, Springer Nature Switzerland AG; see: https://link.springer.com/book/9783032078599

Dana will present a paper of ours that was also recently published: "Quantification of International Trade Network Performance Under Disruptions to Supply, Transportation, and Demand Capacity, and Exchange Rates in Disasters." This paper was co-authored with colleagues at the Kyiv School of Economics (KSE): Oleg Nivievskyi and Pavlo Martyshev and appears in: Dynamics of Disasters- From Natural Phenomena to Human Activity, Ilias S. Kotsireas, Anna Nagurney, Panos M. Pardalos, Stephan Pickl, Chrysafis Vogiatzis, Editors, Springer Nature Switzerland AG; see:https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-74006-0#toc

And on the first evening of the conference, I will receive the INFORMS President's Award, for which I am deeply grateful and very honored:  https://www.informs.org/News-Room/INFORMS-Releases/Awards-Releases/Anna-Nagurney-Honored-with-2025-INFORMS-President-s-Award

My Agricultural Supply Chain Networks Under Uncertainty Seminar is Now Online, Thanks to CORS (Canadian Operational Research Society)

I am grateful to Dr. Anjali Aswathi for inviting me to present on April 11, 2025 in a CORS event. Dr. Aswathi is the President of the Canadian Operational Research Society,

The title of my presentation was, "Agricultural Supply Chain Networks Under Uncertainty."

The link to my slide deck for the lecture is here: https://supernet.isenberg.umass.edu/visuals/CORS-Nagurney-2025.pdf

The link to the video recording on Youtube is here: https://youtu.be/AIbWpVPM4uU

The above video recording also includes the presentation by Dr. Emma Freninger, which followed my presentation.

It was also very thoughtful of the CORS President to provide the above certificate. 

Thanks to my PhD students and all others who attended our virtual presentations with special thanks to Ismael Pour for writing up some of the highlights on the UMass Amherst INFORMS Student Chapter blog: https://websites.umass.edu/umassinf/2025/04/13/two-talks-in-one-day/

Our research on agricultural supply chain networks continues!

The Supply Chain Resilience (SCRIPS) Workshop in DC and More!

Last week I had the great pleasure of attending the SCRIPS (Supply Chain Resilience Issues, Problems and Solutions for the Homeland Security Enterprise) Workshop in Washington DC. The workshop was extraordinary, bringing together experts from government, academia and industry. The venue was excellent - the Texas A&M Bush Center, very close to The White House. 

It was an honor to be invited to deliver the keynote: Supply Chain Resilience Research: Insights from Agricultural & Food Supply Chains.

There were 3 themes to this workshop: the agricultural and food industry, the semiconductor industry, and ports. The organizers were incredibly prescient with the workshop taking place October 1 and 2, 2024, and the  East Coast and Gulf Coast dock workers set to go on strike at midnight on October 1!

I had anticipated a possible dock workers strike and wrote this article for  The Conversation: "Brown bananas, crowded ports, empty shelves: What to expect with the US dockworkers strike." The article was updated, once the strike was announced, before my keynote on October 1. I was busy going back and forth with my Editor.  The strike ended, preventing an economic disaster, within 3 days, and I had this article published in The Conversation: "Dockworkers pause strike after Biden administration’s appeal to patriotism hits the mark." 

I'd like to take the opportunity to thank the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Supply Chain Resilience Center, the Center for Accelerating Operational Efficiency (CAOE) at Arizona State University and the Cross-Border Threat Screening and Supply Chain Defense Center (CBTS) at Texas A&M University, both DHS Centers of Excellence, for hosting this workshop. Special thanks to Ronald Askin for inviting me to speak with gratitude also to: Ross Maciejewski, Hilary Shackelford, and Pompelli Greg, who did an amazing job leading our food/ag industry break sessions. Appreciation is extended to: Cynthia Gerber, Manish Bansal and Sara Saberi for taking and sharing some of the nice photos in the collage below. Thanks to ALL for their participation and the incredibly inspiring insights and discussions.

It was terrific to see colleagues that I know from Operations Research from multiple universities at the workshop as well as to have CDC, FEMA, and, of course, DHS representatives taking part in the workshop.

It rained periodically during the workshop but, propitiously, the rain would stop when Robert, who is responsible for the amazing Ukraine Rally DC, would be out. I had brought my Ukrainian flag and, both last Monday and Tuesday, I joined him and others.

