What an Amazing Week - It's All About Our Students!

Anyone who thinks that professors have a life of routine and their weeks are just punctuated by the classes that they teach are completely wrong.

If you like a predictable routine each day then being an academic is certainly not for you.

On the other hand, those of you who crave novelty, excitement, interactions with fascinating people, the exchange of new ideas as well as dynamism and being surrounded by energy and activity, then being an educator and a college professor is a dream job.

What makes being a college professor so special is the students and all that we do is really for the students!

This week is one of those weeks that highlights the span of activities that a fculty member is engaged in so let me tell you what we have been up to.

On Monday, I was videotaped by a UMass Amherst undergrad who is a member of the Isenberg School of Management Marketing Club for an Isenberg Youtube series that the club started on Meet the Professors. The students are editing my interview and it will be posted soon. I got to hear about the student's major and we reminisced about New Jersey, where he is from. The extracurricular activities that our students are engaged in are diverse and they acquire numerous skills through them.

Then,  after meetings with advisees and doctoral students, it was time to march across campus for a search committee meeting. I am serving, with my great colleagues in Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, on a faculty search for an Assistant Professor in Systems Engineering. We went over the piles of applications and reached a consensus as to the top candidates, which was gratifying. There are fabulous PhD students out there. We will be very busy with their visits and interviews in the coming weeks. And if you want to see how in demand systems engineering expertise is just read about UTC's gift of $10 million to UConn to create an institute with faculty positions.

On Tuesday, I taught my OIM413 Logistics and Transportation class, which I love teaching and will soon be teaching a class today, as well. The students are now identifying the topics that they will be doing their project papers on. These will be individual projects, rather than team projects, due to the late Thanksgiving this year and only one week of classes afterwards. I worked on a rubric (never had one of these in my Brown University days) to help them with their papers. Then, after more meetings it was time for our "weekly" National Science Foundation (NSF) project teleconference. Our project: Network Innovation Through Choice is one of 5 Future Internet Architecture projects selected by NSF. Our project team, consisting of  Professor Tilman Wolf of the College of Engineering, me, and our doctoral students, with Professors Ken Calvert and Jim Griffoen of the U. of Kentucky, Professors Rudra Dutta and Georre Rouskas of NCState, and Dr. Ilia Baldine of the Renaissance Institute at UNC, and their students, is working on a new Internet. We discussed the recent Principal Investigators Meeting that took place in San Diego and you can view the presentations (ours was given by Dr. Dutta)  here.

Then it was time to complete my talk for the TEDx UMassAmherst Professor Speaker Showcase, which takes place next Monday, November 25, in ISOM's Flavin Room. Students had nominated me for this special event and I am so honored and excited to be part of it. On Tuesday, some students had made an elaborate colorful announcement in chalk in my classroom, which was such a surprise -- I was redder than the bright red jacket I wore that day!

On Wednesday, I received a wonderful message from the Founding Editor of the Goteborg Daily, which is an English language newspaper published in Sweden's second largest city, sometimes also spelled and pronounced as "Gothenburg." My interview was published with photos and it brought back so many memories. Many nice messages followed from colleagues and students in Sweden, Austria, and the U.S. (and even from a few thoughtful top administrators) who had seen the article -- Thanks for the support!

My TEDx talk "completed," I met with several of the organizers of this event -- the students are so creative and their attention to detail is impressive -- there will be a red carpet, a spotlight, and even music provided by a group from the Berklee College of Music in Boston! We went through my talk and discussed the background, etc. Plus, I was videotaped also for this event. As one of my doctoral students said, "You always have to look fresh, Professor!"

Then it was time to discuss another pending project with fellow faculty and when I arrived home, after also meeting with a student about her doctoral dissertation proposal, I found in my mailbox a new book that I will be blogging about -- will keep you in suspense as the TEDx folks are doing in announcing one professor speaker each day before next Monday's gala event!

Plus, I heard wonderful news from a student in Vienna, Austria, who had taken my Humanitarian Logistics and Healthcare intensive short course that I taught at the Vienna University of Economics and Business last March (while on sabbatical in Europe).  He had been accepted into its doctoral program to work under my former doctoral student, Tina Wakolbinger, who is now a Full Professor there -- I had written him a letter of recommendation -- so happy about this great outcome!

