Photos from the 2010 CMS Conference in Vienna, Austria

The 2010 Computational Management Science conference took place July 28-30, 2010 in gorgeous Vienna, Austria.

Above are photos taken at this conference. For a full page of photos, which are also downloadable, click here.

I thank the organizer, Professor Georg Pflug, from the University of Vienna, for an outstanding venue, excellent plenary talks, and a wonderful social program.

It is very important to go to conferences, both smaller, specialized ones, as well as other more general conferences in one's professional/academic areas. One never knows whom one may meet and what interesting opportunities may arise from the serendipity of face to face encounters and discussions on topics of mutual interest!

Plus, it is so special to reconnect with many friends and colleagues from around the world in interesting locations!

Driving with Igor -- My Taxi Driver in Yalta

I made it back to Massachusetts last night after almost two weeks of travel, including eight flights, to speak at conferences in Vienna, Austria, and in Yalta, Ukraine.

I was feeling like George Clooney in the movie, "Up in the Air," and even a Lufthansa stewardess told me that my schedule had been much worse than hers. Also, Clooney never had to speak anything but English during his air travels.

But this is not a blogpost about my adventures in flight (those will come later) but my experiences driving in Ukraine with Igor, my taxi driver.

As I had written earlier, I landed at the Simferopol airport last Saturday as dusk was approaching on a flight from Kiev. Simferopol airport is in the Crimea, Ukraine, and I have never been to such an unusual and tiny airport. I was met by a swarm of taxi drivers (some of my colleagues call them sharks but I recognize that they just want to earn a living) and was able to identify my prearranged driver, "Igor," by his white cap, big smile, and his sign with an "A" on it. When I asked him, in Russian, what his name was, he answered, "Igor," so we were on our way.

The one and a half hour drive from Simferopol to the Hotel Yalta, where the second conference of my journey was taking place, was rather anxiety-provoking, since there is only one road between these two points; the road is shared by 70 year old trolley busses, and the road is extremely curvy, with the Black Sea on one side and the Crimean mountains on the other. Also, cars pass one another regularly on this road. (I have taken taxis in Naples and have been on a bus up to Anacapri on the island of Capri, so I have had my share of scary land-based travel experiences abroad).

Plus, Igor had a tv set on (he was very proud of his German-made Opel car), and, every once in a while, he would answer his cell phone calls. To distract him from using the cell I engaged him in conversation in Russian and got a lot of practice. He paid me what I consider to be a compliment. He identified me, given my accent, as being from Western Ukraine (and not a US citizen).

Igor told me about his life, about his going to school in Chechnya, and having been trained as a military parachutist and serving in Pskov, Russia. He, ultimately, fell in love with a girl in Crimea and decided to settle there. He regalled me with stories of some of the passengers that he had transported to/from the Yalta Hotel, which is a 1,000 room amazing hotel that I stayed in that dates to the Soviet era.

When we reached the hotel, I breathed a huge sigh of relief, paid him $50US (he preferred this method of payment to the Ukrainian currency), and told him that I would probably be using him again the following Wednesday for my morning return trip to the Simferopol airport for the flight to Kiev.

When Wednesday came, Igor was waiting for me at 7AM at the Hotel Yalta and my journey back began. Driving with Igor in the daylight was delightful (since, in a strange way, we had become friends). Frankly, he reminded me a bit of of the gentle giant Shrek (see photo above), which, coincidentally, was the movie playing on my Lufthansa flight from Frankfurt back to Boston.

Igor displayed such joy in his family, in his garden, and in his cats and dogs, and in his job of being a taxi driver, that it was very refreshing. We laughed a lot during our journey back.

He stopped the taxi to show me some magnificent views featured above (but his photo of me did not work). Upon our arrival at the Simferopol Airport, he treated me to an espresso at a tiny cafe opposite the terminal.

I have Igor's business card and would definitely use him again should my travels take me back to Yalta or the Crimea. He has even driven passengers to Kiev (10 hours) when flights were canceled due to bad weather.

What a Conference in Yalta

The second day of the 3rd Yalta Conference on Optimization with the theme of Network Science is now over with ( at least the technical part). The conference organizers have even planned an excursion to a local winery for this afternoon.

Yalta is a historic city located in Crimea, Ukraine.

I have enjoyed listening to the talks very much on wide-ranging network topics, including a fantastic talk on sensor networks in space and influence of space weather with risk analysis, prediction, and optimization.