It was very special to meet refugees from Ukraine and even Kiran and Alan, who had worked in the Peace Corps in Ukraine, and I spoke Ukrainian with them!

My time in DC was incredibly rewarding and very special! And, while walking on the street back to my hotel one evening, a gentleman cried out my name and starting hugging me. He had just arrived from Mexico, was very familiar with my research, and was starting his new job at The World Bank the next day. He also knows our UMass Amherst Chancellor Javier Reyes, who is from Mexico. What a small world it is!

My INFORMS Tutorial on Game Theory and the COVID-19 Pandemic

This past week the INFORMS Annual Meeting took place in Anaheim, California with both in-person and virtual presentations. I was honored to have been invited by Professor John Carlsson from USC to present a tutorial at this conference. My tutorial was on: Game Theory and the COVID-19 Pandemic. The tutorials were all prerecorded and streamed.

The tutorial has coverage of fundamental methodologies plus applications of game theory and optimization to supply chain network models inspired by the COVID-19 pandemic from food to PPE ones. It includes models in which the governing concept is that of Nash Equilibrium, Generalized Nash Equilibrium as well as cooperation. The application part of the tutorial is based on papers, synthesized, that have been published in the pandemic. I am very grateful to my co-authors for wonderful collaborations before the pandemic and throughout the pandemic.

The video of the tutorial can be viewed here: https://bit.ly/3pCzFeT.

Due to requests, I have also made the slide deck of my tutorial available and it can be downloaded here: https://bit.ly/3mfR8HK

Finally, the preprint of of the tutorial is available on the following link https://bit.ly/3bdEvXD. The tutorial paper, which is 48 pages, has been published in the INFORMS Tutorial volume:  Emerging Optimization Methods and Modeling Techniques with Applications https://bit.ly/3Gg4GeB. 

Special acknowledgments to Professors John Carlsson and Doug Shier of Clemson University for the expert editing of the volume and the organizing of these timely tutorials. 

Very Excited About My Upcoming Speaking Engagements

The new academic year is off to a great start. It is the third week of the new academic year at UMass Amherst and I have been pleasantly surprised at how much I am enjoying teaching remotely.  I think that the engagement with students, with the right technology, enthusiasm, and energy, is making for a very rewarding educational experience. 

The beginning of the academic year also tends to be the time for the start of different speaker series and  a renewed conference season (post the summer). Such events are all now taking place remotely. The time to prepare a good talk has perhaps grown since the delivery is very often through Zoom, and one has to be cognizant of that.

In less than a month, I will be giving three invited presentations, each on a different theme/topic.

In late September, I'll have two presentations. The first presentation is an invited one for the INFORMS Chicago Analytics Conference,  and my talk will take place on September 25. This conference is being organized by the INFORMS Chicago Chapter and the INFORMS Analytics Society. The title of this presentation is, "Novel Supply Chain Network Models Inspired by the Covid-19 Pandemic: From Optimization to Game Theory."

I very much like the theme of this conference, which is Analytics to the Rescue! Joining me as invited speakers are fabulous colleagues of mine in the profession. I 'm sure that the Q&A will be stimulating and enlightening after my talk and the discussions wonderful, although virtual, throughout this conference.

The following Monday, on September 28, 2020, I will be speaking on, "Optimization of Food Supply Chain Networks: Why Quality, Trade Instruments, and Labor All Matter."  The venue for this presentation is something extra special - it is the Amazon Consumer Science Summit! I am one of six invited speakers and am truly honored to be presenting at this summit, which takes place September 28-October 1, 2020. My host is Dr. Mauricio G.C. Resende. I had been invited to speak at the Amazon Research Scientist Summit in August 2018, but with the wildfires in the area at that time and the bad smoke conditions, I sent my presentation in lieu of travel.

My presentation at the Amazon Summit will be panoramic in scope and will include some very recent research, inspired by the pandemic, on food supply chains and disruptions, as well as research done with my former PhD student, now Dr. Deniz Besik, who is in her first year as an Assistant Professor at the University of Richmond.  We wrote 6 papers together (thus far), some with other co-authors, including Professors June Dong, Dong Li, and Ladimer S. Nagurney. All six of the papers have been published. Deniz's successful PhD defense took place on March 6, 2020, only a few days before WHO declared the Covid-19 pandemic.  The research that we did on tariffs, quotas, and tariff-rate quotas is very relevant in the pandemic. 

