Thrilled to be Appointed Chair of the Magazine Editorial Advisory Board (MEAB) of INFORMS

Professional magazines inform, educate, and entertain and help one to network and to keep on top of developments in one's field. From professional magazines, one can learn about events and conferences, and honors that members have received as well as professional appointments. 

I was thrilled to be approved by the INFORMS Executive Committee to Chair the Magazine Editorial Advisory Board (MEAB). The Executive Committee was gracious to delay the start of my appointment to January 1, 2023 because of Russia's major invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022. Thanks to Cole Smith, the past INFORMS VP of Publications, for shepherding the motion for this! My readers know that my first language is Ukrainian and I serve as a Co-Chair of the Board of Directors of the Kyiv School of Economics (in addition to my chaired professorship appointment at the Isenberg School of Management).

I have very big shoes to fill - Professor James Cochran of the University of Alabama is my predecessor and served as Chair of the MEAB for many years!

Today, I had the pleasure of meeting with Kara Tucker, who is the Editor of the INFORMS magazines: ORMS Today and the Analytics Magazine, as well as Analytics eNews. She also oversees the student membership magazine ORMS Tomorrow. Kara had met with Jim Cochran, Matt Walls, who is the Director of Publications at INFORMS, and me at the Indianapolis INFORMS Annual Meeting, which took place in October 2022 to provide some guidance. We had a terrific brainstorming session.

Below, I display a photo of the two most recent issues of ORMS Today, which are cover to cover reads! I was deeply honored to have written the cover article on Ukraine for the October 2022 issue.

As Chair of MEAB, I will also have voting privileges as a Member of the INFORMS Publication Committee, whose VP is Chris Tang.

Information on ORMS Today, including issues, can be found here.

Information on Analytics Magazine is available here.

ORMS Tomorrow info can be found here.

I think that you might enjoy the essay, "Great Reasons to Write for INFORMS Magazines," by Jim Cochran in ORMS Today!

Below is a list of those who are serving on the MEAB with the names in yellow having their terms now  ending. The composition of the MEAB is very impressive with international representatives from academia and industry. Thanks to all for their service! I am in the process of  filling the 3 slots and am delighted that Trilce Encarnacion of the University of Missouri St. Louis will be filling the slot vacated by Shannon Harris. Also, Jun Zhuang of the University of Buffalo will fill in the slot vacated by Andy Hall. Looking forward to an exciting time supporting the great INFORMS magazines.

Laura Kornish (University of Colorado-Boulder) – marketing science

Andy Hall (Marymount University) – military, security, and analytics 

Shannon Harris (Virginia Commonwealth University) – MIF, WORMS, and analytics 

Catherine Cleophas (University of Kiel) – transportation and logistics 

Carlos Paternina-Arboleda (San Diego University) – international activities

Gokce Esenduran (Purdue University) – manufacturing and service operations management 

Yao-Hsuan Chen (MSD Research Laboratories) – health applications 

Akshay Gupte (University of Edinburgh) – computing and optimization 

Emily McIntosh (Ernst & Young) – artificial intelligence and machine learning 

James Cochran (University of Alabama) – emeritus member.

Celebrating My 23rd PhD Student - Dr. Mojtaba Salarpour

Now is the time of the year in academia, when we mark major milestones, such as the completion of degrees by our students. Yesterday, was a very special day, during which we had the Isenberg School PhD robing ceremony of the class of 2022.

It was wonderful to take part in the ceremony and to speak about my 23rd PhD student, now - Dr. Mojtaba Salarpour! It was the first such in-person ceremony in 3 years because of the pandemic.

The program is below and includes the names of the 6 students from the Isenberg School that received the PhD this past year and the names of their dissertations and their PhD advisors. Impressively, 3 of the 6 are from my Operations and Information Management Department. Mojtaba's concentration in our PhD program was Management Science.

It was nice to see my Department Chair, Professor Senay Solak, at the ceremony and also my 24th PhD student - Dana Hassani.

