A Big Thank You and Congratulations to the Montreal Operations Research Student Chapter

The invitation arrived on April 22, 2019 - towards the end of the Spring semester.

The event that I was invited to speak at was to take place on May 15, 2019, as part of the Optimization Days conference in Montreal, Canada. The conference was at HEC.

Although the date was just a few days past the UMass Amherst graduation ceremonies as well as the POMS conference in Washington DC, I accepted quickly, since it was to celebrate the 3rd anniversary of the Montreal Operations Research Student Chapter. I am a big proponent and supporter of INFORMS Student Chapters and have been the Faculty Advisor to the UMass Amherst one for 15 years (that translates to 30 semesters of activities, including hosting of speakers). The Montreal Chapter has over 270 members across multiple universities in the area. It was co-founded by a group of students, including  Hyame Alameddine and (now) Dr. Carlos Zetina, both from Concordia University. Dr. Zetina was the recipient of the INFORMS Judith B. Liebman Award.

The invitation, which came from Hyame Alameddine, the Chapter's Vice President, said, in part:

Dear Prof. Nagurney,

On behalf of the Montreal Operations Research Student Chapter (MORSC), we would like to invite you to Optimization Days <https://symposia.cirrelt.ca/JOPT2019/en/home>  2019, Montreal on May 15, 2019, to deliver the keynote addressing a topic of your choice for our third-anniversary event which we will celebrate during Optimization Days. Given your pioneering work in operations research; we hope you can honor us with your presence and words as we present our chapter's achievements and list of upcoming events to our members, industry partners, well-known Montreal researchers and representatives of our umbrella institutions. Our organization would be happy to cover the costs associated with your travel and accommodation.

Established in May 2016, MORSC is a multi-university, multidisciplinary, graduate student association chartered under the Canadian Operations Research Society (CORS) and the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS). Our mission is to create a collaborative community of Montreal graduate students working on Operations Research topics. Our emphasis is on knowledge sharing and networking among members from various disciplines. We organize tutorials, workshops and panel discussions for students to stay up to date on the field. We also organize student research seminars in collaboration with GERAD and CIRRELT for students to showcase their work and a speaker series for members to learn from highly respected experts in the field. We have created our website (www.mtl-students.com>) that serves as a reference for upcoming events and as an online library of materials on Operations Research (www.mtl-students.com/archive>). In 2017, MORSC received the INFORMS 2017 Student Chapter Annual Award at the cum laude level  and in 2018, it received the INFORMS 2018 Student Chapter Annual Award at the Magna cum laude level.
 
I offered several topics that I could speak on and they selected the following:

My presentation can be downloaded here. Speaking to this group, which has achieved an immense amount during 3 years, was a great honor, and I wanted to congratulate them and to offer my support. Coincidentally, the first conference that I ever attended as a PhD student was in Montreal and it was with my Brown University PhD dissertation advisor, Dr. Stella Dafermos. And, amazingly, I got to stay in the very same hotel, The Terrasse Royale!

The attention to detail was extraordinary, with posters disseminated about my talk, a delicious cake prepared, and even a request for questions from me about my presentation, with prizes!

 My questions to the audience (I was delighted that even undergraduates came):

 1. What city was the venue of the first conference that Anna Nagurney attended as a PhD student?

2. Which of the following are NOT part of the math academic genealogy of Stella Dafermos and Anna Nagurney:

Maxwell, Galileo, Laporte, Newton?

3. The famous Braess paradox (1968) paper was written in what language?

4. Name TWO perishable products in healthcare.

5. What was the name of the best selling cholesterol reducing drug sold by Pfizer that lost its patent rights in 2011?

Bonus question:

What brand of European chocolates are sold at the nearby Royal Terrasse Hotel in Montreal?

After my presentation, I presented the Chapter with a birthday card and certificate and they presented me with a lovely plaque (so thoughtful and so appreciated).

 

Also, at the event, many students were recognized for their great writing and papers!

Above I am standing with the Chapter Officers as well as the Chapter's Faculty Advisor, Professor Daria Terekhov. Very cool that, among the officers, is a former classmate of my PhD student, Deniz Besik - Başak Tozlu.

