Dr. Stavros Siokos to Receive Isenberg School's Leader of Impact Award in Boston

When I heard the news, I was thrilled! My former PhD student, Dr. Stavros Siokos, who is the Co-Founder of Astarte Capital Partners, will be recognized next week at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts with the Leader of Impact Award from the Isenberg School of Management. Lorraine Martinelle wrote this lovely article on Stavros's outstanding contributions: https://www.isenberg.umass.edu/news/leader-impact-stavros-siokos-98phd-do-well-doing-good and I was honored to also be interviewed.

The collage below was prepared as a tribute to Stavros over the years. I am grateful for the memories of times in Amherst, London, Athens, NYC, and, soon, in Boston.

Stavros has been so generous with his time, wisdom, and many kindnesses, and his impactful work for our beautiful planet.

Congratulations, Dr. Stavros Siokos, and thank you for your many wonderful contributions and investments for planet earth and its people, both now and, in the future.

The Mathematics for the Real World Conference in Odense - Kyiv was Outstanding and Inspiring

I am back from a whirlwind trip. Last week, I took part in my 4th conference of this summer and it was extra special - the Mathematics for the Real World Conference in Odense and Kyiv organized by the International Centre for Mathematics (ICMU) in Ukraine (the host in Kyiv) and the Center for Quantum Mathematics at the University of Southern Denmark (the host in Odense). I flew from Boston Logan to Copenhagen and then took a shuttle to Odense (and also back).

The event had outstanding speakers and even students from Ukraine as participants, now studying at universities in other countries. 

Last Wednesday was what I call a "perfect day" at the conference. It began with the Fields Medalist Maryna Viazovska delivering the plenary talk on "Formal and Informal Mathematics of Sphere Packing," followed by my plenary on "Networks, Supply Chains, and Variational Inequalities," with terrific Q&A. Additional great talks were by Mykola Maksymenko on "Quantum Computations in Practice" and Oleksii Kuchaiev on "Artifical Intelligence in Practice." The panel discussion on Maths-Driven Innovations with Anna Lysyanskaya, Maryna Viazovska, Jørgen Ellegaard Andersen, and me in Odense, and Jean-Pierre Bourguignon, streaming in, plus colleagues in Kyiv taking part, with Khrystyna Gnatenko moderating and with an introduction by Maria Vlasenko was so exciting that it lasted past 6PM.

I am grateful to the organizers: Khrystyna Gnatenko, Alexander Marynych, Volodymyr Minin, and Anna Lysyanskaya, and to Jørgen Ellegaard Andersen, and to Oleksandra Golovkova plus Maria Vlasenko and Maryna Viazovska for their hard work on making this unique conference a big success. Congratulations also to the International Centre for Mathematics in Ukraine - ICMU, which was founded only in 2022, a very tough year for Ukraine and the world, and to the Centre for Quantum Mathematics (QM) on their accomplishments.

And a big shoutout to all the wonderful students from Ukraine who joined us  plus an appreciation to Li Quan, who, at the lunch on Wednesday, when I mentioned chocolate, produced some that he had recently bought in Munich and shared it with all of us at our table. I am sure that new collaborations will come out of this great event.

Information on the conference can be found on the ICMU website: https://icmu.ua/en/events/applied-maths-2026

Those of you who have been following the news, would know about the multiday continuing bombing of Kyiv by Russia. The last two days of the conference our colleagues in Kyiv spent in a bomb shelter but they insisted that the conference continue. Their fortitude, dedication, and courage inspire me.

Thank you, also, to UMass Amherst for this news release: https://www.umass.edu/news/article/anna-nagurney-delivers-keynote-joint-odense-kyiv-conference-mathematics-real-world

I have posted my presentation on the Supernetwork Center website: https://supernet.isenberg.umass.edu/visuals/ICMULecture-Nagurney-2026%201.pdf

Thanks to all my students (present and past) and to all of my co-authors!

The IFORS Conference in Vienna, Austria Was Amazing

It is hard to believe that, this summer, I spent 3 continuous weeks in Europe, and spoke at 3 conferences. I already blogged about giving a keynote at the Game Theory Conference in Naples, Italy and about the EURO Conference in Linz, Austria. I also wrote about the IFORS initiative of GLOW on this blog and the various associated events at the conference in Vienna.

