Thanks to ALL Who Took Part in Our International Conference on Dynamics of Disasters in Greece

It has been an incredibly busy, yet energizing, several few weeks with two international conferences on different continents and different seasons (summer and winter).

I'd like to take the opportunity to thank all those who took part in the 6th International Conference on Dynamics of Disasters, which took place in Piraeus, Greece, July 3-6, 2023.

The below collage was constructed to capture a few of the highlights.

The venue of the conference was the Historical Library of the Aikaterini Laskaridis Foundation in Piraeus.

We had the pleasure of hearing from outstanding plenary speakers, both practitioners and academics.

It was inspiring to see conferees representing many different countries including: Austria, Germany, Nepal, Japan, Canada, Greece,  Italy, Turkey, the UK, and the US.

In a period in history with compounding disasters, the exchange of knowledge and best practices and working together to address the great challenges that we are faced with are needed more than ever.

Information about the conference, including the presenters and their talk titles can be found on the conference website.

I had the pleasure of presenting work done with my PhD student at the Isenberg School of Management Dana Hassani and colleagues at the Kyiv School of Economics: Professor Oleg Nivievskyi and Dr. Pavlo Martyshev. The link to the slidedeck of the presentation can be accessed here.

Not everyone could join us because of visa and other extenuating circumstances. Sadly, in April, Professor Urmila Pyakurel of Nepal passed away. She was an avid participant in our previous Dynamics of Disasters conference. We paid a tribute to her in Piraeus. A PhD student of hers presented on their joint work. Urmila lost her life to cancer, which she had battled for many years. She was also a Humboldtian. You can read about some aspects of her amazing life here.

And, while I was at the IFORS conference in Santiago, Chile, July 10-14, 2023, at which I gave a keynote, we heard from Springer Nature that we are getting a contract to edit the volume: "Dynamics of Disasters: From Natural Phenomena to Human Activity." My fellow Co-Editors on this project are: Professors Ilias S. Kotsireas, Panos M. Pardalos, Stefan Pickl, and Chrys Vogiatzis. It was a pleasure to work with them on the organization of this very timely conference.

Wildfire Fuel Management and Operations Research: Fabulous Talk by Prof. Dmytro Matsypura from Australia

This has been a truly amazing week!

We not only celebrated the UMass Amherst INFORMS Student Chapter receiving the Magna Cum Laude Award from INFORMS at the recent conference in Houston, but we also hosted  Dr. Dmytro Matsypura from the School of Business at the University of Sydney in Australia!

Dr. Matsypura was my former doctoral student at the Isenberg School and received his PhD in 2006, with a concentration in Management Science. He is now a tenured Senior Lecturer (equivalent to a tenured Associate Professor) and has been recognized for his exceptional teaching with awards.  He is also a Center Associate at the Supernetwork Center at the Isenberg School. Below is the notice for the talk that he delivered yesterday which was outstanding!

Dr. Matsypura spoke on his latest research on a topic of great relevance -- that of wildfire fuel management. The talk was based on an article with the same title, which is literally, "hot off the press" and published in the European Journal of Operational Research, volume 264(2), 2018, pp. 774-796.  The article was co-authored by Professor Oleg A. Prokopyev of the University of Pittsburgh, and an undergraduate student of Matsypura's: Aizat Zahar, who is from Malaysia and has since graduated.

Dr. Matsypura had the audience at the edges of their seats as he spoke about the number of wildfires in the past year in the US, and in Canada (over 50,000 each with millions of hectares burned) and how the model he constructed with Prokopyev and Zahar can assist in prescribed burning, while taking into consideration not only the biology of the fuel provided by the vegetation in the region, but also zones, and how often the prescribed burning takes place. He described in a very eloquent and commanding way the nonlinear equations underlying the model and how they can be linearized; how  graphs can be used to represent zones in a region, and the role that network interdiction plays. I absolutely loved the way in which he presented different objective functions that the authors had explored and how this impacted the solutions as well as the computational results. In addition, he described a heuristic that was very effective.

Dr. Matsypura noted that there are very few papers in this area and even mentioned that we can learn a lot from aborigines as to how to do prescribed burning. Australia has been doing prescribed burns for 30-40 years now and the goal is to burn on purpose so as to remove "fuel" and to do it sustainably.

He made some very quotable statements including one of my favorites - how we sometimes may need "less complexity - more usability."

The paper I am sure will be very highly cited and he has already spoken with practitioners in both Australia and the US (Montana)  on the results that he has obtained. His talk was an example of how a passion for an important application can drive great Operations Research in terms of model and methodological advances.

We first welcomed him with a dinner on Thursday evening.

On Friday, Dr. Tony Butterfield, who had been the PhD Program Director at the Isenberg School, when Dmytro matriculated, stopped by to give him a hug.

We also managed to take the photo below in the Supernetwork Lab with several of my Doctoral Student Center Associates, including Deniz Besik and Mojtaba Salarpour.

The turnout for his talk was excellent and it even made the UMass Amherst homepage!

I was surprised and delighted when even Professor Amir H. Masoumi, also a former doctoral student of mine, and an Isenberg PhD alum, who is now a Professor at the School of Business at Manhattan College in NYC, showed up! And there was even a guest from the United Nations in NYC.

We then took Dr. Matsypura to lunch at the UMass Amherst University Club, where the food and conversation were terrific. Dr. Masoumi also joined us as did my doctoral students, including Pritha Dutta.

And, in the afternoon, Professor Jose M. Cruz, of the School of Business at UConn, stopped by the Supernetworks Lab. Jose was also one of my doctoral students and a contemporary of Dmytro's and is a great friend of his.

This was a talk and a visit to remember - inspiring, energizing, and very impressive. The UMass Amherst INFORMS Student Chapter also conducted a video interview with Dr. Matsypura and when it gets posted we will certainly let you know!

Thanks to an Isenberg School of Management PhD alum and Supernetwork Center Associate whose research and teaching are making a big impact and difference!