Massachusetts and the United States Must Support Ukrainian Students and Scholars

This blogpost is co-authored with Dr. Ladimer S. Nagurney. Since the latest war on Ukraine began on February 24, 2022, we, as many others around the globe, have been preoccupied with the unprovoked, unjustified invasion of this democratic, sovereign nation, with atrocities being committed by the Russian invaders that continue to escalate and to create horrific pain, suffering, death, destruction, environmental impacts, as well as supply chain disruptions.

We are both educators and are lucky to live in the state of Massachusetts with renowned higher education institutions that serve as a magnet for students and scholars from around the globe. Colleges and universities are the bedrock of democratic societies and now Ukrainian institutions of higher education are at grave risk because of the unprovoked aggression by Putin and his war on beautiful Ukraine and its people.

One of the major successes during the three decades of Ukrainian independence has been the development of a robust system of higher education. There are now several universities in Ukraine that, in terms of instruction and research, can compete on the world stage. In addition to domestic students, these institutions attract students from the developing and developed countries alike. The war on Ukraine presents immense challenges for Ukrainian universities. Because of the war, classes across Ukraine have been canceled; some, amazingly, have been moved to online formats, and some of the students, faculty, and staff have scattered, seeking locations of greater safety. Many of the able-bodied males, from ages 18-60, have joined the military or the territorial defense forces. Even females are assisting in the valiant fight for freedom of their nation.

The first author of this post is the Co-Chair of the Board of Directors (BOD) of the Kyiv School of Economics (KSE)  in Ukraine, a leading business school, and also serves on its International Academic Board (IAB), providing with fellow board members from universities such as the University of Chicago, Yale, Duke, UC Berkeley, SUNY Stony Brook, University of British Columbia in Canada, University of Houston, and Humboldt University in Berlin, Germany, guidance on curricula, research and scholarship and the teaching of faculty, as well as inputs into strategic plans. These are  voluntary roles. She serves on the BOD with a former US Ambassador to Ukraine (John Herbst) and on the IAB with Roger Myerson, a Nobel laureate in Economics, who is the Chair of the IAB. Since the Russian forces entered Ukraine on February 24, 2022, in significant numbers, without provocation, the BOD and IAB members have been holding many emergency meetings with the school administrators, some of which remain in the Kyiv area  to manage the school and its assets during this war. 

The courage of the students, staff, faculty, and administration at KSE and other universities in Ukraine is awe-inspiring. Students are working the supply lines from western Ukraine eastward, at risk to their lives,  to ensure food, water, and medicines and other supplies.  The KSE Foundation, in turn, is raising funds for humanitarian relief. The KSE administration is tracking the status of its students and faculty to see whether everyone is accounted for as many of them now engage in the battle for their country.  Our emergency meetings can get terrifying, since lights may be shut off in places where my colleagues in Ukraine are joining us virtually so as not to provide identification for targeting. And, when the sirens wail, they have to run for shelter.

Although some of the formal classes have stopped, education, nevertheless, continues through the hosting of webinars through KSE, and open to the public, of leading international thought leaders (David Petraeus, Paul Krugman, Michael McFaul, Nicholas Christakis, Nassim Taleb, to name a few) and of panels of KSE faculty, including the KSE President Tymofyi Mylovanov, VP Tymofii Brik, Director of the KSE Institute Nataliia Shapoval, and Vice President of Economic Education Oleg Nivievskyi, informing the public of  the impacts of the war. Having such educational events provides the KSE community (and us) with a "sense of normalcy." We do not know how long such events can continue given the escalation of the war and the great uncertainty plus risks.

It is important to emphasize that students educated at Ukrainian universities have assumed positions in the government, at various consulting companies, high tech companies, and many businesses.  The President of KSE Mylovanov is a former Minister of Trade of Ukraine and is also a Professot at the University of Pittsburgh.

