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.

Looking Forward to Giving a Plenary Talk at the Mathematics for the Real World Conference Taking Place in Odense/Denmark and Kyiv, Ukraine

I received the invitation last December and quickly accepted it.

I am thrilled and honored to have been selected to deliver a plenary talk at the "Mathematics for the Real World" conference happening next month simultaneously in Odense, Denmark and Kyiv, Ukraine. 

Many thanks to the organizers: Khrystyna Gnatenko, Alexander Marynych, Volodymyr Minin, and Anna Lysyanskaya, and to the International Centre for Mathematics in Ukraine - ICMU, its Executive Director Masha Vlasenko and the ICMU Scientific Director Maryna Viazovska, and the Centre for Quantum Mathematics (QM) at Syddansk Universitet - University of Southern Denmark for spearheading this exciting conference. 

I'm enjoying preparing my plenary presentation: "Networks, Supply Chains, and Variational Inequalities." 

Maryna Viazovska, the 2nd female Fields Medalist (and it is great that the 3rd female recipient of this prestigious math award, Hong Wang, was announced yesterday), will deliver the plenary talk: "Formal and Informal Mathematics of Sphere Packing." 

I'm also looking forward to being a panelist on the panel: Maths-Driven Innovations, along with Jean-Pierre Bourguignon, Maryna Viazovska, Oleksii Kuchaiev, Mykola Maksymenko, and Tymofiy Mylovanov. 

Additional information about this 5-day conference, including the invited speakers, and full program, can be found here: https://icmu.ua/en/events/applied-maths-2026

Outstanding EUROPT Conference in Linz, Austria

I am writing this blogpost from Vienna, Austria, where I will soon be registering for the IFORS Conference.

This summer, as is my tradition, I enjoy speaking at conferences, and especially those in Europe.

The travel began on June 26, 2026, when I flew to Naples via Amsterdam to take part in the SING 21 Game Theory Conference, where I delivered the opening keynote on the following Monday morning. The conference was a joy, despite the heat, and I blogged about it: http://annanagurney.blogspot.com/2026/07/i-enjoyed-giving-keynote-at-game-theory.html

Then, last week, I spoke at the EUROPT Conference in Linz, Austria. Linz is the third biggest city in Austria, and it is quite industrial. It was my first time there. Below is a photo of the view from our hotel, which overlooked a nice courtyard.

The EUROPT Conference took place at the Johannes Kepler University, which has a beautiful, green campus, complete with a pond, that reminded me a bit of the UMass Amherst pond.

Many thanks to the organizers of the EUROPT 2026 Conference in Linz, Austria. It was an excellent conference, with great scientific presentations and discussions. Information on the conference can be found here: https://www.jku.at/en/institute-of-business-analytics-and-technology-transformation/conference-europt-2026/. It was wonderful to see Professors: Steven Gabriel of the US, Mauro Passacantando of Italy, Tamás Terlaky of the US, Gerhard-Wilhelm Weber of Poland, Bissan Ghaddar of Canada, Miguel Lejeune of the US, Oleg Prokopyev (now of Switzerland), Immanuel Bomze of Austria, and many others and to make new friends from Georgia (the country), Sweden, Brazil, Canada, and Hong Kong. The link to the slidedeck of my presentation on Ad Valorem Tariffs in Global Supply Chain Networks and Impacts on Labor, based on a recently co-authored published paper with my Isenberg School of Management, UMass Amherst PhD student Samira Samadi:  https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01605682.2025.2592758 is here: https://supernet.isenberg.umass.edu/visuals/EUROPT-2026.pdf

The 4 hour conference banquet in a beer hall in an indoor courtyard with a heavenly dessert of warm chocolate cake, cherries, and sorbet, we will all remember!

And, at the Linz train station yesterday, we saw Professor Tamas Terlaky, who was also heading to the IFORS Conference - https://www.ifors2026.at/home/

I Enjoyed Giving a Keynote at the Game Theory Conference in Naples, Italy

Last week the game theory SING21 Conference took place at the University of Naples Federico II in Naples, Italy. I was deeply honored to give the opening keynote talk on the first day of the conference. The title of my talk was: "Game Theory, Supply Chains, Labor, and Tariffs: Insights from Variational Inequalities." It was very warm in Naples but the hospitality was even warmer. Many thanks to Professor Annamaria Barbagallo for inviting me, with gratitude also to all the local organizers. It was a delight to see Professor Suresh Sethi of UT Dallas,  whose talk I very much enjoyed, and also Professors Frieda Granot and Daniel Granot from the University of British Columbia as well as Professor Yigal Gerchak from Telaviv University. There were delegates from numerous countries at this game theory conference, in addition to the US and Canada and European countries, including: Thailand, Japan, South Korea, HK, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay, and Israel. The slidedeck of my keynote presentation can be downloaded from the Supernetwork Center website: https://supernet.isenberg.umass.edu/visuals/SING-Naples-Nagurney-2026.pdf

