Photos from Tutorials from Dynamic Network Analysis to Crowd Sourcing and Public Health

Yesterday, I had the pleasure of introducing the outstanding tutorial presenters at the Social Computing, Behavioral-Cultural Modeling, and Prediction Conference (SBP 2012) at the University of Maryland College Park.

The tutorials were given by Dr. Kathleen Carley (Dynamic Network Analysis), by Dr. Hyam Hirsh (Crowdsourcing, Human Computation, and Collective Intelligence) and by Dr. Patty Mabry and Dr. Nate Osgood (Public Health Concepts: An Introduction to Modelers).

The audience learned so much from these truly informative tutorials and, as the tutorial chair, I would like to thank the tutorial presenters for the breadth and depth of fascinating information that they delivered yesterday. I am hoping that we can post the slides from the tutorials on the conference website and will let you know if/when this is done.

The day flew by much too soon, and all those in the audience were treated to an intellectual feast on some of the most timely research topics today.

Above are some photos taken yesterday at the SBP 2012 conference.

I had to return early, since I was committed to doing a TV interview today for a PBS Channel and the program Connecting Point.

I will let you know when the interview airs. It was motivated by the upcoming PBS production America Revealed, for which I was interviewed by Yul Kwon, for an educational segment on transportation and the Braess paradox.

SBP 2011 Conference Highlights Through Photos

The SBP 2011 conference has been a huge success from the outstanding tutorials and great keynotes, as well as paper presentations (with a refereed proceedings volume), plus social activities.





One of the absolute highlights was sponsorship of 30 students to attend this conference!

Many, many thanks to the sponsors: NSF, NIH, ONR. AFOSR, and ARO for bringing together computer scientists, social scientists from economists to anthropologists, operations researchers and management scientists, applied mathematicians, biologists, medical professionals, cognitive scientists and psychologists, as well as engineers and network scientists!

Special thanks to the Conference Co-chairs, Professor Dana Nau of the University of Maryland and Professor Sun-ki Chai of the University of Hawaii, and to the Program Co-Chairs: John Salerno of the Air Force Research Lab and Professor Jay Yang of the Rochester Institute of Technology for such an excellently organized conference, the terrific venue, and so many stimulating discussions plus such a delicious set of lunches and coffee breaks!

Special thanks also to the Conference Committee:

Huan Liu, Arizona State University
John Salerno, Air Force Reasearch Laboratory
Sun Ki Chai, University of Hawaii
Patricia L. Mabry, Office of Behavioral and Social Sciences Research, National Institutes of Health
Dana Nau, University of Maryland
V.S. Subrahmanian, University of Maryland

It was an honor to be on this team as the tutorial chair!

Three Fabulous Plenary Speakers Confirmed for the Northeast Regional INFORMS Conference!

I can hardly contain my excitement.

We have three outstanding plenary speakers confirmed for the Northeast Regional INFORMS Conference that will take place at UMass Amherst, May 6-7, 2011, and they are:

Dr. Brenda Dietrich of IBM, who will speak on a Smarter Planet.

Dr. Alex "Sandy" Pentland of the Media Lab at MIT, who will give the plenary talk: Building A Nervous System for Humanity: Making Health, Financial, Logistics, and Transportation Networks Work, and

Dr. David Simchi-Levi of MIT, who is also the Editor of the flagship journal, Operations Research, who will be speak on Flexibility--From Practice to Theory.

The panels for this conference are also confirmed and I am delighted that there will be an all student panel.

Please check out the conference website, since it is regularly getting updated.

Both Dr. Brenda Dietrich and Dr. Sandy Pentland spoke earlier in our UMass Amherst INFORMS Speaker Series, so it will be terrific to welcome them back. I will be seeing Dr. Pentland even before then, since he is giving a tutorial at the SBP 2011 conference that will take place at the University of Maryland College Park at the end of this month. I am serving as the Tutorial Chair at this conference.

And, as for a confirmed tutorial at our UMass Amherst conference, I am absolutely delighted that Mr. Greg H. Parlier, a retired colonel, will give the tutorial: Transforming U.S. Army Supply Chains: Management Innovation in DoD for Improved Efficiency, Productivity, and Cost-Effective Global Operations.

This will certainly be a Spring with some wonderful conferences, which I will be blogging about, of course!

Thanks to all the conference organizers and program committee members who devote so much time and effort to the organization of these important venues for researchers, practitioners, and students alike!

Hope to see you at UMass Amherst in the beautiful month of May and even at the SBP 2011 conference before then, if your schedules permit!