There are many institutions of higher learning in Ukraine that need our support now. While numerous faculty senates and professional organizations in the United States have issued statements of solidarity with Ukraine and have condemned the war,  these are only the first steps. A second step, which is also very important symbolically, is to have universities issue Memoranda of Agreement (MOA) with universities in Ukraine. We are pleased that the University of Massachusetts Amherst entered into an MOA with KSE on March 14, 2022. This  agreement provides also very important psychological support and can be leveraged for additional funds to support individual students, researchers, and faculty from Ukraine, for short-term stays, for example.  In addition, options of reserving room in online classes for students in Ukraine, as well as those displaced by the war, can yield immense benefits. We are grateful to Kalpen Trivdei of the UMass Amherst International Programs Office for championing this MOA. One can also donate to foundations of Ukrainian universities, some of which are based in the US.

KSE, for example, is not only raising funds for humanitarian relief, but, in addition, is using its expertise and connections with government authorities to provide delivery of needed supplies in an effective, efficient manner even under conditions of extraordinary complexity and challenges.

Universities in Ukraine also need funding to pay their employees. We do not know the end-game for this war at this time but it is essential that higher education in Ukraine be supported in all manner possible, now, in the short-term as well as in the long-term.

Certain high tech companies are starting to enhance data preservation of Ukrainian universities. 

There is even a promising initiative in the works for a Ukrainian Global University with the Kyiv School of Economics and the Ukrainian Catholic University in Lviv leading the charge.

We hope that the US government and our well-endowed foundations can step up. The democracy of the free world is at stake. Massachusetts can lead in the efforts!

Super First Day of Classes at the Isenberg School of Management

There is something special about the month of September, when the new school year begins. The nights are cooler in the northeast, some of the leaves have started to change colors, and there is an air of anticipation.

I am sure that you remember many "first days" of classes, from elementary school onward through high school and college, and perhaps graduate school or a professional school.

I never get tired of the start of the new academic year and last night I was so excited, that I could hardly sleep.  Today, was the first day of the new academic year at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and, in the Fall, I always very much enjoy teaching my Logistics and Transportation class, which is an elective in the Operations and Information Management Department.  Also, if the classroom size permits, I allow interested students, especially from Industrial Engineering, into the course, who have some background in operations and modeling.

Faculty members, as some students do, too, I expect, take the time to decide what outfit to wear on the "first day of school." One of my Marketing colleagues always wears a red tie and recommends something bright and cheery and for those of you who follow Alex Pentland's work (we have hosted him at the Isenberg School through our great UMass Amherst INFORMS Speaker Series), you will know that first impressions - which may be only seconds or minutes long - do matter! Pentland is from MIT and is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, a well-deserved honor.

Today, after having breakfast, I checked my email messages and there was good news, and a perfect start to this special day.

Our paper, which I have blogged about, A Generalized Nash Equilibrium network model for post-disaster relief, and which was co-authored with one of my former undergraduate students, Emilio Alvarez Flores, who received a degree from the Isenberg School in May 2016, and a colleague from economics, Professor Ceren Soylu,  is the lead article in the November issue of Transportation Research E. I received a nice preprint today before my class.

Having such news before your first class is clearly energizing plus synergistic.

During class I asked the students to share a fun fact about themselves having to do with Logistics and Transportation, and these were so interesting and so much fun - from stories about commuting close to two hours each way for their summer internships, to riding mopeds as a mean of transport in Thailand and without a helmet, to driving over 3,000 miles this summer to help a family member move, to flight delays and travails, to working on yachts in Boston, and also fear of flying. It should be a very interesting semester.  One student mentioned that her favorite mode of transport was Uber!
Coincidentally, last night I read the latest issue of The Economist and guess what was the cover story?! It will be fascinating to see what happens with autonomous vehicles, in general, and the impact on Uber, which has no hard assets, for example, one of the issues explored in this issue.