The IFORS Vienna Conference attracted over 2,200 delegates from 70 countries! This is truly amazing and so impressive.

The first full day was filled with wonderful highlights including the brilliant plenary by former INFORMS President Radhika Kulkarni to a standing room only audience and with an overflow room needed. Her topic of "Smarter Decisions with AI and OR Collaboration: Opportunities and Challenges," led to many continuing discussions throughout the day.

It was great to see the Secretary of IFORS, Gavin Blackett, and Springer Nature Editors, including Christian Rauscher. I was thrilled to see my book, "Labor and Supply Chain Networks," on display and was touched that Erny Rahayu Wijayanti wanted to be photographed with me.

And, of course, every IFORS Conference needs an International Transactions in Operational Research (ITOR) Editorial Board meeting led by its great Editor-in-Chief Celso Ribeiro.

I  am grateful for the opportunity to have presented in the invited IFORS Vienna session: Moments in the History of OR & IFORS organized by Gerhard-Wilhelm Weber with the outstanding M. Grazia Speranza as session chair. I very much enjoyed doing the research behind my presentation on "Highlighting Some Historical Women in OR," with focus on Ailsa Land, Alison Harcourt, Marguerite Frank, Stella Dafermos, and Judith Liebman and highlighting what more can be done, how far we have come, and the great initiative of GLOW - Global Leadership of Women in Operational Research. It is not often that one gives a talk and sees in the audience multiple people that one has mentioned in it, in addition to Gerhard-Wilhelm Weber and M. Grazia Speranza! Thanks to all the speakers in the session and to Janny Leung, Paula Carroll, and Annunziata Esposito Amideo for coming and for their leadership! It was extra special to also have Dmytro Matsypura, my former Isenberg School of Management, UMass Amherst PhD student, and very successful professor at the University of Sydney,  come to our session and all the way from Australia! And Janny Leung carried, amazingly, many GLOW backpacks in neon colors, which I will joyously carry.

It was fabulous to see Mary Magrogan of INFORMS, who has worked there for 45 years, being recognized as a newly elected IFORS Fellow and to have the late Judith Liebman be inducted into the IFORS Hall of Fame, with family members present.

Congratulations and Thanks to Professor M. Grazia Speranza on the Publication of Her Book, "Glowing Women: Women in Operations Research!"

This week I am in Vienna, Austria, taking part in my third conference in Europe, in as many weeks.

The conference taking place now in Vienna is the IFORS Conference, which takes place every three years.

The IFORS Conference is extra special because of the inauguration of the initiative known as GLOW.

Plus, congratulations and thanks to Professor M. Grazia Speranza are well-deserved on the publication of the English (expanded) version of her book, "GLOWING WOMEN: WOMEN IN OPERATIONS RESEARCH," which was published just in time for the IFORS Vienna Conference and its extraordinary GLOW - Global Leadership of Women in Operational Research events. Grazia is a former President of IFORS - The International Federation of Operational Research Societies, an INFORMS Fellow, and a recipient of the EURO Gold Medal, The book recognizes and celebrates the journeys of women from multiple countries, interwoven with Grazia's experiences as a scholar, leader, mother, and wife, and offers thoughtful wisdom and guidance. Through beautifully rendered interviews with (in alphabetical order): Shoshana (Shoshi) Anily, Cynthia Barnhart, Paula Carroll, Marielle Christiansen, Rosiane de Freitas-Rodrigues, Elise Del Rosario, Ola Jabali, Kathy Kotiadis, Martine Labbé, Janny Leung, Anna Nagurney (I am so honored to have been included), Dolores Romero Morales, Sunity Shrestha, Rina Schneur, and Karen Smilowitz, the book provides us with inspiration and a vision for a more inclusive future. The book was published by Armando Curcio Editore. 

More information can be found on the publisher's website: https://lnkd.in/dPviXqUn

Below are photos, the first of which was taken at the ITOR Editorial Board Meeting, run by its outstanding Editor-in-Chief, Professor Celso Ribeiro.

