Great Talks at the Isenberg School of Management

Great speakers provoke and inspire and we can learn so much from them. Students, faculty, staff, and guests from the community benefit immensely from invited speakers plus there is nothing like face to face time in which to exchange stories, share laughter, and, perhaps, even start new friendships.

This week has been an especially busy one at the Isenberg School of Management with many departments hosting speakers including two speakers that were hosted by my department -- Operations & Information Management. The poster above was prepared by the Isenberg School Communications office for a talk that took place last evening and was organized by the Management Department. Dr. Anita M. McGahan of the Rotman School at the University of Toronto spoke on "The Business of Creating Social Value."  She is the President of the Academy of Management, which has 18,000 members. The President of INFORMS, which now has 11,000 members, is also a female, Dr. Anne Robinson of Verizon. Great to see such wonderful leadership at the top of such professional societies!

Dr. McGahan's talk took place at the Integrated Sciences new building and the takeaways were:

1. Work on important problems (think of what you want to leave behind).

2. Create social value through your work.

3. We need new business models -- I liked hearing about innovating in reverse -- rather than having more complicated neonatal incubators use the kangaroo approach (baby on the parent).

4. We should care not just about shareholder value but about sustainable outcomes (rather than organizations).

She spoke about meeting Dr. Paul Farmer, a co-founder of Partners in Health, on a shuttle flight from DC to Boston and also about various new industries and products from wind energy to the Tata Nano car. She is very dynamic and interacted very well with the audience -- I estimated over 400 in attendance, including many undergrads including many students.

Dr. Detmar Straub, A Regent's Professor of the University System of Georgia and the J. Mack Robinson Distinguished Professor of Information Systems at Georgia State University, spoke this afternoon as part of the Dean's Lecture series. His talk was on "Why Top Journals Accept Your Paper." He completed two terms as the Editor-in-Chief of the journal MIS Quarterly. I had the pleasure of joining several of my IS faculty colleagues and one of our doctoral students for lunch with Dr. Straub at the University Club, which is in a building dating to 1728. The food was very good and the conversation fabulous  -- we laughed over so many great stories -- I especially enjoyed his reminiscences about various conferences.

 Dr. Robert Shumsky of Dartmouth was our previous speaker in the Dean's Lecture series. He is well-known in INFORMS and OM circles.

Also, today, the UMass Amherst INFORMS Student Chapter had the pleasure of hosting Professor Michael C. Fu of the Snith School at the University of Maryland College Park. He has degrees from MIT and a PhD from Harvard and he was fabulous. His talk began at 2:00 at the Isenberg School and we ended our conversations at 4:00PM. His talk focused on stochastic methodologies with applications ranging from financial engineering to supply chains. Specifically, he spoke on  stochastic gradient estimation techniques, which are methodologies for deriving computationally efficient estimators used in simulation optimization and sensitivity analysis of complex stochastic systems that require simulation to estimate their performance. His presentation was so clear and I loved such phrases as the "mathematically disadvantaged" and "statistically unconscious."

The photo below I took (apologies that it was not my best) after Professor Fu's presentation. My colleague from engineering, Professor Weibo Gong, also a Harvard PhD and a former doctoral student of Professor Ho's, helped in the hosting.

On November 1, we will be hosting, through the efforts of the UMass Amherst INFORMS Student Chapter, Dr. Les Servi of Mitre, who, coincidentally, had the same PhD advisor at Harvard, Dr. Ho, as did Dr. Fu and Dr. Gong. I have known Les since we overlapped at Brown University. Both Les and Michael are INFORMS Fellows and outstanding scholars. Dr. Servi will be speaking on social media and sports, with a focus on his work in soccer -- it should be a fascinating talk, Last time that he spoke in our series, his topic was on pirates off the coast of Africa! And he gets paid to work on such interesting projects.

Jon Quick, UMass Amherst Hockey Player, Leads the Kings to the Stanley Cup and Hockey History

As those of you who read this blog know, I am now spending time in Gothenburg, Sweden as a Visiting Professor. The experience has been fabulous, professionally and personally.

While residing in Sweden, I can't help but absorb all of the wonderful events, including sports events, since the Swedes not only care about their environment but also are very big on physical fitness and sports.

When I turn on the TV (always entertaining to see the programming in different countries) there are always sports events being televised and lately it has been hockey and, of course, the 2012 Euro soccer matches (more on this later).

Yesterday, sports history was made and the news hit very close to "home."

First, Jonathan Quick, the LA Kings goalie, and former UMass Amherst hockey player, led his team to its first Stanley Cup and on their home ice in LA!

I remember watching Jon Quick play hockey as the goalie at UMass Amherst at the Mullins Center. Since my daughter is a competitive figure skater, over the years we have spent a lot of time at ice rinks, including the wonderful Mullins Center at UMass.

Yesterday (I admit, I am of Ukrainian heritage and Ukrainian is my first language, which I learned in Canada as a child), was also the 2012 Euro soccer match between Sweden and Ukraine, which took place in the capital of Ukraine, Kyiv. Here in Gothenburg, the fans were decked out in blue and gold, and the same in Ukraine, since the flags of both of these countries are blue and gold.

The first half of the soccer game was scoreless. Then, the Swedes scored, and Ukraine's amazing soccer player, Shevchenko (also the surname of the famous Ukrainian poet, Taras Shevchenko), scored two headers and the Ukrainians, who are the co-hosts of 2012 Euro, with Poland, won the game.

Sports draw the audience in not only because of team loyalties but also because of the uncertainty of the outcome of a game and the ongoing suspense.

Two sports that I love to watch, because of the athleticism of the players, are hockey and soccer, and yesterday was a double treat!

Celebrating Sports, the World Series, and the Isenberg School of Management

Sports are an activity that brings people together -- from the players to their families, the coaches and staffs, and, of course, the fans. Sports illustrate the best in all of us, from meeting tough challenges, under, sometimes, grueling and difficult conditions, to outstanding teamwork and good sportsmanship. They also provide a means of escape and entertainment (as great literature does).

Being a professor at the Isenberg School of Management, among its many positives, is that, besides such terrific departments as Finance and Operations Management (my home), Accounting, Management, and Marketing, we also have the Hospitality and Tourism Management department, the Resource Economics department, and one of the top (if not the top) Sports Management department in the country! Plus, in that department there are even a few Yankees fans.

Now that the Yankees have won their 27th World Series and NYC is celebrating tomorrow with a parade on Broadway, as a transplanted New Yorker (via Yonkers), I must say that this is a time to celebrate the Yankees victory!

As an operations researcher, we could say that we were expecting such a win, since Professor Bruce Bukiet of the New Jersey Institute of Technology computed a 70% chance that the Yankees would beat the Phillies in the World Series as reported last week on ScienceDaily.com

For those of you who are interested in learning more about the analytics behind baseball, you may wish to listen to the excellent podcast on Running the Numbers in Time for the World Series in which Professor James Cochran of Louisiana Tech University is interviewed by Barry List of INFORMS. Other podcasts on different topics are also available on that same link.

For now, let's celebrate the specialness and uniqueness of sports!