The cake was as delicious as it was beautiful!

Many thanks also to the excellent photographers! The group photo is a very special memento. I remember fondly many selfies taken with the expert - Dr. Carlos Zetina at INFORMS conferences!

Also, it was a delightful surprise to see  Dr. Alelsandr Kazachkov there (the recipient of the 2018 ICS Best Student Paper Prize, whose committee I chaired), Professor Michel Gendreau, and a University of Maryland  Smith School colleague - Professor Raghavan. I also saw Professor Gilbert Laporte's photo on a nice screen - he was recently elected to the National Academy of Engineering. Sorry to have missed Professor Hani Mahmassani, who was a plenary speaker.

And, of course, I had to purchase Leonidas (Belgian) chocolates in the shop at my hotel to being back to Amherst!

Also, I had some lovely long walks in the area.

Congratulations to the MORSC Chapter Officers and members on all of your achievements and thank you for the outstanding hospitality - you set new standards! Wishing you all much continuing professional and personal success.

An Outstanding Transportation Conference in Switzerland with Photos

I am writing this blogpost from Zurich, Switzerland.

I am in Switzerland because of the 18th Swiss Transport Research Conference (SRTC), which took place May 16-18, 2018 in Monte Verita, Ascona, Switzerland.

When the invitation to give a keynote talk at this conference arrived months ago from Professor Kay Axhausen of ETH Zurich, I immediately accepted. The timing was ideal - just after our multiple UMass Amherst graduations signalling the end of another great academic year and before the CORS Conference in Canada and other exciting events. Also, since I love doing research in transportation and logistics and teach in this area, the conference theme was ideal.

The organization of the conference was outstanding and my itinerary was planned to the greatest detail and with fabulous care and thoughtfulness and I am incredibly grateful. I arrived in Zurich on Monday, after a very comfortable flight from Boston Logan on Swiss International. My hosts had even researched which would be the ideal seat for me in business class! On Tuesday, I met with Professor Kay Axhausen and doctoral students as well as a colleague from Denmark, Professor Otto Nielsen of DTU, whose seminar talk I very much enjoyed.

Another special treat, which demonstrates the serendipity of travel - I got to meet the nephew of Professor Dietrich Braesss of Braess Paradox fame, who is now at ETH Zurich and we took the photo below.

 Then we had a lovely dinner in the Old Town part of Zurich.

What would a transportation conference be without exploring and experiencing modes of transport? So, last Wednesday, a group of us convened at the Zurich Central Train Station to begin our journey to the conference site and we only had one change of trains (on our return yesterday we had two). The scenery was spectacular with lakes, mountains, valleys, and lovely homes as well as animals ranging from big cows to sheep.

We were met by a bus at the Lorcano train station, which drove us to a point on a mountain at which we disembarked and made our trek up to the conference venue, Monte Verita. The photo below I took from my villa hotel room.

I was so honored to open up the conference with my keynote talk: Perishable Product Supply Chain Networks: The Role of Transportation, which can be downloaded here.

The conference was organized with only two parallel sessions plus three keynote talks as well as discussion sessions. All the meals were included as well as breaks, which allowed for numerous opportunities for discussions and conversations. I thoroughly enjoyed brainstorming about the present and future of transport around the globe and expectations for impacts on cities, rural communities, and the world, with innovations in autonomous vehicles as well as shared mobility. It was fascinating to speak with researchers and doctoral students as well as practitioners from Europe, the US, and Asia.

The beauty of the venue was breathtaking, as was the elegance, and exceptional organization of the conference. 

Some other highlights included meeting a doctoral student from the University of Catania in Italy, who told me that one of his absolutely favorite professors was Professor Patrizia Daniele, with whom, coincidentally, I had published yet another paper just this past week.

Also, meeting Professor Norman Garrick from the University of Connecticut was very special. He is now on sabbatical at ETH, which is one of the top universities in the world.