Super Excited to be Presenting at International Conferences this Summer

Conferences are outstanding venues at which to exchange latest research results and ideas, to do networking, and to reconnect with colleagues from around the globe. And, when the conferences are located in beautiful locations, the experiences become even more special and worthwhile.

This summer will be a very busy one. I will soon be presenting 4 talks at 3 different conferences in 2 different countries.

My first talk is the opening keynote talk at the Game Theory Sing21 Conference in Naples, Italy. I am very grateful to Professor Annamaria Barbagallo for the invitation. The title of my keynote is: "Game Theory, Supply Chains, Labor, and Tariffs: Insights from Variational Inequalities."

The program for the conference is now available online: https://sites.google.com/view/sing-21/programme_1/scientific-programme

I will then travel to Linz, Austria to speak at the EUROPT Conference: https://www.jku.at/en/institute-of-business-analytics-and-technology-transformation/conference-europt-2026/ At that conference, I will present a paper that was co-authored with my Isenberg School PhD student, Samira Samadi, which was recently published in the Journal of the Operational Research Society (JORS). The paper, entitled, "Ad Valorem Tariffs in Global Supply Chain Networks and Impacts on Labor," can be accessed from the journal website: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01605682.2025.2592758

The IFORS Conferences, which take place only every three years are some of my favorites! IFORS is the umbrella organization for national Operations Research Societies, including INFORMS. And, since the 2026 conference will take place in Vienna, it is one not to be missed. I love Austria and had a Fulbright at SOWI in Innsbruck, Austria. My family and I very much enjoyed living in Austria.

It will be an easy journey from Linz to Vienna.

Working on the two presentations for IFORS was very enjoyable. I would like to take the opportunity to thank Professor Gerhard-Wilhelm Weber for inviting me to speak in the stream: Moments in the History (and Future) of OR. Preparing my presentation, "Highlighting Some Historical Women in OR," took me on a very nostalgic journey since I was blessed to have known some of the truly remarkable female OR pioneers. And my other presentation at this conference is on a paper co-authored with two females: Samira Samadi and Professor Deniz Besik (who was my former PhD student at the Isenberg School): "Fresh Produce Spatial Price Equilibrium on General Networks: Capturing Commodity Quality Deterioration Through Endogenous Transportation Time Delay Functions with Capacities," which was recently published in the European Journal of Operational Research:  https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0377221726003759. Of course, in the former presentation, I will highlight the new initiative of  IFORS: GLOW - Global Leadership of Women in Operational Research! 

More information on the IFORS conference can be found on its website: https://www.ifors2026.at/home/

Safe travels, everyone!

Honored to Have Reached Over 25,000 Citations on Google Scholar

I was my PhD Dissertation Advisor's  (Stella Dafermos's) first PhD student at Brown University. She was a trailblazer and left an incredible scholarly legacy although she passed away at the age of 49.

Somehow, with effort, luck, passion, and serendipity, I have managed to build a wonderful collaboration network with students (past and present) as well as researchers around the globe. For all my collaborators, I am deeply grateful.

And, as a female scholar, I think it is meaningful to have reached the milestone of over 25,000 citations to my work on Google Scholar. The full list of my publications, as well as my collaborators over the years,  can be found on my Google Scholar page: 

https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=ecFsBp0AAAAJ&hl=e

It is interesting that my two most highly cited publications are the first two books that I wrote, one with a former PhD student of mine, now Professor at SUNY Oswego, Dr. Ding Zhang. And, my most highly cited journal paper, published in Transportation Science, is a translation from German to English of the famous Braess (1968) paradox paper. That paper was co-authored with Professor Dietrich Braess and my former PhD student, now Professor Tina Wakolbinger of the Vienna University of Economics and Business. And, in 2002,  along with Professor Ding Zhang, and his wife (also a former PhD student of mine),  SUNY Oswego Professor June Dong, we published the paper, "A supply chain network equilibrium model," in Transportation Research E, which is my 4th most highly cited work.

Many thanks to all the researchers and scholars who cite our work!

Doing research (and having it make some impact) is the greatest reward but it is nice also to have the work acknowledged, read, and cited.