Today, Thursday, after teaching my class, I will be getting ready for two big events tomorrow. I am serving as a co-supervisor of a doctoral dissertation at the School of Business, Economics and Law at the University of Gothenburg, and, tomorrow, Friday, the student, Niklas Arvidsson, will be defending his dissertation. I will be Skying in early in the morning for the defense. I have been very much enjoying reading his dissertation and attended his Kappa when I was in Gothenburg. The dissertation includes 5 papers that he has published on the overall theme of sustainable freight, which I am very interested in.

After Niklas' defense I will be off to support the students of the award-winning UMass Amherst INFORMS Student Chapter, since we are hosting Master Inventor Dr. Mary Helander of IBM with a reception at 10:30AM in the Isenberg School followed by a one hour Q&A. Then Mary and I will go out to lunch. She has a PhD from Sweden so her visit will be quite special for all of us!

Looking Forward to Speaking at the University of Oklahoma

Tomorrow (yes, Easter Sunday), I will be flying to Oklahoma through Dallas, Texas.

I was invited by Professor Janet K. Allen to take part in a Dream Course, Understanding and Engineering Systems, at the University of Oklahoma. As I wrote in an earlier post, President David L. Boren, who has been the University of Oklahoma's long-serving President, is an avid supporter of this initiative.

On Monday (yes, April Fools' Day), I will be giving two lectures. The first lecture will be in the Dream Course  class and is entitled: "Grand Challenges and Opportunities in Supply Chain Networks: From Analysis to Design."

The second lecture is a public lecture: "Assessing the Performance and Vulnerability of Networks from Transportation to the Internet, Financial Networks, and Supply Chains: Which Nodes and Links Really Matter?

 The notice for the public lecture is online on the page of the Vice President for Research.

I am very much looking forward to seeing a part of the USA that I have never been to.

Plus, the itinerary that has been prepared for me is wonderful and I will be meeting with faculty from the School of Industrial and Systems Engineering there and the School of Computer Science and the School of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering, as well as with administrators.

I will certainly be kept busy!

Another highlight will be meeting with some students of the University of Oklahoma INFORMS Student Chapter over dinner and before my public lecture on Monday night! As the Faculty Advisor of the UMass Amherst INFORMS Student Chapter, this will be an added treat.
 
Tomorrow evening should be an especially exciting time at the University of Oklahoma since the women's basketball team will be playing against Tennessee in the Sweet Sixteen NCAA 2013 event in Oklahoma City, which is very near Norman.

I will post the full presentations after I return back to Massachusetts from Oklahoma.

Go, Sooners!

Meet a UMass PhD Alum Event at the Isenberg School on November 2 and Poster

Yes, today, UMass Amherst is closed and we are hunkering down for the arrival of Hurricane Sandy. Since we still have power and I hope that this good fortune continues, we can still accomplish some work.

We are delighted that Dr. Benneyan, who received his PhD in Mechanical and Industrial Engineering from UMass Amherst, will be speaking at the Isenberg School of Management this Friday in Room 106 at 2PM. Dr. Benneyan's PhD advisor was Dr. Larry Seiford, who is an INFORMS Fellow, and had served at NSF and is now at the University of Michigan.

Professor Benneyan  is a Professor at Northeastern University and his talk is being hosted by the UMass Amherst INFORMS Student Chapter, which I have served as the Faculty Advisor of, for over 8 years.

The students prepared the nice poster below. If you click on the image you can enlarge it.

Also, immediately after Professor Benneyan's presentation on Healthcare Systems Engineering, we will be celebrating the UMass Amherst INFORMS Student Chapter's receipt of the magna cum laude award from INFORMS. This is the sixth award that our chapter has received from our parent society in as many years!

Professor Benneyan is sponsored, in part, by the INFORMS Speakers Program, which I have chaired for the past two years.

In the meantime, all in the Northeast of the US, please stay safe and take care with Hurricane irene.

Healthcare Systems Engineering: Past, Present, Future -- Mark Your Calendars!

Next Friday, we will be hosting Dr. James C. Benneyan at the Isenberg School of Management at UMass Amherst.