 I thoroughly enjoyed hearing the keynote talks by Professor Caspar Chorus from TU Delft in The Netherlands and by Claudio Ruch from ETH Zurich.

We took the group photo below.

This was a conference that set new standards. I would also like to thank the sponsors for making this conference possible. I thoroughly enjoyed conversations with representatives from SBB (Swiss Railways) and from Swiss Roadways. The transportation experiences have been idyllic and the conference was as well. Kudos to Professor Kay Axhausen and also special thanks to his research assistant, Mr. Felix Becker.

Great Seeing One's Book on Exhibit at a Conference

I enjoy writing books and all the books that I have written have an underlying theme of networks, whether the book is on supply chains, sustainable transportation, finance, or on methodologies, ranging from variational inequalities to projected dynamical systems.

Professor Dimitri Bertsekas of MIT gave me some great advice a while ago and he told me that if I have 5 to 10 papers on a theme then it makes sense to write a book.

I enjoy developing the outline, figuring out the organization of the chapters, and, of course, selecting a title is also always important. Writing a book takes a lot of time and extreme focus but having a book published and seeing it in print and, also, increasingly, nowadays, online as well, is always a very joyous occasion.

Last week, while at the INFORMS conference in Nashville, Tennessee, one of the highlights was visiting the exhibits in a great hall where you could view displays by various publishers as well as software companies and even of several organizations. It was also a good place to network and have some refreshments.

My book, Competing on Supply Chain Quality:  Network Economics Perspective, that I co-authored with my former PhD student and Isenberg School of Management alumna, Dr. Dong "Michelle" Li, and that was recently published by Springer, was on display at its booth at the INFORMS conference.

My co-author and I were delighted to see it there and also enjoyed viewing other recently published books.

Also, on display, in a preprint version was the book that I co-edited with Professor Ilias Kotsireas and Professor Panos M. Pardalos, Dynamics of Disasters: Key Concepts, Models, Algorithms, and Insights, which we have been told by Springer will be available online by the end of the month and in hardcopy format by mid December. The book consists of a preface and 18 refereed book chapters from both academics and practitioners. The photo below is of me with Matt Amboy of Springer, who has always been really responsive to any questions that I may have and for which I am very grateful.

Although I did not get a chance to take a photo with Pardalos and our book now in production I did dine with him at the INFORMS Fellow lunch and took the photo below prior to us being seated. We are with Dr. Suvrajeet Sen and Dr. Mauricio Resende of Amazon, whom I had nominated for the Fellows Award and he was inducted that day.

Also, it was so nice to have Professor Chris Tang of UCLA, who is the Editor of the new Springer Series on Supply Chain Management, in which our Competing on Supply Chain Quality book appears, be at our table at the INFORMS Fellows lunch!

Last year, at the INFORMS Conference in Philadelphia,  the book, Networks Against Time: Supply Chain Analytics for Perishable Products, that I co-authored with Professors Min Yu, Amir H. Masoumi, and Ladimer S. Nagurney (the "other Professor Nagurney), was on display at the Springer book, so we took the photo below of 3 of the co-authors.

The week prior to the INFORMS conference in Nashville, I gave a plenary talk at the Game Theory and Security conference at NYU, which I also blogged about. There I was delighted to see on display a book that I did not author but in which I had a chapter written with my doctoral student, Shivani Shukla, and Ladimer S. Nagurney.

Best to everyone with their Operations Research and Management Science and Analytics research and keep on writing and publishing!

Howdy and Thanks to Texas A&M University for the Hospitality!

I arrived home in Massachusetts from College Station, where Texas A&M University is located, with a connection at Dallas / Fort Worth in the wee hours of the morning.

I would like to thank Texas A&M University where the greeting is "Howdy!" for its outstanding hospitality with special thanks to its award-winning INFORMS Student Chapter.

My flights to and from College Station were great and, after reading The New York Times and The Economist en route on my last leg to College Station I even read Time magazine, with the appropriate cover below. There were many "Aggies" as Texas A&M fans are known on that flight and I shared insights from the cover article with them. My flight seatmate was a student at Ohio State who was visiting friends at Texas A&M and he said that, as a high school student in Texas, they would pledge allegiance to the Texas flag.