Thanks to Dr. Les Servi for Speaking in Our UMass Amherst INFORMS Speaker Series

On April 10, 2026, we had the honor and pleasure of having Dr. Les Servi speak in our UMass Amherst INFORMS Speaker Series. We were very excited to have Dr. Servi back at UMass Amherst. 

The title of his presentation was: “Identifying Critical Nodes in Mission Systems: An Operations Research Framework.” 

Dr. Les Servi is an Operations Research Scientist and former Chief Scientist for Cyber Operations Research at The MITRE Corporation. Earlier, he conducted research at MIT Lincoln Laboratory, Bell Laboratories, and GTE Laboratories (now Verizon), and spent a sabbatical year as a visiting scientist at Harvard University and MIT.  He has served as an Associate Editor for the journals: Operations Research, Management Science, and the INFORMS Journal on Computing. He is also  a MORS Fellow, an INFORMS Fellow, and served six years on the INFORMS Board of Directors. Dr. Servi is an INFORMS VP Chapters and Forums Board member.

Dr. Servi's book, "Mission Dependency Network Analysis," was published by Springer in 2026 and he kindly presented me with a copy. It was nice to see one of my papers with Patrick Qiang cited therein.

We had a great discussion after his presentation and at lunch. Many thanks to the INFORMS Student Chapter for doing such a nice job in publicizing his presentation - the announcement even made the UMass Amherst homepage with special thanks to the Chapter President Samira Samadi.

And, after the delicious lunch at the UMass Commonwealth Restaurant, Dr. Servi was off to Logan Airport to catch a flight to DC for the INFORMS Analytics Conference, where I joined him on Sunday!

I Thoroughly Enjoyed Speaking on Trade Wars and Game Theory at the Great INFORMS Analytics Conference

Conferences can be deeply engaging and energizing and the recent INFORMS Analytics Conference at the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center set new standards https://meetings.informs.org/wordpress/analytics/! Many thanks to all those who helped to make this conference a great success!

I love the serendipity of great conferences from the meeting of new colleagues to seeing friends that you did not even realize would be attending! 

There were over 500 attendees and about 60 one hour presentations. I was honored and delighted to be able speak on Trade Wars and Game Theory. Who Wins, Who Loses? The audience was terrific with many excellent, thoughtful questions. And, as promised, I have now posted the slide deck from my presentation: https://supernet.isenberg.umass.edu/visuals/Analytics-Nagurney-2026.pdf

I very much enjoyed many of the Edelman Award presentations of the finalists and the networking events. The food was also delicious and the venue was stunning! Engagement of academics with practitioners is critically important and, after I returned, I shared some of the many highlights with the students in my class at the Isenberg School of Management.

Looking Forward to Giving a Distinguished Engineering Lecture at Purdue University

I have been enjoying working on the presentation that I will be giving at Purdue University, after our mutual spring breaks next week.

I was actually scheduled to deliver a Distinguished Lecture in Engineering at Purdue in February, 2025 but my flights were cancelled because of snowstorms so we rescheduled for 2026 and in late March.

A few years back I was offered a faculty position at Purdue but I received a counteroffer from UMass Amherst, so I stayed at the Isenberg School of Management. It will be nice to be back at Purdue and to see its growth and changes.

My talk will cover a lot of territory on research I have done with wonderful colleagues and PhD students on agricultural supply chain networks, with a focus on policies and international trade as well as disruptions (and there have been and continue to be many) plus resilience.

And, after my presentation, there will be a panel, which will allow for additional discussions.

Travel and the exchange of ideas are truly wonderful aspects of being an academic. I am very grateful to all institutions and the faculty, students, and staff who are engaged in organizing seminar series!

Our Paper on Integrated Crop and Cargo War Risk Insurance with Application to Ukraine is Published!

The front page of today's Sunday New York Times has an article on Odesa, Ukraine, which is painful to read. This very important port city for Ukraine for trade has been subject to relentless bombing for the past few weeks with even a silo of sunflower oil attacked and the oil spilling into the Black Sea. Residents of Odesa have had to suffer from the bombing, and shortages of water and electric power.

