Serendipity of Great Conferences - the 50th Anniversary of EURO in Leeds

This is the first post of a series on the EURO Conference, which took place June 22-25, 2025 in Leeds, UK. This Operational Research (OR) Conference brought together 2,000 delegates from around the globe and was historic since it also marked the 50th anniversary of the establishment of EURO - the Association of  European Operational Research Societies. There were delegates even from China!

This post is on the serendipity of conferences - it is always a delight to see colleagues in person, some of whom you might not even have realized would be coming.

On Sunday, June 22, 2025, in the hotel elevator, I saw Kathy Stecke of the University of Texas Dallas and we burst out laughing. Then, en route up a big hill to the University to register on Sunday, I was greeted with a warm: Hello! on the street by Razia Amzad of Springer Nature. At registration, it was truly a delight to see Christina Phillips, Graham Rand, Tetyana Romanova, Martine Labbé, and Gendreau Michel! And, amazingly, in my third conference presentation on 20 years of EURO conferences I have photos of many of these wonderful colleagues in my slide deck. A delight was to even see at registration the photographer who took the official photos at my Blackett Lecture at The Royal Society on December 5, 2024, thanks to The OR Society.

Conferences can be very energizing and inspiring from the scientific knowledge exchange perspective to all the wonderful personal connections. On June 24, 2025, after my second conference presentation,  I was thrilled to see Anand Subramanian, the genius behind the Subject_To interview podcasts, who came all the way from Brazil. Then, to meet up with Suresh Sethi, whose passion for life and scholarship fills me with hope, plus to see Kostas Nikolopoulos, one of the outstanding editors of the Journal of the Operational Research Society (JORS) of The OR Society, and its publisher Richard Goodman, along with Sunil Tiwari, whose dynamism and intellect delight, made for an extraordinary afternoon. Joining us was Pritha Dutta, one of my former Isenberg School of Management, UMass Amherst PhD students, who traveled all the way from Portland, Oregon, where she is now an Assistant Professor at Willamette University. Pritha presented on her latest research on humanitarian operations with applications to India.

After my third conference presentation, and the wrapup of the conference, as we were heading to the Leeds train station from the hotel, I saw Senay Solak, who is the Chair of my OIM Department at the Isenberg School of Management! We were delighted to see each other and walked together to the station, each heading onwards on our journeys.

Many thanks to EURO and to The OR Society for such wonderful conference experiences, which further emphasize the importance of face to face professional meetings.

And, then at the Leeds train station, I saw Janny Leung of Macao, who actually chaired the session that Senay spoke at the day before. We had an excellent conversation about some initiatives. 

The Serendipity of Science and Why Dreamers are Important - Nobel Laureate Sheldon Glashow at UMass Amherst

Yesterday, we had the pleasure of hearing Dr. Sheldon Glashow, a Nobel laureate in physics speak on "A Parable of the Pure and the Practical," at UMass Amherst.

When I saw the announcement for his talk, which was quite provocative and which is reposted below, I knew that the talk would be great:

Politicians and opinion makers argue stridently that governments and universities should invest only in such areas of research that are likely to result in immediate and specific benefits, through wealth enhancement or job creation. They find undirected curiosity‐driven research in basic science to be useless and unaffordable luxuries that consume resources rather than promoting economic growth and human welfare. 

This talk will show how wrong they are.

Dr. Glashow was inspiring, entertaining, and very energetic and he spoke to a standing room only crowd. He mentioned that this was only the second time he was giving this lecture - the first being in China.

He quoted from Louis Pasteur: "Chance favors the prepared mind," and demonstrated the role that serendipity plays in scientific discoveries. Researchers are trying to do something but find something else from saccharine to velcro, to teflon, to even Viagra (lots of chuckles from the audience).

He emphasized that dreamers are important and that many Nobel prize discoveries where, at first, useless.  He showed through numerous examples - I took photos of some of his slides, which I have posted below, because I could not write fast enough in my notes - that curiosity-driven searches are as effective as directed ones. He also noted technology transfers and that these may take years but without the discovery of DNA structure we would not have gene therapies, without general relativity we would not have GPS systems, and noted that radioisotopes saved his life. This reminded me of the medical nuclear supply chain work that we have published several papers on.

One has to "keep one's eyes wide open" for those accidental discoveries. Think of Kevlar, for example.

I also VERY MUCH appreciated his emphasis of the importance of international collaborations because that is fundamental to our work at the Virtual Center for Supernetworks at the Isenberg School at UMass! He also related his fond memories of his high school in NYC, the Bronx High School of Science, which has produced more Nobel laureates than any high school on the planet - 7 in physics and 1 in chemistry (he did share a lot of jokes about chemists).

You can click on the photos below to enlarge them.

Remember the importance of the scientific method and the prepared mind!

Dr. Glashow also mentioned that his sister-in-law was Lynn Margulis, a former UMass faculty member, who passed away not long ago. I thanked him for his brilliant lecture afterwards and we reminisced about NYC. You could tell that his sense of wonder about the universe has never left him, which is truly special!

And, speaking of those great old school ties, Dr. Glashow was introduced by his former classmate at the Bronx High School of Science, Professor Morton Sternheim, who, along with his wife, has endowed this lecture series.