I must admit that I enjoyed the very sunny warm weather (low 80s) as well as the hospitality and charm of College Station from the tiny airport to the friendliness of the students, faculty, and staff and everyone that I encountered. I liked the politeness as well and being called "Ma'am" in a Southern accent.

I did experience some culture shock at breakfast when I piled the fresh berries on my plate at the buffet and then next to containers of yogurt saw a big bowl of white creamy stuff, which, since I am from New England,  I assumed was plain yogurt. After mixing it with the berries and sampling the concoction I believe that I ate some Marshmallow Fluff -- so sugary but actually tasty!

The new building housing the Department of Industrial & Systems Engineering was the venue for my presentation, "Networks Against Time: From Food to Pharma," with pizza and drinks served. Afterwards, I got to meet more of the graduate students and very much enjoyed hearing about their research and ideas for plans for the future.

And, Professor Sergiy Butenko, who also helped with the hosting even managed (my itinerary got changed) to fit in 45 minutes of the outstanding presentation by Celia Sandys, the granddaughter of Winston Churchill.on "The Power of Words: The Inspiring Leadership of Winston Churchill," but then we had to leave since my talk was at noon.

 

Her presentation emphasized his moral integrity and how great leaders anticipate change and get constituents to believe in what can be accomplished, i.e., Victory. The video clips of Churchill with tapes of parts of his speech in the background were fascinating. The venue was also stunning with the students calling out in Aggie-like cheers.

She noted in her talk that, in the  aftermath of September 11th, 2001, she was inundated with letters from the leaders of the day. They all held a central message; that it was to the words and inspiration of her grandfather that they had turned to for strength and guidance when faced with the leadership challenges presented by this unprecedented trauma. "Your grandfather was a great source of inspiration and strength to me following the tragic events of September 11th" - Rudy Giuliani.

In walking back for my talk, Professor Butenko showed me the tree below where Aggie couples get engaged.

 It is different in Texas -- I saw no potholes and the building that I spoke at was simply stunning inside and was built, I was told, in 1 year. It had areas and lounges for students, beautiful labs with Dell computers for various faculty member research groups. The kitchen was stunning and there were carpets almost everywhere. The INFORMS Student Chapter Awards were prominently displayed in the hall for all to see and celebrate.

 

 I even met the gentleman who helps students, including graduate students,  with communications -- writing and speaking and I liked his display below.

Thanks, again,  to Texas A&M University for the great hospitality with special thanks to the INFORMS Student Chapter there. It is truly a model student chapter and, as the Faculty Advisor of the UMass Amherst INFORMS Student Chapter, this is a real compliment. Thanks also to Dow Chemical, which provided $10,000 in support for the Texas A&M INFORMS Chapter Speaker Series (How I wish this could be done at UMass -- any donors out there?!)  and also to the INFORMS Speakers Program for covering my travel expenses.

Somehow I managed to get TSA preferred both ways and did not even have to take off my jacket or shoes and marched to the head of the security lines.

Photos from the Fabulous Supply Chain Workshop in Switzerland

Yes, it was a whirlwind trip -- I flew from Boston to Zurich on September 10 and returned yesterday, September 15, with new research ideas, great new contacts, and visual scenes and experiences that were simply fabulous.

Below, I present, in photos, some of the highlights. The purpose of my trip was to deliver the talk Networks Against Time: From Food to Pharma at the Workshop on Supply Chain Vulnerability and Resilience. The Workshop was organized by the ETH Risk Center and the Zurich Insurance Group.

The view from my room at the Zurich Development Center (ZDC) (Lake Zurich and the Alps with the green landscape in the foreground):

Some of the art displayed at the ZDC, which was a former sanitarium and where Bircher invented bircher muesli -- delicious -- soccer fans will appreciate the photos, I am sure:

 Some photos from the conference:

 Scenes outside the workshop venue:

Thanks to the organizers of this Supply Chain Workshop for such an extraordinary workshop in a perfect venue!