We are all connected. A wonderful colleague at the Odesa Law Academy, Borys Kormych, has been a Virtual Scholar through our global partnership between UMass Amherst and the Kyiv School of Economics (KSE) in two cohorts. In the most recent one, my Isenberg School of Management PhD student, Ismael Pour, and I have had the honor and pleasure of collaborating with him. We always worry how our colleagues, collaborators, and friends are doing in the illegal, horrific war perpetrated on Ukraine and Ukrainians.

An outcome of our collaboration  is the paper, "Integrated crop and cargo war risk insurance: application to Ukraine," that was published in the January 2026 issue of the International Transactions in Operational Research (ITOR): https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/itor.70038?af=R A reprint of the paper can be downloaded here: https://supernet.isenberg.umass.edu/articles/IntegratedWarInsurance.pdf

Today the President of Ukraine Zelenskyy will be meeting with President Trump in Mar-a-Lago.  

Peace with security must return to Ukraine. 

After almost 4 years of the full-scale invasion by Russia, with billions of dollars of destruction and so much suffering and loss of lives, the war needs to end with the aggressor also paying for all the consequences. 

Our Paper with Colleagues in Italy on Flexible Production Networks and Environmental Regulations is Published!

It is now the holiday season so one needs to find moments of joy, despite so many horrific events and challenges. I am very grateful to my wonderful collaborators.

The same day as the mass casualty event at my alma mater, Brown University, a paper that I co-authored with colleagues at the University of Catania in Italy: Dr. Gabriella Colajanni, Professor Patrizia Daniele, and Dr. Daniele Sciacca, was published in the European Journal of Operational Research and it is open access: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0377221725009786

Also, at about the same time, we received a huge package of chocolates from one of these co-authors, which brought light in this time of darkness.

We will be enjoying the chocolates for many weeks and will also be sharing them. 

Thank you for the friendships across the miles and for the outstanding community of Operations Researchers.

Let peace and freedom and righteousness prevail as we come to the end of the 2025 year.

Honored to Be Named a Fellow of The OR Society

The official good news arrived a few weeks ago and, this past week, I received the certificate.

I am humbled and thrilled to have been named a Fellow of the Operational Research (OR) Society,  which is based in the United Kingdom.

It has been quite an amazing year, thanks to both The OR Society and to another professional society that I am a member (long-time one) of - that of INFORMS.

On December 5, 2024, I delivered the Blackett Lecture at The Royal Society in London, thanks to The OR Society, and blogged about the magical experience here: https://annanagurney.blogspot.com/2024/12/an-incredible-blackett-lecture.html

Below is a collage of photos to capture this truly memorable experience:

An article that I wrote about my  Blackett Lecture was published (and is feely accessible this year) in The OR Society flagship journal The Journal of the Operational Research Society (JORS): https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01605682.2025.2494706

And, just this past week, on the day before Thanksgiving, an article that I wrote with my Isenberg School of Management PhD student, Samirasadat Samadi, on tariffs, supply chain networks, and labor was published in JORS: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01605682.2025.2592758

I am so grateful to outstanding professional societies for providing us with communities and support.

Thank you to The Or Society Fellows Committee, its Board, and to those who wrote letters of support for me!

Many thanks also to INFORMS for recognizing my work (and thanks to my students and collaborators) with the 2025 President's Award: https://www.informs.org/News-Room/INFORMS-Releases/Awards-Releases/Anna-Nagurney-Honored-with-2025-INFORMS-President-s-Award

Our work continues.

Our Paper on Tariffs and Labor in Global Supply Chain Networks is Accepted!

We are delighted to report that there is an update on the paper in this post. Today, on the day before Thanksgiving, it was published on the journal website: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01605682.2025.2592758?src=

There are two streams of research that I have been heavily engaged in and they are the impacts of tariffs on both producers and consumers plus the integration of labor into supply chain networks and I have even published a book on the subject: Labor and Supply Chain Networks: 

https://supernet.isenberg.umass.edu/bookser/Labor-book.html

I have been working with my PhD student, Samira Samadi, on investigating impacts of tariffs on labor, including employment, and integrating the two streams of research.

I am delighted that, this past week, we heard from the Editor in Chief (EIC) of the Journal of the Operational Research Society (JORS), Professor Kostas Nikolopoulos of the Durham University Business School in the United Kingdom, that our paper, "Ad Valorem Tariffs in Global Supply Chain Networks and Impacts on Labor," has been accepted in this outstanding journal.