Dr. Benneyan will be speaking on Healthcare Systems Engineering: Past, Present, Future.

Dr. Benneyan is a member of the INFORMS Speakers Program, which I have had the privilege of chairing for the past two years. The UMass Amherst INFORMS Student Chapter has invited him to our campus. We will also be celebrating the chapter's receipt of the magna cum laude award at the 2012 INFORMS Conference in Phoenix recently.

Dr. Benneyan is a UMass Amherst alum.

His talk will take place at the Isenberg School of Management in Room 106 from 2-3PM followed by a reception to celebrate the award. Please join us if you can -- it should be a fabulous, informative presentation.

The abstract of Dr. Benneyan's presentation and his bio are below.

Abstract

Problems with our healthcare system are well-known and staggering, including poor access, inefficient processes, equity disparities, practice variability, and patient safety issues, all at enormous costs. Healthcare expenditures now exceed $3 trillion annually (nearly 18% GDP), increasing at almost double inflation and with ~30% attributable to poor processes, error, and waste. Estimates of medical errors include 1.4 million affected patients, 98,000 deaths, and $8.8 billion annually, while avoidable readmissions, variability, and non-compliance cost over $200 billion/year. The enormity of this crisis has prompted the National Academy of Engineering, Institute of Medicine, and others to advocate greater application of systems engineering and operations research over a decade ago, yet not much has changed. Management science, by whatever name, in fact has a long history in health care, recently enjoying another renaissance within academia. This talk is divided roughly into thirds - discussing the state of healthcare today, history of healthcare IEOR and examples of current applications, and important future directions and changes if our field is to have more profound societal impact.

  

Bio

Dr. James Benneyan is director of the Healthcare Systems Engineering Institute at Northeastern University, including undergraduate through doctoral academic and internship programs and three centers funded by the National Science Foundation, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid, and Veterans Health Administration. He is a senior fellow at the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, advisor to CMS’s Innovation center, past vice president of the Institute for Industrial Engineers, and serves on numerous editorial and advisory boards. Benneyan has received nine research, teaching, and service awards; is a fellow of the Society for Health Systems, Institute of Industrial Engineers, and Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society; and has served as principal investigator, director, or co-director in seven research centers and laboratories totaling over $32 million in funding. Prior to Northeastern, he was senior systems engineer at Harvard Community Health Plan, an industrial engineer at IBM and Digital Equipment Corporation, and consultant in a healthcare engineering company. 

Avatars, Computer Modeling, and Networks

I always say that one of the best things about travel is the people that you (might) meet. My most recent trip (about which I have also blogged about) was to give an invited talk at the Social Theory and Social Computing: Steps to Integration Workshop that took place May 22-23, 2010 in gorgeous Honolulu, Hawaii. Not only was the venue perfect but the talks at this workshop were stimulating, thought-provoking, and at, times,, may I say, somewhat controversial. The passion for research was obvious among the speakers and what I appreciated tremendously was the interdisciplinary focus of the research that was presented.

Let me say, that the organizers and the speakers at this workshop have the courage to break through disciplinary boundaries because that is the best way to create new synergies and to stimulate new discoveries. Doing business, as usual, will not yield innovations.

At the workshop, I had the pleasure of meeting (among other fascinating individuals) Professor Barry Silverman, who combines systems engineering (and actually told me that he was also trained in operations research) with behavioral science, and is a Professor at the University of Pennsylvania.

Lo and behold, last Sunday, right on the first page of The Boston Globe, was a feature article on the research that Professor Silverman is conducting under the provocative title: Knowing the Enemy, One Avatar at a Time. The article discussed his research on the computer modeling of villagers in Afghanistan, which has attracted a lot of funding support but also a bit of controversy (any research that goes against the grain is bound to be challenged).

More information about the workshop at which Professor Silverman spoke can be found here and his presentation may be downloaded (if you are impatient) here.

You can read more about Professor Silverman's research as well as the complementary research of Professor Kathleen Carley of CMU (who I have had the pleasure of meeting several times) in an earlier article on the types of networks that they study in the IEEE Spectrum.

The above group photo was taken at the Hawaii workshop. Professor Silverman is the tallest standing in the back row wearing a Hawaiian shirt.