I also very much enjoyed the keynote talks by Professors Francis Bloch and Hans Peters and many other presentations. The full program is available on the conference website: https://sites.google.com/view/sing-21

The conference banquet on the Mediterranean with a view of Mt. Vesuvius was fabulous with multiple courses and a delicious chocolate almond cake for dessert. Below are some photos. Professor Annamaria Barbagallo presented me with a lovely gift of a plaque of Mt. Vesuvius!

I am grateful to all those who devote so much time and energy to organizing outstanding scientific conferences in locations that are truly special. Thank you! 

My PhD Students Had a Great Year So We Celebrated

One of the great pleasures of being at a research university is working with PhD students and also celebrating their accomplishments. Yesterday, we celebrated some of the accomplishments of my Isenberg School of Management Operations Management PhD students over this past year with a delicious lunch at The Commonwealth Restaurant at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

Highlights of an excellent academic year have included:

• Dana Hassani receiving the 2026 Isenberg School Outstanding Doctoral Student Teacher Award;
• Ismael Pour successfully teaching a full course, for the first time, and publishing the co-authored paper, "Integrated crop and cargo war risk insurance: application to Ukraine," co-authored with Professor Borys Kormych of Ukraine, and me, in the International Transactions in Operational Research: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/itor.70038
• Samira Samadi publishing the paper, "Fresh produce spatial price equilibrium on general networks: Capturing commodity quality deterioration through endogenous transportation time delay functions with capacities," with Professor Deniz Besik and me in the European Journal of Operational Research: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0377221726003759 and also the paper with me, "Ad valorem tariffs in global supply chain networks and impacts on labor," in the Journal of the Operational Research Society: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01605682.2025.2592758. In addition, Samira successfully taught a full course for the first time plus she served as the President of the UMass Amherst INFORMS Student Chapter!

These PhD students were also very active in presenting their research at conferences of the professional societies: INFORMS, POMS, and DSI. And, Sarvagya Jha had a terrific first year as a PhD student and recently submitted his first paper to a journal. We shared the five exquisite desserts in the photo below.

Wishing all PhD students and their faculty a fabulous and productive summer with great, impactful research.

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.

Delighted that Our Paper on Fresh Produce Trade and "Choke Points" is Published in EJOR!

The three of us worked very hard on this paper, "Fresh Produce Spatial Price Equilibrium on General Networks: Capturing Commodity Quality Deterioration Through Endogenous Transportation Time Delay Functions with Capacities," and it took three revisions (a record for me, I must say) before acceptance. My co-authors on this paper are Samirasadat "Samira" Samadi, who is one of my PhD students, and Professor Deniz Besik of the Robins School of Business at the University of Richmond.

The paper was published in a volume of the European Journal of Operational Research (EJOR) this past week, which was extra exciting since it also was the last week of classes of the academic year at UMass Amherst!

The link to the journal publication of the article is here: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0377221726003759.

The work was inspired by many challenges associated with fresh produce transportation and quality of the commodities because of issues such as drought as in the Panama Canal and now the essential shutdown of the Strait of Hormuz because of the war on Iran. We capture endogeneous transportation delays due to capacity reduction on links and the impact on quality of fresh produce as it travels from supply markets to demand markets. The case study in the paper is on the global trade of bananas, a nutritious and very popular fruit, which is also important for food security. We also propose commodity quality trade network performance measures, supply-based, demand-based, and network-based, that can be applied for an individual commodity or across all commodities.

We are grateful to the EJOR Editor, Professor Mike Yearworth, who handled out paper, and to the reviewers for their comments and suggestions. My co-authors and I very much believe in the relevance and importance of the research that resulted in this paper.

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!

Thrilled that Our Paper on Tariffs and Effects on Labor in Supply Chains is Published Free Access in JORS!

My Isenberg School of Management PhD student, Samira Samadi, and I are thrilled that our paper on ad valorem tariffs and their effects on labor in competitive supply chains is now published in the Journal of Operational Research (JORS). JORS is the flagship journal of the Operational Research Society, which is based in the United Kingdom.

The paper is titled, "Ad Valorem Tariffs in Global Supply Chain Networks and Impacts on Labor." The model is a game theory one of firms competing in an oligopolistic manner, each one seeking to maximize its profits, in the presence of tariffs. The firms seek to determine the optimal production of commodities and their distribution as well as the labor needed, with wages and productivity of labor included.

