Delighted that Our Paper on Fresh Produce Trade and "Choke Points" is Published in EJOR!

The three of us worked very hard on this paper, "Fresh Produce Spatial Price Equilibrium on General Networks: Capturing Commodity Quality Deterioration Through Endogenous Transportation Time Delay Functions with Capacities," and it took three revisions (a record for me, I must say) before acceptance. My co-authors on this paper are Samirasadat "Samira" Samadi, who is one of my PhD students, and Professor Deniz Besik of the Robins School of Business at the University of Richmond.

The paper was published in a volume of the European Journal of Operational Research (EJOR) this past week, which was extra exciting since it also was the last week of classes of the academic year at UMass Amherst!

The link to the journal publication of the article is here: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0377221726003759.

The work was inspired by many challenges associated with fresh produce transportation and quality of the commodities because of issues such as drought as in the Panama Canal and now the essential shutdown of the Strait of Hormuz because of the war on Iran. We capture endogeneous transportation delays due to capacity reduction on links and the impact on quality of fresh produce as it travels from supply markets to demand markets. The case study in the paper is on the global trade of bananas, a nutritious and very popular fruit, which is also important for food security. We also propose commodity quality trade network performance measures, supply-based, demand-based, and network-based, that can be applied for an individual commodity or across all commodities.

We are grateful to the EJOR Editor, Professor Mike Yearworth, who handled out paper, and to the reviewers for their comments and suggestions. My co-authors and I very much believe in the relevance and importance of the research that resulted in this paper.

Terrific Production and Operations Management Society (POMS) 2024 Conference in Minneapolis

I'd like to thank the organizers of the 2024 POMS Conference, which took place in Minneapolis, Minnesota, April 25-29. Full information on the program and associated activities can be found on the conference website: https://pomsmeetings.org/conf-2024/

Both my Isenberg School of Management PhD student, Dana Hassani, and I presented at this conference and Dana also took part on the Doctoral Colloquium as did another Operations Management Isenberg School PhD student, Busra Karkili. Dana shared with me the lovely group photo below taken at the colloquium.

Coincidentally, on our flight from Bradley Airport to Minneapolis, were both Busra and her PhD Advisor, Senay Solak, who is also chair of our OIM Department.

I presented my latest work on food security, international trade, and nutritional subsidies by governments, whereas Dana presented one of our papers on the quantification of international trade network performance under disruptions to supply, transportation, and demand capacity, and exchange rates in disasters, done with colleagues, Oleg Nivievskyi and Pavel Martyshev at the Kyiv School of Economics in Ukraine. The below collage was prepared as a memento from this great POMS conference.

My presentation was based on a paper that was recently published in the International Transactions in Operational Research and was recognized with an Editor's Choice Award.  Special thanks to Telesilla Kotsi for organizing a very interesting session and inviting me to speak

It was extra special, because of the serendipity at conferences, to see Tinglong Dai and Suresh Sethi plus Kathy Stecke and even Zihao Qu, who will be joining our Operations and Information Management Department, Isenberg School of Management, UMass Amherst.

It was delightful to see several of our Isenberg UMass PhD alums there, including recently promoted and tenured Michelle Li, and Heng Chen, and Sara Saberi also took part. My colleague, Ahmed Ghoniem, also was at the conference. It was lovely to meet many other conferees and to reconnect with others through such warm, fascinating conversations, including a great conversation with Andres F. Jola-Sanchez! As promised, I have posted our presentations on the Virtual Center for Supernetworks site: https://supernet.isenberg.umass.edu/visuals.html

Thanks also to Springer Nature Group Editor Matthew Amboy for displaying my Labor and Supply Chain Networks book at the Springer booth at the conference!

With best wishes to everyone as the end of the academic year comes to a close and with many summer conferences on the horizon!