Yesterday I gave a keynote talk, "Fragile Networks: Identifying Vulnerabilities and Synergies in an Uncertain World," which may be accessed in pdf format here.

Participants at this conference have come from the US, from Ukraine, Russia, Italy, and Romania. Some are students at US or Ukraine universities. The group from Romania drove for three days to get here; a couple from the US flew into Kiev and then drove down, whereas another group from Kiev took the train, which was late and they missed my talk.

It has been very special to be in this beautiful part of the world and to hear Ukrainian as well as Russian spoken.

The organizers of this conference have outdone themselves in attention to detail.

The banquet last night was exquisite and I will post photos after I return to the US.

In Ukraine for Network Science Conference

Yesterday I flew on Austrian Airlines from Vienna to Kiev, Ukraine. One of my seatmates was a Japanese lady who had graduated from Cornell University in regional planning and who works for the UN (UNICEF) in Kiev. We had a delightful conversation. The other seatmate was a lady from Donetsk who for years has been working in Italy although her husband and children live in Ukraine. I talked politics with her and it was so interesting to get a female perspective.

I was met at the Kiev airport by a colleague in operations research from the University of Pittsburgh who then took me out to lunch since I had a 5 hour wait until my flight to Yalta.

The lunch at the Kozachok restaurant was one of the best meals of my life -- delicious borshcht and varenyky (which are like dumplings) which were filled with cabbage and carrots and sauteed onions. We ate outdoors at a covered patio.

This trip to Ukraine has special meaning for me since it is the first time that I am visiting the country of the birthplace of my parents. The people are warm and very kind, and it is wonderful to hear my first language spoken and even announcements made in it.

I must say that the organizers of the Yalta Optimization conference with the theme of Network Science this year have been treating me royally.

My flight on Ukraine International Airlines from Kiev to Simferopol was excellent and my seatmates were gentlemen from Dubai (who amazingly ended up checking in at the same hotel just before me in Yalta). As for this airport, let me say that it is out of another era.

I was met by a taxi driver named Igor (this was preplanned and I was very grateful for this particular attention to detail) who wore a white cap and who had a sign with "A." We talked nonstop for an hour and a half during the winding taxi ride to Yalta. I had a great time conversing with him in Russian (he did identify that I had a Ukrainian accent).

The conference hotel is fantastic with views of the Black Sea on one side and mountains on the other.

Today I have a day of rest before the talks begin tomorrow.

I will be giving another keynote talk (different from the one I gave in Vienna last week).

There is nothing like international travel to enlighten one.

By the way, the gentlemen from Dubai had spent several days in Kiev and loved the city which they told me has a very special spirit.

Last Day of the Computational Management Science Conference in Vienna

Today is the last day of the 2010 Computational Management Science (CMS) conference that is taking place in Vienna, Austria. The weather is now cool and rainy but it should be clearing up later today.

It has been absolutely wonderful to listen to talks on topics ranging from the design of transportation networks for hazardous material shipments, to the analysis of earmarks and financing in humanitarian operations to the formulation of teams and resource allocation.

I have been going to the supply chain, transportation, and networks stream of talks and also to several of the game theory and stochastic programming ones.

Many of the participants have told me that they will be coming back to future CMS conferences since they have learned so much from this conference and have also had a wonderful time socially.

The next CMS conference will take place in Spring 2011 in Neuchatel, Switzerland.

Today I will be attending another plenary lecture (the final one and the closing session of this conference) which will be delivered by Dr. Claudia Sagastizabal who is Argentinian but works in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

I commend the organizers for having two female plenary speakers (out of four)!

My plenary talk, Supply Chain Networks: Challenges and Opportunities from Analysis to Design, can be accessed, in pdf format here. Given the number of positive comments that I have received from audience members, I believe that I got the importance of this topic and the fascinating applications across.

Plenary talks play a very important role at scientific conferences. I have already extended my congratulations to the other plenary speakers -- Professor Campi of the University of Brescia in Italy and Professor Pistikopoulos of Imperial College in London. The content of their talks as well as their delivery of them were fabulous. I am getting intellectually spoiled here by the originality of and creativity behind the research presented.

The organizers have done a magnificent job of getting this conference together and I thank them as well.

A Perfect First Day at the CMS Conference in Vienna

My flight from Logan Airport in Boston to Frankfurt via Lufthansa was wonderful except that there was a dog underneath my seat named Bailey, who is a shitzu, and who whined painfully for hours. Some of us thought that the plane was experiencing mechanical difficulties.