The journal now requires both an abstract and a practitioner abstract and both are below.

We very much enjoyed researching and writing this paper, which also includes a case study on soybeans, and investigates quantitatively the impacts of tariffs on major countries affected, including China and the US. The mathematical model is that of a competitive global supply chain network under oligopolistic competition and the tariffs are ad valorem ones, which are now widely applied to many products, including commodities. 

A preprint of the paper can be found on the Supernetwork Center website: https://supernet.isenberg.umass.edu/articles/TariffsandLaborinGlobalSupplyChainNetworks.pdf

We are grateful to the EIC, the Associate Editors, and to the two anonymous reviewers for the professional handling of our paper and their constructive comments and suggestions.

Wonderful Celebration of the UMass Amherst INFORMS Student Chapter's Cum Laude Award and My INFORMS President's Award

Last Friday, we had a delightful celebration at the Isenberg School of Management of two awards received recently at the INFORMS Annual Meeting in Atlanta.

Since I have been a Visiting Professor in Sweden, not only at KTH in Stockholm, but also over a multiyear period at the University of Gothenburg's School of Business, Economics and Law, I learned there the importance of celebrations! For example, at the latter, we would regularly meet, as a group, to enjoy a "fika" with delicious pastries, cakes, and coffee (and great conversations) to celebrate journal publications and other achievements.

Hence, the UMass Amherst INFORMS Student Chapter sent out invitations - and produced the nice poster below for the event last Friday.

This year's President, Samira Samadi (who is also my PhD student), ordered a fruit platter and various pastries plus coffee and the students surprised me with a Congratulations chocolate cake.

Earlier, I had blogged about my receipt of the INFORMS President's Award, an honor I am so deeply grateful for: https://annanagurney.blogspot.com/2025/10/deeply-honored-to-receive-informs.html and Samira wrote this lovely post on the Chapter Award received and my President's Award on the Chapter website: https://websites.umass.edu/umassinf/2025/11/02/two-awards-one-incredible-2025-informs-annual-meeting-experience/

It was wonderful to celebrate the Chapter's receipt of the Cum Laude Award from INFORMS plus my President's Award and below are a few photos from the event. Many thanks to all who support us. 

Josh Gladstone is our chapter expert at cutting up cakes! Last year's Chapter President, Ismael Pour, is overseeing his progress in the photo above with Yongdong Chen providing support. 

Slide Decks of Our Talks at INFORMS in Atlanta Are Now Posted on Topics from War Risk Insurance to Tariffs and Rerouting to Remembering the Great Hani Mahmassani

My immediate research group had five presentations at the recent INFORMS Conference, which took place in Atlanta, October 26-29, 2025.

I am delighted that the slide decks of all the above presentations have now been posted on the Virtual Center for Supernetworks website: https://supernet.isenberg.umass.edu/visuals.html.

Below is a photo of the speakers and the organizers (thanks to Himadri Sen Gupta and Andrés González for the invitation) of the Resilient Networks session in which Ismael Pour, my PhD student, presented our paper on integrated crop and cargo war risk insurance with applications to Ukraine. This paper we co-authored with Borys Kormych of the Odesa Law Academy and it was published in the International Transactions in Operational Research and is available free access: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/itor.70038?af=R

My PhD student, Samira Samadi, presented two papers (since I had to speak on a panel memorializing Hani Mahmassani, who passed away on July 15, 2025).

Samira's first paper presentation, which was on fresh produce quality deterioration under transportation congestion and disruptions, was on work we did with Deniz Besik of the University of Richmond. Her second paper, which we co-authored, was on tariffs and rerouting, and is in press in a volume in honor of Terry Rockafellar's 90th birthday: https://link.springer.com/book/9783032078599.