Mojtaba is from Iran and, while at UMass Amherst, he taught several courses, and was President of the UMass Amherst INFORMS Student Chapter for 2 years, including 1 1/2 years during the pandemic. He was instrumental in organizing several very interesting virtual panels - one of which was with healthcare researchers from Mass General Hospital and another one was on a career panel. Plus, we had the honor of hosting Dr. Mauricio Resende, Principal Research Scientist of Amazon, in the Chapter's Speaker Series that I help the chapter to organize. Under his tenure as President, the Chapter was recognized with the Magna Cum Laude Award from INFORMS!

Mojtaba's PhD dissertation, "Essays on Supply Chain Economic Networks for Disaster Management Inspired by the Covid-19 Pandemic," constructed several highly relevant game theory models with applications, literally, "drawn from the news." His research, while at UMass Amherst, yielded 4 published papers and 1 published book chapter. I am delighted that he will be an Assistant Professor (tenure-track) at Texas A&M Commerce, starting this Fall. Below, are first pages of his papers.

As I said in my speech about Mojtaba at the ceremony, Mojtaba Salarpour is "standing on the shoulders of giants," since my academic genealogy, by way of my PhD advisor at Brown University, Professor Stella Dafermos, goes back to Maxwell, Newton, and Galileo - so- "no pressure!"

After the ceremony, it was great to enjoy the delicious food provided by UMass Amherst and to see many colleagues, students, and friends!

Congratulations to all the students, Class of 2022, now alums of their alma mater! With best wishes to you on your new journeys with a special congratulations to Dr. Mojtaba Salarpour! I remember fondly the delicious pistachios he brought for me from Iran when he arrived and after he landed in Boston Logan.

Celebrating my 22nd PhD Student - Dr. Deniz Besik

The Covid-19 pandemic has called for new types of celebrations of the successes of our students, including virtual graduation ceremonies at colleges and universities.

Last Friday, UMass Amherst had  an exceptional celebration via a video tribute that included many luminaries from Massachusetts from politicians, to an astronaut and UMass Amherst alumna, as well as celebrities.

Last Friday, the Isenberg School of Management at UMass Amherst also hosted a virtual celebration via Zoom for our PhD graduates, and, among the 9 receiving their PhDs, was Deniz Besik.

Dr. Deniz Besik was my 22nd PhD student and her concentration at the Isenberg School was Management Science. I have chaired the doctoral committees of 12 females and 10 males.

Dr. George Milne, our PhD Director at the Isenberg School, organized the event, with assistance from Mike Korza.  Deniz's family was able to Zoom in from Turkey.

It was such a pleasure to write about Dr. Besik, who came to our program from Turkey, having worked also in Germany. My tribute to her is below. She will be joining the faculty of the Robins School of Business at the University of Richmond in Virginia, in the Fall.

The full brochure with information on all of our PhD graduates can be accessed from the Isenberg website here.

The Sunday before, Deniz and I put on our robes and, with help from friends, had the photos below taken, while practicing physical/social distancing.

Deniz had 6 papers published while a PhD student, which is a remarkable accomplishment, in such journals as the European Journal of Operational Research, the Journal of Global Optimization, and Socio-Economic Planning Sciences. Her multidisciplinary research on perishable food supply chains, with a focus on quality, as well as economic policy instruments such as tariffs and quotas, yielded fundamental tools as well as insights and helped to identify who wins and who loses in the ongoing trade wars, made even more relevant now with the Covid-19 pandemic.

Hard to believe that Dr. Besik defended her dissertation on March 6, 2020, just a few days before the World Health Organization declared the Covid-19 pandemic and the world changed.

Deniz excelled in the three dimensions of research, teaching, and service, all very relevant to her future success in academia. Deniz served as the President of the UMass Amherst INFORMS Student Chapter and was a very engaged and loyal member. The chapter's webmaster, Haris Sipetas, posted a tribute to her, and to her two fellow PhD graduates in Engineering: Rodrigo Mercado and Ekin Koker.

Congratulations to Dr. Deniz Besik! We look forward to celebrating your PhD graduation face to face before too long. Wishing all the 2020 degree recipients all the very best! Your grit and resilience will get you through these challenging times.