As I wrote back in May on this blog, on my flight back from Honolulu, there was a cat next to me that a serviceman had brought on board.

Bailey's owner said that it was his third trip to Germany and, for some reason, he could not settle down. I managed to converse a bit with my seatmate and read the NYTimes but then decided that with the conference and my speaking engagements in Europe I had better get some sleep. Luckily, a stewardess found me another aisle seat so that I could catch some shuteye. My new seatmate was a postdoc from Germany, who is Italian, and who was returning from a Gordon conference in New Hampshire so we ended up having a delightful conversation about scientific research and even the World Cup and we even managed to get some sleep.

The Lufthansa plane had terrific and very comfortable seats and the bathrooms (first time I had seen this) were in the middle of the plane and a staircase down (lots of legroom there).

After a brief layover at the Frankfurt airport I caught my Austrian Airways flight to Vienna.

Yesterday was the first day of the Computational Management Science conference which is taking place in glorious Vienna, Austria. The weather here is sunny and cool with gentle breezes -- simply perfect and a very welcome break from the heat back in the US.

Yesterday I gave the opening keynote talk on supply chains networks and had a chance to speak at another session that I had organized. In the latter, one of my former doctoral students, Professor Tina Wakolbinger also spoke, and it is always extra special to see former students doing so well. In addition, a group of us, including colleagues from Texas and Florida, went out to lunch together.

Last evening a group of us was invited to Professor Georg Pflug's home in Vienna for a lavish dinner buffet. Professor Pflug is the organizer of this conference. It was the perfect evening with colleagues from around the world conversing and dining in an elegant setting.

It will be hard to leave this magnificent city!

Of course, I already also managed to indulge in some delicious Mozart kugel chocolates.

Packing as an Optimization Problem -- Off to Europe

I will soon be on a two week trip to Europe to speak at conferences and have begun to pack.

Packing a suitcase is an optimization problem to which we can apply the tools of operations research.

First, consider the constraints:

I am assuming one carryon suitcase which must fit into the overhead compartment in the airplane(s) so I have to deal with a limited volume.

I am also limited as to the weight of the fully packed suitcase since I insist on carrying my suitcase on the plane and having it with me in my travels. (I recall not so fondly having to dump some of my favorite shoes at the Auckland airport since I was over the weight limit and refuse, if at all possible, to check my luggage, since my suitcase from Japan, lost two decades ago, compliments of United, has yet to arrive.) Also, every academic has his share of horror stories of suitcases that arrived at the destination after the talks were given.

One should pack for the weather (so I have been checking the weather forecasts for my two destinations) and for the occasion. I have to give two plenary talks so I have to look professional for the duration of the two conferences (besides my European mother instilled this in me and even as a child she dressed me in suits). In Vienna, the temps are forecasted to be rainy and cooler next week whereas Yalta is a summer tourist destination on the Black Sea and can be quite warm (but probably cooler than in the steamy Northeast of the US now).

Of course (I wonder whether male academics care about this), I believe that the clothing that one takes should be color-coordinated and in good taste (and one should not wear the same outfit every day). Plus, with the right combination of skirts, tops, and accessories (shoes matter, too), one can maximize the number of outfits that one can generate. One has to factor in those evening banquets and conference excursions.

Going for this period of time, one needs to also plan for including some exercise, so I will make do with a good pair of sneakers and some colorful t-shirts and shorts.

Luckily, conferences in the summer only require lighter-weight clothing!

So, I need to identify which resources (pieces of clothing) I should take with me in the carryon suitcase so that they do not exceed the volume of the suitcase nor the weight limit and maximize some representation of the utility or satisfaction that I get from bringing and wearing them. Additional constraints include "matching" type of constraints -- I can't very well just show up in only tops or only bottoms but need each day a complete outfit when I venture out.

One of my most challenging extended business trips took place a few years ago when I had to speak in Cyprus (where it was very hot), then fly to Iceland for a conference (with temps in the mid40s), and then back to give a talk in Erice, Sicily, where it was also very warm. Luckily, my husband and daughter met me in Iceland and brought warm clothing so I did not have to deal with that part.

I emailed my presentations to the organizers of the two conferences so I don't have to lug a laptop but have backups on a pendrive.

I solved the above optimization problem and am delighted with the result. I could include a photo of my suitcase contents but, instead, I will surprise you with photos after this trip.

And, remember to always take an umbrella!