And then, during office hours - I was not sure whether anyone would show up since I do not assign homework on the very first day - a student who was also in my Humanitarian Logistics and Healthcare class stopped by and we brainstormed for 90 minutes (it felt like 10 minutes) about possible topics for her honors thesis. (Emilio's honors thesis I co-supervised last year.) But, mostly, we just talked about healthcare and hospitals and improving the quality of care and our personal experiences.

Catching up with colleagues at the Isenberg School was also a lot of fun today and  hearing about how they spent their summers.

Then it was time for our weekly NSF project teleconference on our EAGER grant (which are high risk but potentially high return projects). Along with Associate Dean of the College of Engineering at UMass Amherst, Dr. Tilman Wolf, I am working with colleagues from the University of Kentucky, who are computer scientists: Dr. Ken Calvert and Dr. Jim Griffioen. Together we had also had, with NCState and RENCI, a multiyear NSF Future Internet Architecture (FIA) grant and we worked on ChoiceNet. Our work is getting a lot of citations which is gratifying.

And, as part of the discussion, Ken mentioned that he had listened to a very interesting podcast in the NPR Freakonomics radio series: http://www.npr.org/podcasts/452538045/freakonomics-radio, the July 213, 2016 edition, entitled: Is the Internet Being Ruined? He mentioned that Dr. David Clark of MIT was interviewed in this segment, so I had to listen. David Clark is one of the brains behind the Internet and an absolutely delightful individual. Two years ago, on September 20, 2014, I had the pleasure, with my wonderful colleagues: Professor Mila Sherman of Finance, Professor Senay Solak of my department, and Professor Wayne Burleson of Electrical and Computer Engineering, of organizing a workshop at the Sloan School at MIT on Cybersecurity Risk Analysis for Enterprise Security (a mouthful). This was made possible through a grant that we received from the Advanced Cyber Security Center in eastern Massachusetts and also with support from Mila's dissertation advisor at MIT, the renowned Dr. Andrew Lo, who also gave a keynote speech.  Dr. David Clark, a visionary and thought leader, was also a keynote speaker and I still remember the research assignment that he had given me. You can see photos in my post on the link above.

I hope that your first day of the new academic year was enjoyable and rewarding!

Transformative Lectures by a Disaster Researcher - Challenges in the Arctic and Beyond

How often do students get to hear from a disaster researcher who has written 20 books, some of which are science-based Nordic disaster novels, with one of his books being commissioned now for a TV series?!

Yesterday, we had the pleasure of hosting Mr. Rasmus Dahlberg, who is Fellow at the Center for Disaster Research at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark. Mr. Dahlberg presented two talks yesterday (but, then again, he is a marathoner and is running the DC marathon next Sunday). He was coming to the Isenberg School from the University of Colorado Boulder where he had been conducting research for a month.

His first presentation, which was given in my 8:30AM Humanitarian Logistics and Healthcare class (after he had had a 7:30AM  interview with a Danish radio station on Tom Clancy, a writer that Dahlberg is an expert on),  was titled: "Offshore is Onshore" Building a Scalable Search and Rescue (SAR) Infrastructure in the Arctic.

This presentation of Dahlberg can be downloaded here.

Dahlberg also works with the Danish Emergency Management Association as well as with the Danish Red Cross so he has an immense amount of practical experience, which, coupled with his research, provides him with amazing narratives to share with audiences.

His first presentation focused on how to handle uncertainty and unpredictability in emergency management. He began with a possible crisis of a cruise ship with thousands of passengers sinking between Greenland and Iceland. He has been advising Greenland and Iceland on emergency management. He says such potential disasters keep him awake at night. He mentioned the Costa Concordia which sank in the Mediterranean in January 2012. When it comes to Arctic regions, the survivability of those in such a cruise ship disaster would be questionable. Fishermen know, for example, that, without protective gear, if they fall into such waters, they die in 2 minutes. He spoke of covered lifeboats (and also made references to the Titanic) as well as protective gear but said that what would really work, but which is not popular, would be to have two cruise ships transiting together in proximity. If passengers needed help on one, there should be sufficient capacity on the other to provide rescue and assistance.