Bravo to Deniz Besik on Her Successful PhD Defense

Yesterday, was a very special day. Deniz Besik, who is my 22nd PhD student, successfully defended her doctoral dissertation at the Isenberg School of Management. The title of her dissertation is: "Essays on Competitive Perishable Food Supply Chain Networks: From the Impacts of Tariffs and Quotas to Integration of Quality." I had the pleasure of chairing her dissertation committee, which consisted of Professors Ana Muriel and Hari Balasubramanian of the College of Engineering at UMass Amherst and Professor Priyank Arora of my department at the Isenberg School.

Although the defense took place at 3:30PM on a Friday afternoon, the room was packed with Deniz's friends and colleagues and guests who had come to support her. Some had traveled from Boston and NYC to come to support her. Dr. Pritha Dutta, who was my 21st PhD student, and is now a Professor at Pace University, came from NYC.

Deniz in 4 and a half years as a doctoral student published 6 co-authored papers, which is an incredible accomplishment. Below are images of first pages of some of the articles.

Deniz was recognized for her research with the 2019 Outstanding Doctoral Student Researcher Award from the Isenberg School and took part in the INFORMS, POMS, and DSI doctoral colloquia. And, we recently heard that she was elected into the Phi Kappa Phi Honor Society. The ceremony will take place in early April and the UMass Amherst graduation in early May (assuming such events will be able to proceed, given the coronavirus).

The audience had great questions, given the timeliness of the dissertation as well as the clarity with which Deniz presented the results in her dissertation. Below is a photo of now Dr. Deniz Besik with her committee members after her defense.

And we managed to take a photo of some of the folks in the audience who stayed until after 5PM to congratulate her.

She was presented with flowers and I also gave her a gift.

Then it was time for a celebratory dinner, which took place at Judie's in downtown Amherst.

Followed by a very special dessert with candle.

I might add that Deniz during her doctoral studies also taught classes and she even served as the President of the UMass Amherst INFORMS Student Chapter. She has accepted a tenure track Assistant Professorship at the Robins School of Business at the University of Richmond in beautiful Virginia. The rewards of being a faculty member are many, but one of the best is seeing a very deserving and hard-working student achieve her dreams. We all wish Dr. Deniz Besik much continuing professional and personal success as she begins a new chapter as an Assistant Professor!

Supernetwork Center Associates Shine at INFORMS Conference in Seattle

In my previous blogpost, I wrote about the fascinating experiences I had in delivering the opening keynote at the recent Operations Research Conference in Mexico City. However, since I am also teaching this semester, I could not attend the INFORMS Conference in Seattle, because it would not be right to miss classes over a two week period. Moreover, I believed it important to support the Mexican OR Society. This was one of only two Annual INFORMS conferences that I have not been at in over two decades. I appreciate all the messages that I have been receiving that I was missed - thank you very much!

However, our research was presented at INFORMS Seattle and also very special recognitions received by several Supernetwork Center Associates.

In particular, three of my joint papers were presented:

The above talks can be downloaded from the Supernetwork Center site at the Isenberg School of Management and are based on papers recently published in the journals: Transportation Research E, International Journal of Production Economics, and the European Journal of Operational Research. Many thanks to the organizers of the sessions that the above first and third presentations appeared in! Below are photos of the two presenters of those talks.

Usually, at every INFORMS Conference, I host a dinner for Supernetwork Center Associates, many of which are my present or former doctoral students, who are now very successful professionally. Although this year I could not, it was wonderful to receive the photo below.

In the above photo (l-r) are: the females in the front row: Professor Min Yu of the University of Portland, Professor Ke Ke of Central Washington University, Professor Pritha Dutta of Pace University, my PhD student Deniz Besik, and Professor Sara Saberi of WPI. And, in the back row (l-r) are the males: my PhD student Mojtaba Salarpour, Professor Jose Cruz of UConn, and Professor Patrick Qiang of Penn State. Professor Shivani Shukla of the University of San Francisco presented on our cybersecurity research but is not in the photo. Professor Dmytro Matsypura of the University of Sydney also did not make it to the photo (but more on his award follows).