Dana Hassani delivered a paper of ours in the 8AM session on the last day of the conference. The paper, with Oleg Nivievskyi and Pavlo Martyshev of the Kyiv School of Economics (KSE), was published in an edited Dynamics of Disasters volume by Springer last December: https://www.springerprofessional.de/en/quantification-of-international-trade-network-performance-under-/50390576

I will blog about the panel in honor of Hani Mahmassani in a separate post but below I share a photo of the entire group that took part. Thanks to Karen Smilowitz and to the Transportation Science and Logistics (TSL) Society of INFORMS for allowing us to memorialize Hani in a session originally scheduled for the Robert Herman Lifetime Achievement Award recipient, who could not make it (Cynthia Barnhart of MIT was recognized this year). Hani was an earlier recipient of this award.

 

Terrific INFORMS Magazine Editorial Advisory Board (MEAB) Meeting in Atlanta

Many thanks to INFORMS for the extraordinary conference in Atlanta, October 26-29, 2025! The conferees returned inspired and with renewed energy. It was a conference that set new high standards and was so enjoyable with about 7,000 conferees from around the globe.

In addition to the talks, business meetings, social networking events, and award ceremonies, this Annual Meeting serves as the venue for various face to face board meetings.

I have been chairing the INFORMS Magazine Editorial Advisory Board (MEAB) for several years now and very much enjoy working with fellow Board Members and INFORMS staff. The MEAB oversees such excellent publications as ORMS Today, Analytics Magazine, and also ORMS Tomorrow.

I'd like to thank INFORMS Editor Kara Tucker and Mary Leszczynski, Director of Marketing at INFORMS, and Board Members: James Cochran of the University of Alabama, Trilce Encarnacion of the University of Missouri–St. Louis, Lavanya Marla of the University of Illinois, Patricia Neri of Underwriters Laboratories, Thiago Serra of the University of Iowa, Anand Subramanian of the Universidade Federal da Paraíba, Jun Zhuang of the University of Buffalo, and our newest member Carlos A. Zetina of FICO Express for a very productive, engaging meeting this past Monday morning at 8AM. Jun Zhuang took the below expert selfie of us. It is such a pleasure to serve as the Chair of MEAB. Many thanks also to Tinglong Dai of Johns Hopkins University, who was triple booked and could not join us but followed up with a warm message.

Carlos even brought delicious chocolates from Montreal for us! 

More info on MEAB and its members: https://pubsonline.informs.org/magazine/orms-today/resources. I thank both Gokce Esenduran of Purdue University and Emily McIntosh of  Ernst & Young for their service. Their terms have now expired. 

Link to issues of ORMS Today: https://pubsonline.informs.org/magazine/orms-today

Many thanks to all the contributors to these very engaging, informative professional publications!

Congratulations to the UMass Amherst INFORMS Student Chapter!

The INFORMS Conference in Atlanta, which took place October 26-29, 2025, was fantastic! There were about 7,000 conferees, who enjoyed the scientific presentations plus keynotes and plenaries, many social networking events, tutorials, business meetings, and also award ceremonies. It was wonderful to have participants who are students, academics, and practitioners from around the globe!

On Monday evening of the conference, the INFORMS Chapter Awards event took place. As the Faculty Advisor to the UMass Amherst INFORMS Student Chapter since 2004 (when the Chapter was founded), I was delighted to see the Chapter recognized with the Cum Laude Award for its activities.

The evening began with welcoming remarks from Elena Gerstmann, the Executive Director of INFORMS, and Mark E. Lewis, the President-Elect of INFORMS.

Then we had the pleasure of hearing from Vinod Cheriyan, the Chapter Representative to the Subdivisions Council of  INFORMS, and listening to the dynamic keynote by Sina Ansari.

The students were thrilled to receive the award plaque and we took a group photo.

This Student Chapter is an outstanding collaboration between PhD students in Operations Management at the Isenberg School of Management and Industrial Engineering PhD students at UMass Amherst. All who are interested in Operations Research and Analytics are welcome to join. Last year's Chapter President was Ismael Pour and this year's Chapter President is Samira Samadi.

For more information about the Chapters, its Officers, and activities, please visit the UMass Amherst INFORMS Student Chapter website: https://websites.umass.edu/umassinf/

It was wonderful to have even a former member, now a Professor, Dr. Heng Chen of Kansas State University, join us.

Congratulations to the students! We plan on holding a celebration on campus soon.

Deeply Honored to Receive the INFORMS President's Award

On the evening of October 26, 2025, the lovely INFORMS Awards Ceremony took place at its Annual Meeting in Atlanta.