And, on October 7, 2020, I will be speaking on "Game Theory Network Models for Disaster Relief," at the USC Center for Artificial Intelligence in Society." Information on that presentation is available on this website. We have continued our research on game theory in the pandemic and I now have a PhD student, Mojtaba Salarpour, focusing on this topic. His most recent published paper is, "A Stochastic Disaster Relief Game Theory Network Model," which we co-authored with Professors June Dong and Ladimer S. Nagurney. It was published in SN Operations Research Forum (2020) and is available on the journal's website in its entirety. We also have an article now, in press, entitled, "Competition for Medical Supplies Under Stochastic Demand in the Covid-19 Pandemic: A Generalized Nash Equilibrium Framework," which we co-authored with Professors Dong and Pritha Dutta.  I am very excited about also giving this presentation and my hosts at USC have reached out to me to see whether I would also like to meet with students virtually and I, enthusiastically, agreed.

Postscript on My INFORMS Webinar: Blood, Sweat, and PPEs: Rescuing Perishable Product Supply Chains and Impacting Policy Through Analytics

First, I would like to thank the INFORMS Practice Section for the invitation to deliver the inaugural webinar in its Analytics Series, which took place last Friday. The title of my webinar was: "Blood, Sweat, and PPEs: Rescuing Perishable Product Supply Chains and Impacting Policy Through Analytics." 

As noted on the INFORMS Section's webpage: the goal of the webinar series is to bring awareness of the value of applying analytics to real-world problems. The series is organized by Dr. Patricia Neri of Bayer Crop Science and Dr. Carrie Beam of the University of Arkansas.

Also, special thanks to all those who were able to join in. I was thrilled to hear from colleagues in many different countries, who were able to Zoom in.

This blogpost is a postscript on the webinar with links to my presentation and to the full webinar, which is now on youtube, and answers to questions in the Q&A.

That morning began with getting ready for the virtual event.

The logistics of the webinar, which was carried out via Zoom, was handled by Beth West and Mary Leszczynski of INFORMS and it was exciting to have it be open to the public and to have the registration be free. 

We had had multiple practice sessions, since there were slides to be included prior to my presentation about the series as well as slides afterwards, providing a link to this blog and noting that the webinar would also be posted on youtube.

Dr. Neri gave a lovely introduction to my presentation.

In the webinar, I spoke about a variety of perishable product supply chains impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic, including: food, PPE, and blood supply chains, and also provided some hope based on convalescent plasma as a treatment, under the reality of competition.  I discussed both earlier relevant research as well as research that we have conducted on supply chain disruptions and resilience during the Covid-19 pandemic. And, I also spoke about the impact of analytics during the Covid-19 pandemic on policy, including our work on blood supply chains. I emphasized the importance of the work being done by our Operations Research and Analytics community and also highlighted inspiring younger generations.

The slides of my presentation have now been posted.

The webinar is now also online, thanks to INFORMS. 

Dr. Carrie Beam expertly handled the Q&A.

And, as promised, since we did not get a chance to address all the questions, below I provide a list of questions, followed by my response. For completeness, I also include the questions that were "live."

Question from Don Mustard of Canada: Covid has exposed a global supply chain that was not prepared for a global pandemic. What is the role of government in reinforcing supply chains' structure against disaster, ensuring that disruption is minimized?

My answer: This is an excellent question. I believe that national governments must be involved in disaster mitigation and preparedness and clearly this pandemic is a healthcare disaster. First and foremost, the government must ensure that we are prepared for a worst case scenario, as we are are experiencing now. This is an extreme disaster given the impact and prevalence over space and time (unlike an earthquake, flood, tsunami, etc.).  Many of the supply chains that have been most severely disrupted now are being referred to as "critical infrastructure" and the associated workers are truly essential ones. The government should guarantee that we have adequate stockpiles of  PPEs and medical supplies as well as the capacity to produce them, including vaccines. Investing in food supply chains is also warranted. As I discussed in my presentation, labor in many industries, including food processing, has suffered in the pandemic, resulting in product shortages. Having healthcare for workers will keep everyone safer and make our supply chains more resilient.

Question from Dr. Angelika Leskovskaya of Southern Methodist University: Will it be possible to send slides and probably recording after the webinar?

My answer: The links to the slide and the recording of the webinar are given above. I will check with INFORMS about further broadcasting of the information. Thank you.

Question from Don Mustard of Canada: Perhaps could you discuss your thoughts on the concept that Covid didn't create problems in the supply chain, but rather, just exposed them... and what your confidence that we will learn from this (vs. revert to our historical patterns of behavior).