I was delighted to hear that Dr. Matsypura (who was my PhD student at Isenberg) received the INFORMS ENRE (Energy, Natural Resources and the Environment) Best Publication Award in Environment and Sustainability at the conference for his paper on wildfire fuel management, co-authored with Professor Oleg Prokopyev of the University of Pittsburgh  and with Matsypura's student, Aizat Zahar, and published in EJOR, . The paper can be accessed here.  Below is the photo of the awardees, forwarded to me by Professor Matsypura.

Also, I was thrilled that my doctoral student, Deniz Besik, received the Bayer - Women in OR Scholarship and was recognized at the Analytics Society Business meeting at INFORMS Seattle. I had nominated Deniz for this award. Deniz, amazingly, already has 6 published journal articles and will be received her PhD in May 2020. She also took part in this year's Doctoral Student Colloquium immediately before the INFORMS Conference.

Thanks to Dr. Polly Mitchell-Guthrie for her tweet with the image below.

And, Professor Jose Cruz of UConn organized a session on Sustainable and Responsible Supply Chain Management in which multiple Supernetwork Associates spoke.

I was Chair of the 2019 INFORMS Volunteer Service Award Committee, having served on this committee also the two previous years (and was honored to also be a recipient of this award in 2016). Congratulations to Dr. Scott Nestler and Dr. Stefan Karisch for receiving this award this year. Dr. Sadan Kulturel-Konak, a member of this year's committee, presented this award in Seattle in my place.

It was also very gratifying that there were two additional recipients of major awards at INFORMS in Seattle, both of whom I had written letters for.

Plus, even before I flew to Mexico, as the Faculty Advisor to the UMass Amherst INFORMS Student Chapter, I supported the students who practiced their talks in our UMass Amherst INFORMS Tune-Up!

Many thanks to all the companies, universities, publishers, and societies for personal invitations to attend even brunches and meetings at INFORMS Seattle! These were all very much appreciated.

And, in closing, congratulations to all the award recipients and thanks to all the volunteers that help to make INFORMS such a fabulous professional society!

You can find many photos, courtesy of INFORMS, posted on its Flickr page.

The EURO 2019 Conference in Dublin Brings Operations Researchers Together From Around the Globe

The fabulous EURO 2019 conference, which took place June 23-26 at UCD in Dublin, Ireland is now over but the impact of the scientific exchanges, the renewal of friendships and new ones made, along with wonderful memories, will sustain many for a long time to come.

It was a conference that included tutorials, keynote talks, numerous fascinating and very timely panels, as well as scientific paper presentations on Operations Research. The organizers and organizing committee are congratulated on the success of the conference. Special thanks to Professors Sean McGarraghy and Luis Eduardo Neves Gouveia, the conference chairs, for even sending me a personal thank you this morning for my tutorial at the conference!

From the very beginning of our arrival in Dublin, there were numerous surprises - upon our arrival, we saw Melissa Moore, the Executive Director of INFORMS, and, soon thereafter, Mary Magrogan of INFORMS. The organizers had put many of the invited speakers up at the lovely Radisson Blu hotel, in walking distance of the university. It was, hence, very special, to be seeing colleagues from many countries at breakfast, including IFORS President Professor Maria Grazia Speranza, or on the lovely grounds, including Professor Kash Barker, in the photo with me below!

One aspect of the conference that I very much enjoyed was seeing my former doctoral students, now professors, Dr. Sara Saberi of WPI in the USA and Dr. Dmytro Matsypura of the University of Sydney in Australia, along with my long-time collaborator, Professor Patrizia Daniele of the University of Catania in Italy, who was also a member of the organizing committee.

I had a packed schedule. Monday afternoon of the conference, I was a panelist on the Women in OR panel, which had a terrific audience and discussions. Below I am standing with Professors Christina Phillips and Paula Carroll next to the lovely flowers.

 

This EURO conference was especially thrilling since Professor Martine Labbe, in the photo above next to me, who was also on the Women in OR panel, was named the first female recipient of the EURO Gold Medal award! We are standing next to Professors Maria Paola Scaparra and Annunziata Esposito Amideo.