I was deeply honored and humbled to be recognized with the INFORMS President's Award: 

I received the good news via a phone call from the 2025 INFORMS President David Hunt, and did not share the news publicly until INFORMS issued the press release below in October.

https://www.informs.org/News-Room/INFORMS-Releases/Awards-Releases/Anna-Nagurney-Honored-with-2025-INFORMS-President-s-Award

The award ceremony was elegant and what made it extra special for me was to have, in the audience,  my PhD students (present and former ones), colleagues, friends, INFORMS staff, and also my husband. I am grateful to David Hunt and to Past Presidents Laura Albert and Julie Swan (both of whom served on the committee) for this very meaningful honor. I appreciate the leadership of the INFORMS Executive Director Elena Gerstmann. Pelin Pekgun was wonderful in making many warm announcements.

Below, I share a photo of the award plaque, which my husband kindly carried back to Amherst yesterday, and other photos. Many thanks to former President's Award recipient, Pinar Keskinocak, for sending me the photo of the two of us!

And INFORMS, so efficiently, put up the video recording of my award acceptance speech on its YouTube channel, which is very thoughtful and kind: https://www.youtube.com/watch?reload=9&v=-2GAGCgnaGE I had had a rehearsal for my speech earlier that Sunday, which speaks to the professionalism of INFORMS!

Thank you, David Hunt, and thank you, INFORMS, for the support, the leadership, and also for the incredible community that is INFORMS! Let's continue to devote our efforts so that everyone can realize their full potential.

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

Excellent INFORMS Tune-Up Event Hosted by the UMass Amherst INFORMS Student Chapter!

Yesterday, the UMass Amherst INFORMS Student Chapter held its annual INFORMS Tune-Up event at which PhD students, who are chapter members, practice the presentations that they will give at the upcoming INFORMS Annual Meeting. This year, the conference will take place in Atlanta, Georgia, October 26-29, 2025. The website for the conference is here: https://www.informs.org/Meetings-Conferences/INFORMS-Conference-Calendar/2025-INFORMS-Annual-Meeting

The presenters and their titles are on the poster below.

It was great to have speakers from the Mechanical and Industrial Engineering Department (MIE) at UMass Amherst as well as from the Operations and Information Management (OIM) Department.

I very much enjoyed all the talks. Ali Jafari and Yukti Kathuria are from MIE and Samira Samadi, Ismael Pour, and Dana Hassani are from the OM side of OIM. The latter three are also my PhD students.

The audience included faculty and students and valuable comments and suggestions were given on the presentations and there were also great questions. It was an excellent practice session.

The presentations by Ali and Yukti focused on on unsupervised learning approaches and Bayesian networks to healthcare, respectively, and those by Samira, Ismael, and Dana were on food quality under trade disruptions, integrated crop and cargo war risk insurance, and the quantification of international trade network performance, respectively.

Samira's presentation was based on  a paper that we co-authored with Professor Deniz Besik of the University of Richmond.

Ismael's paper was based on a paper that we co-authored with Professor Borys Kormych of the Odesa Law Academy and which is the lead article in the January (2026) issue of the International Transactions in Operational Research. It is available for free here: 

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

Dana's paper, in turn, was also co-authored with me, and with colleagues at the Kyiv School of Economics (KSE), Oleg Nivievskyi and Pavlo Martyshev. The paper was published in the latest Dynamics of Disasters  (2024) co-edited volume: https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-031-74006-0_7

Special thanks to faculty: Professor Peter Haas of the Manning College of Information and Computer Sciences, UMass Amherst, Professor Hari Balasubramanian of MIE,  and Professor Zihao Qu of OIM for taking the time to support the students and offering their suggestions. 

I took the nice photo below:

The pizza, fresh fruit, and coffee were delicious.

This student chapter will be recognized at the INFORMS Atlanta conference with the Cum Laude Award on October 27. We will have a nice group there to receive the award and to also celebrate!

I have been the chapter's Faculty Advisor since its inception in 2004 and have very much enjoyed seeing how the students have grown professionally and socially. I stay in touch with many once they receive their PhDs and go on to careers either in academia or industry!