My answer: Clearly, the pandemic dramatically illustrated to everyone not only the importance of supply chains but also the need for flexibility, agility, and having multiple suppliers, among many other important characteristics. At the same time, the necessity of closing many businesses,  incorporating social distancing measures in production and processing facilities, dealing with employee illnesses and fears of contagion, modifying freight service provision, etc., put many additional stressors on the supply chains. I do believe that Operations Research and Analytics will be utilized and valued more by many organizations as a result of the pandemic because our tools are extremely useful and can identify vulnerabilities (as well as synergies) in supply chain networks. We (firms, organizations, governments) cannot turn our backs on the lessons learned.

Question from Dr. Duncan Klett, Cofounder of Kinaxis: It seems logical that national stockpiles should be filled to close to necessary levels, then supplies would flow through the stockpile so the oldest get sent out to hospitals for immediate use, keeping the stockpile "current."

My answer: Yes, one would think that that would be and should be the case. I believe that some were surprised that masks actually can, in effect, perish over time because their quality deteriorates. This should have been addressed and mitigated way before the pandemic hit us.  

Question from Dr. Amir Masoumi of Manhattan College: Once the volume of blood donations and transfusions across the US are back to "normal", in which direction do you see the blood banking industry moving with respect to balancing the supply and demand for blood products?

My answer: I believe that there will have to be more cooperation, rather than competition among blood service organizations. That was actually one of the themes in a paper co-authored with you and with Dr. Min Yu that I mentioned in my webinar presentation. Also, with the demand for convalescent plasma, obtained through apheresis of blood donations, as I had discussed in my presentation, which is emerging as a possible treatment for Covid-19, there is now some added hope for hospitalized patients battling this disease. There is competition now for the valuable convalescent plasma but, ultimately, there should be system optimization and allocation accordingly.


Question from Rishabh Bhandawat, PhD Candidate at the University of Buffalo: Would centralized inventory with some sort of sharing mechanism have helped with Covid? 

Answer: I think that definitely, yes, especially in the case of the National Stockpile of PPEs and medical supplies. However, as I had mentioned in the webinar, there were not sufficient amounts plus there was deterioration in the quality (hence, perishability) of many items, which exacerbated the shortages. We need a sufficient centralized inventory and management of the critical needs supplies along with a fair distribution to points of demand.

Question from Dr. Robin Lougee of IBM: Does Anna want to talk about the role of blockchain?

Answer: Time did not permit a discussion on blockchain.  However, how blockchain can influence supply chains in the pandemic would be an excellent topic for a future webinar. Thanks.

Question from Dr. Robin Lougee of IBM: What's the NEXT presentation in the series?

Answer: The next webinar will take place on July 10, 2020 and is entitled, "Inventory, Packages, Price Points and People: An Inside Look at leading Technical People." The webinar will consist of panelists who will address: "How do the best geeks in the industry motivate and manage their technical teams. The panelists will be: Dr. Pooja Dewan of Otis Elevator, Dr. Anne Robinson of Kinaxis, Dr. Mallory Freeman of UPS, and Dr. Pallav Chhaochhria of Citi.

Many thanks for all the great questions! During the Q&A there were also comments sent by Marino Biagini and by Teja Krasek (from Slovenia), which were very much appreciated.

There was a glitch at the beginning of the webinar, which was quickly corrected, by the projector unmuting the computer. The Chat facility was disabled by the INFORMS folks due to prior issues for security reasons. 

Being "first" in anything is always risky, but nothing ventured, nothing gained. And with technology and the Internet there is always the possibility of a disruption.

I like forward to further discussions and important contributions from our community during these challenging times and when the pandemic is past us.

My Upcoming INFORMS Webinar: Blood, Sweat, and PPEs

The invitation came from Dr. Patricia Neri, who serves on the Board of the Practice Section of INFORMS. Would I be interested in giving the inaugural webinar in their Practice Series? Very quickly I agreed. There was specific interest in having me speak on perishable product supply chains in the Covid-19 pandemic. I have had multiple interviews in the media on this topic (radio, TV, and print) and it was an opportune venue in which to synthesize thoughts as well as earlier and recent research on supply chains and disruptions.