Illustrative examples are provided along with a global soybean trade case study. Numerical results reveal how such tariffs shift trade flows, reshape labor allocation, and affect demand prices as well as profits, with labor shortages and cost disruptions further negatively compounding the effects.

The Editor in Chief, (EIC) of JORS, Kostas Nikolopoulos of Durham University, has kindly made the paper free access and the link to it is below: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01605682.2025.2592758

With tariffs having wide impacts, both locally and globally, this is one of the very first papers to quantify the effects on labor, trade flows, and profits. We thank the EIC for the expert handling of our paper as well as the anonymous reviewers who provided valuable feedback on the original paper.

Thrilled to Receive the Galleys for Our Tariffs, Rerouting, and Supply Chain Paper for the Rockafellar Volume

It has been a very busy "winter break" with the revising of a 50 page paper with collaborators, the reviewing of multiple journal articles, and also the handling of papers submitted to journals as an Associate Editor. And, of course, the holiday season, with the accompanying festivities also needed attention! Plus, I have also been busy updating my lectures for two classes that I will be teaching this spring at the Isenberg School of Management.

I was delighted to receive from the publisher Springer galleys for the paper, "Multicommodity Trade, Tariffs, and Rerouting," which is in press as a chapter for a very special edited volume in honor of Tyrrell "Terry" Rockafellar on the occasion of his 90th birthday! The volume is titled, "Convex and Variational Analysis with Applications." The volume is edited by Professors Rassias and Pardalos and was originally scheduled for publication in mid December 2025 but now the publication date on the Springer page is March 16, 2026: https://link.springer.com/book/9783032078599.

The paper, which I co-authored with my Isenberg School of Management PhD student, Samirasadat "Samira" Samadi, will be chapter 16 in this special volume.

The galleys (I was delighted) were in great shape and no changes were needed!

Thanks to the typesetters for their outstanding work. We are very much looking forward to the publication of this volume, which I am hearing will have 27 chapters.

Honored to be a Highly Ranked Scholar, Thanks ScholarGPS

I was delighted to be notified during the holiday season  in an emailed message from ScholarGPS that: Your prolific publication record, the high impact of your work, and the outstanding quality of your scholarly contributions have placed you in the top 0.05% of all scholars worldwide according to the most recent 2025 ScholarGPS.

The notification provided additional information that can also be found on the ScholarGPS website: https://scholargps.com/

ScholarGPS provided me with both my Lifetime ranking - #7 in Supply Chains, #14 in Network Model, and #83 in Business and Management (and also Highly Ranked Scholar in All Fields of Scholarly Endeavor).  I was thrilled to hear that I am  #4 in Game Theory over the past 5 years, a methodological framework that I utilize in much of my supply chain modeling work.

I enjoy doing research tremendously (and publishing both journal articles as well as books plus also OpEds, etc.) and aim to make my research, with great students and collaborators,  relevant to pressing global issues.

Nice to have the following certificates from ScholarGPS:

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.

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!

The 2nd Virtual Conference on Ukraine was OUTSTANDING!

I'd like to thank KTH The Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden, for hosting our 2nd Virtual Conference on Ukraine August 22 and 23, 2025. It was truly outstanding. It was an intellectual feast with 3 Nobel Laureates in Economic Sciences: Daron Acemoglu, Roger Myerson, and Paul Krugman delivering keynotes along with Yuriy Gorodnichenko and Subal Kumbhakar. 

I was honored to also give a keynote (the first one) and have posted my presentation as well as that of my Isenberg School of Management, UMass Amherst PhD student Ismael M. Pour on the Supernetwork Center website: https://lnkd.in/gncCNfTK.

I would like to thank the President of KTH Royal Institute of Technology Anders Söderholm for his warm welcoming remarks as well as fellow members of the Organizing Committee: Lars Harvigson, Almas Heshmati, Hans Lööf, Paul Nystedt, Roman Sheremeta and Hans Westlund. I am grateful to all the presenters of papers as well as to the panelists who joined me in discussing: Challenges of Ukraine's Post-War Reconstruction. Thanks also to those who joined us from many different countries and engaged with us. The networks that we are building in support of Ukraine in terms of research, higher education, and policy-making are inspiring.

So many fascinating research questions are  percolating from this conference. The full program can be downloaded here: https://www.kth.se/ukraine-conference.

Thanks to UMass Amherst for issuing this nice press release: https://www.umass.edu/news/article/anna-nagurney-co-organizes-virtual-conference-featuring-three-nobel-laureates-map

Tomorrow we mark Ukraine's Independence Day in commemoration of the Declaration of Independence of 1991. Slava Ukraini.