And, we even had a male on this panel - Professor Daniele Vigo! Many thanks to the audience, including quite a few males, for their insights and suggestions as to how we can build a stronger community of nurturing females (as well as other less represented groups) in Operations Research and in science, in general! I do believe that we have started to strengthen our community in this regard and I also especially recognized WORMS - Women in Operations Research and the Management Science, a forum of INFORMS.

Earlier on Monday, we had an editorial board meeting of the Wiley journal, International Transactions in Operational Research, expertly edited by Professor Celso Ribeiro of Brazil. A photo of those in attendance is below (some had talks to give at the same time, and they were missed, including Dr. Mauricio Resende).

Also, among the award recipients at EURO was Dr. Paolo Toth and he is the rightmost figure in the photo above. It was delightful to see so many colleagues from multiple continents. I wish there had been more time to chat with everyone, including Professor Laura Albert of the University of Wisconsin Madison! I very much appreciated the lovely flowers and thoughtfulness of the organizers with even a gift presented to me after my tutorial on Tuesday morning, from 8:30-10AM.

Due to many requests, my tutorial slides can be downloaded from here. Special thanks to Professor Matthias Ehrgott, a member of the EURO organizing committee, for his wonderful introduction of me at my tutorial. I have known Professor Ehrgott for many years and have delightful memories of dining with him not only in the UK but even in New Zealand.

Many thanks to all those who came to my tutorial, including Professors Roman Slowinski and Roman Snajder! My father's name was also Roman.

Also, on Tuesday, I heard that several outstanding colleagues, several of whom were at EURO Dublin, including Dr. Stephan Onggo, had received large grants from EPSCR! It was such a happy day! Below I am standing with Dr. Onggo, whom I had the pleasure of personally congratulating. There will be great continuing research done on disaster relief and healthcare!

It was terrific to see our most recent Dynamics of Disaster book on display at the Springer booth at the conference. Below I am standing with Springer Senior Editor Christian Rauscher.

And, I love the element of surprise and serendipity that one often experiences at an international conference. In walking outside after my tutorial I saw a colleague from UMass Amherst, Professor Maciej Ciesielski of the College of Engineering, who wanted to attend my tutorial but took the bus to DCU rather than UCD and missed it!.

Tuesday night was the conference gala banquet at the Aviva rugby stadium, which was a very interesting experience at which I even got to see Professor Ann Campbell and her family who traveled all the way from Iowa! And it was wonderful to also see a collaborator of Ann's, Professor Jan Ehmke, who had been my host at an OR conference in Berlin two Septembers ago!

 On Wednesday morning (at 8:30AM), I spoke at the Making an Impact panel, which was part of a stream of sessions.  I had been invited just the week before by Dr. Joachim Gromicho because another panelist had a medical emergency. Photos of the panelists and of some audience members  are below. I was very impressed by the energy, enthusiasm, and wisdom of all at this event.

And, on Wednesday afternoon, it was time for a session on supply chains that I had organized. Dr. Saberi spoke on her latest work on sustainable supply chains and freight and I delivered a paper just accepted for publication in the Journal of Global Optimization on tariffs and world trade, co-authored with Professor Ladimer S. Nagurney, and my Isenberg School of Management doctoral student Deniz Besik. We had an audience of researchers from the US, Italy, Morocco, the Netherlands, and France at our session!

And, would you believe, on our last morning in Dublin, before I spoke at IBM, I met at breakfast Dr. Sarah Marie Jordaan, a Professor at Johns Hopkins, whose brother is a colleague at UMass Amherst. She had even recently hosted one of our doctoral students there, who will soon be a Professor at Carnegie Mellon University, Dr. Destenie Nock. It is truly a fabulous Operations Research world!

Then, on Thursday morning, I was off to give a talk at IBM Dublin, and then onwards to additional conferences, with a weekend in beautiful London.

Many thanks to Dr. Rahul Nair and to Dr. Sergiy Zhuk of IBM for their outstanding hospitality and great discussions of their amazing research!

And, at the Dublin airport, who was at a neighboring gate - my collaborator, Professor Patrizia Daniele, heading back home to Catania, Italy!

My next conference is in Greece - the 4th International Conference on Dynamics of Disasters, which I co-organized (again) with Professors Pardalos and Kotsireas. It will be hot there!