I have been working on the presentation slides for my webinar, which is entitled, "Blood, Sweat, and PPEs: Rescuing Perishable Product Supply Chains and Impacting Policy Through Analytics." The webinar will take place on June 12, 2020, with Q&A to follow. The webinar is open to the public and information on registration is available here. Joining me on the Q&A panel will be Dr. Patricia Neri and Dr. Carrie Beam (I thoroughly enjoyed brainstorming with both recently on the title!). Special thanks also to Beth West of INFORMS for handing the logistics for my webinar.

The World Health Organization declared the Covid-19 global epidemics an official pandemic on March 11, 2020, and, even before then, I was hard at work conducting research on disruptions to supply chains because of the coronavirus. On March 12, 2020, my article on the stressed blood supply chain and the coronavirus was published in The Conversation. To this date, the article remains the most read article by a UMass Amherst faculty member, published in the outlet over the past year. It was followed by an invited piece in the INFORMS Analytics Coronavirus Chronicles.

Perishable product supply chains, including a variety of food ones, PPEs (which are time-sensitive), a well as blood supply chains, are some of the supply chain networks that have been most severely impacted in the pandemic. In this webinar, I will discuss our earlier work and present research on such topics and, for the latter, I will emphasize new work that includes the inclusion of labor under different constraints in supply chains. I will also highlight a recent paper on convalescent plasma that I wrote with Dr. Pritha Dutta on what has become a unique market consisting of competition among nonprofits and profit organizations for plasma from Covid-19 survivors for therapies in those suffering from the coronavirus. Finally, I will describe how work in operations research and analytics is influencing policy on a national level in a significant way.

And, since several of you have asked, below, I have highlighted some of the recent media interviews that I have taken part in, which are accessible on the links below. Many thanks for the interest! Hope that you can join me for the webinar.

Interview by UMass Amherst

Article on the Isenberg School Website on Impact on Policy

NBC Boston TV News Interview on Meat Shortages

Radio Interview on Farm Talk

Diaper and Wipe Shortage Radio Interview - Los Angeles

Interview for The Verge on Algorithms in the Pandemic and Supply Chains

Interview in USA Today on Diaper and Wipe Shortages

Interview in Morning Consult on Collateral Damage in the Pandemic

Also, many thanks to the American Mathematical Society and to Mike Breen for hosting me on the podcast on supply chains and Covid-19.

Electricity and Energy on America Revealed Tonight

Tonight's episode on the excellent PBS TV series America Revealed is, Electric Nation, and it will be broadcast ET at 10 PM.

I will be watching.

According to the description of tonight's episode:

Our modern electric power grid has been called the biggest and most complex machine in the world – delivering electricity over 200,000 miles of high tension transmission lines.  But even though the grid touches almost every aspect of our lives, it’s a system we know very little about.

My research group has done research on electric power network systems and also on network vulnerability from transportation systems to supply chains.


Episode 1 was on food and episode 2 was on transportation.

Next week it will be on manufacturing.


I wrote up  some of the  highlights of the transportation segment.

America on the Move -- Transportation Episode on America Revealed Tonight

Having enjoyed the first episode of America Revealed last week, which was on food, I am looking forward to tonight's segment, "America on the Move," which will focus on transportation systems.


More information about tonight's show, with video clips, can be found here.

Last week, I was interviewed on this production for the PBS affiliate WGBY 57 TV show, Connecting Point.

You can view my interview in NYC with Yul Kwon, the host of America Revealed. In that interview I spoke on the Braess paradox and gridlock.

Nice to see network systems getting so much attention and generating so much interest!

Excellent America Revealed Episode on Food

Needless to say, I have been eagerly awaiting the PBS four part series, America Revealed.

The first episode aired last evening, and it was on food.

The host, Yul Kwon, began by introducing the series and episodes and he noted the importance of networks, which was great!

Indeed, through last night's episode to next week's, which will be on transportation, followed, on subsequent Wednesdays, by episodes on energy and manufacturing, we will be educated and entertained in a spectacular way.

PBS has even set up webpages for Teachers, which is fantastic and you can view my interview with Yul on the Braess paradox there.

The aerial photography and filming are amazing as is Yul's courage (he parachutes out of planes and flies in planes that I would not be brave enough to do so) but, then again, Yul, is the winner of the 2006 Survivor. He may have a fear of heights but when the job needs to be done, he does it.

Given that   the most recent paper that we wrote was on food supply chains, I was completely captivated last night. The images of the tomatoes and cattle will stay with me for a long time.

Congrats to the urban farmers who are greening Detroit as well as to those who, for generations, have continued to feed Americans and beyond.