He also spoke about Iceland, which has been the site of erupting volcanoes and earthquakes. Now the former US military base is being used as a potential triage site and not just a hangar in which to store blankets. He is working also on a big Nordic project to mitigate the affects of climate change, which will last until 2020. The Iceland Coast Guard has only 3 helicopters and 3 ships and, of course, Greenland, is even more short of transport equipment. He mentioned one big helicopter which he has flown in, in which 96 mushing dogs were transported once for a dog sled race in the middle of Greenland. What an image.

We got to hear stories of polar bears (they love Nutella)  and how Iceland is building up capacity for search and rescue missions in the region. It shocked us when he said that Iceland alone could handle no more than 7 hypothermia patients at a time. Greenland can handle no more than 8 trauma victims at a time!  All the search and rescue folks in Iceland are volunteers and they were the first country to respond to Haiti post the 2010 earthquake disaster. They are incredible and digging out folks, often using dogs for assistance, in avalanches, and clearly can even respond to earthquakes in warm climates! He noted that many hospitals in Scandinavia are specializing which can create capacity issues in disasters.

He told us that "safety science is driven by events" and  we all know of some major disasters that spurred new policies and actions afterwards. He emphasized Nassin Taleb's work and black swans and not just dealing with risk in terms of probabilities and impacts but also thinking of possibilities and worst case scenarios - just like a cruise ship with 4,000 passengers sinking in the Arctic.

He envisions a Search and Rescue Academy in which practitioners and researchers can be working together, side by side. I loved this.

He also noted that what is needed in disaster relief and emergency management - and disasters are those events that can't be managed by existing resources - is a coordinator of coordinators. This also very much resonated with me.


We took a group photo with the Professor for a Day plaque that was presented to Dahlberg.

Then Dahlberg and I went out for coffee and delicious scones at a downtown Amherst cafe and it was time for lunch at the University Club, which I hosted. It was extra special to have both undergraduates and graduate students make time (it was a Tuesday and not our usual seminar day of Friday) to attend.

At 2PM it was time for Dahlberg to present in our great UMass Amherst INFORMS Speaker Series. His presentation was: Bridging the Gap: Preparing for Long-Term Infrastructure Disruptions and it can be downloaded here.

 In this presentation, Dahlberg focused on what is critical infrastructure and emphasized multidisciplinary perspectives. He had a lot of great quotes from anthropologists including that infrastructure is "matter that enables movement of other matter." This brought out vividly that infrastructure may be invisible until it fails - we lose power, a bridge collapses, water is undrinkable, etc.

In doing his research on the importance of bridges and especially the Oresund bridge that he studied deeply, he spent days riding the train on the bridge which connects Malmo, Sweden with Copenhagen, Denmark,  interviewing people as to what they would think if the bridge was inoperable, say, for one day, one month, or a more extended period of time.  The knowledge workers could work at home for a period. The sewer truck driver told him that "he does not take his work home." To have a 20 minute commute each way change to a two and a half hour commute because with a bridge closure one would have to make use of multiple modes of transport, including a ferry, over greater distances, would clearly have an impact. However, this bridge was not considered a European Critical Infrastructure and, in fact, nothing in western Europe was! A small airport in Bulgaria, nevertheless, was.

I had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Dahlberg at the Dynamics of Disasters conference, which I coorganized last summer with Professors Panos M. Pardalos and Ilias Kotsireas in Kalamata, Greece. He was the first speaker and made such a powerful impression that when he said he wanted to visit me I knew that having him come and speak would be a transformative educational experience. And I am thrilled that his work on the topic that he spoke on is now a finalized chapter for the book that Kotsireas, Pardalos, and I  are co-editing on the conference.