Networks Against Time -- From Food to Pharma

Last week I spoke at the University of Oklahoma and had wonderful experiences and now I am preparing a presentation that I will be giving next week in the Philadelphia area.

I will be speaking at the Penn State's School of Graduate Professional Studies in Great Valley.

The title of my talk is Networks Against Time: From Food to Pharma and the campus has prepared the nice poster below.

More information on my talk is available here.

The INFORMS Philadelphia Chapter had also invited me to speak so I hope to see additional ORMS folks in the audience since my talk is open to the public.

I thank Professor Patrick Qiang of Penn State Great Valley for inviting me to speak and look forward to sharing insights in my talk from the research that we did that is described in the book Networks Against Time: Supply Chain Analytics for Perishable Products.

Women in Operations Research and the Management Sciences and the Analytics Conference

Although I won't be at the INFORMS Analytics Conference, which begins tomorrow in San Antonio, Texas, with many exciting activities, since I have recently returned from speaking at the University of Oklahoma and a month in Europe (Sweden and Austria), in spirit, I will be well-represented by one of our special communities, WORMS (Women in Operations Research and the Management Sciences), and its innovative activities.

Members of WORMS, which is a forum of the professional society INFORMS, received the following message from our President, Dr. Laura McLay:
 

Dear WORMS members, I am excited that WORMS will be participating in several events at the INFORMS Analytics Conference this year.  WORMS is pleased to announce that, due to our many generous sponsors (see below), we were able to sponsor attendance for two students to the Industry Professonal Colloquium at the INFORMS Business Analytics and Operations Research Conference in San Antonio April 7-9, 2013. The two recipients are: Andrea Gallego Fang Dong Fordham Business School Industrial & Operations Engineering Dept. Fordham University University of Michigan, Ann Arbor Candidate for Masters in Business Analytics PhD Candidate August 2013 (expected) May 2013 (expected) Congrats to Andrea and Fang! WORMS will be sponsoring the  Dessert Reception Date: Sunday, April 7, 2013 Time: 8:30 pm – 9:30 pm Location:  Grand Hyatt Republic Room We would like to invite all conference attendees to join us for a dessert reception on the opening night of the conference. WORMS was established in 1995 to encourage interest in the field of OR/MS and to encourage discussion and interaction among individuals having interest in the issues facing women and their relationship to the profession of OR/MS.  WORMS has been actively involved in the INFORMS Annual meeting, and this year WORMS would like to extend its reach to the INFORMS Business Analytics & Operations Research Conference.  We want to gratefully acknowledge the support of our sponsors who made this event and the scholarships possible: Institute for Information Industry Ford SAS IBM Jeppesen Sandia National Laboratory BNSF WORMS will be sponsoring a Birds-Of-A-Feather Discussion Group: Helping Women Negotiate the ORMS Corporate Ladder lead by Rhadika Kulkarni & Brenda Dietrich Monday 4:40 - 6:00pm Presidio B -- Laura A. McLay, PhD Associate Professor Department of Statistical Sciences & Operations Research Virginia Commonwealth University (804) 828-5842 (Office) (804) 828-8785 (Fax) lamclay@vcu.edu http://www.people.vcu.edu/~lamclay/ http://punkrockOR.wordpress.com/ I second the congratulations to the scholarship winners and thank our corporate supporters! I am sure that everyone in the audience for the Birds-Of-A-Feather Discussion Group: Helping Women Negotiate the ORMS Corporate Ladder will benefit from hearing from Dr. Kulkarni and Dr. Dietrich of SAS and IBM, respectively. I had the pleasure of visiting SAS two autumns ago since one of my former PhD students, Dr. Padma Ramanujam, works there and was so impressed by Dr. Kulkarni and the facilities at SAS, that I wrote a blogpost (with photos) on my visit. We have had the pleasure of hosting Dr. Brenda Dietrich at the Isenberg School of Management at UMass Amherst in our UMass Amherst INFORMS  Speaker Series and she was also one of the plenary speakers in the First Northeast Regional INFORMS Conference in May 2011 that we helped to organize on the UMass Amherst campus. To all at the Analytics Conference in San Antonio, enjoy!

What if Your Plane Was Hit by Lightning and a Highly Perishable Product

This past Tuesday, April 2, I was trying to get back from Oklahoma City to Amherst, Massachusetts.

I had had a fabulous stay at the University of Oklahoma in Norman, during which I gave two  lectures as part of a Dream Course there. I wrote about the outstanding hospitality of my hosts in a post.

The weather in Oklahoma on April 1 was delightful -- warm and sunny,  but,  on my flying day back, it was fray and stormy, and I had heard thunder since about 4AM that night.

When I got to the Oklahoma City airport, courtesy of my wonderful host, Professor Janet K. Allen, I saw that my flight to Dallas was delayed and that I would not be able to make the connecting flight to Bradley airport in Hartford/Springfield.

So I agreed to be rerouted to Chicago O'Hare.

The lightning was continuing and as I stood in line waiting to get a sandwich I started a conversation with the lady in front of me who asked where I was flying to. She then told me that a plane that had just flown in from Chicago had been struck by lightning.

I wandered over to my gate and saw no plane, but, given my endless academic curiosity, I proceeded to investigate. She had also told me that there were long lines and that the airline was offering vouchers (I would not mind seeing Hawaii again).

The Southwest plane below was the one that had been struck by lightning as it was descending into the Oklahoma City Airport, and the mechanics could not start working and checking it out until the lightning was more than three miles away, for safety reasons.

The passengers had seen a bright flash of light in the plane when the lightning struck.

Many nervous passengers that were scheduled to fly on the above plane to Chicago were milling around Gate 18 whereas others were being rerouted.

A woman with an infant against her chest approached the gate agent.  I was going to talk to him since as a professor,  who teaches a course in transportation and logistics, among other operations-type courses, I wanted to gather more information that I could share with my students. I dug up this article from Scientific American on what can happen when lightning strikes a plane.

The woman said that she was traveling, via Chicago, on Southwest,  to Manchester, New Hampshire, where she was relocating to, and on the plane above, with the other cargo, was about a 4 month supply of breast milk.

Breast milk is a perishable product and, I thought to myself, having just had our latest book, Networks Against Time: Supply Chain Analytics for Perishable Products, published, that this "product" has similar characteristics to that of human blood -- you have to give it willingly and it is ingested into another human body. Blood supply chains are one of the case studies in our book.

The mother was panicky. She had done her homework and had about a 10 hour time window in which to get her very valuable packages back into the freezer.  I could really empathize and, being a problem-solver, I offered some suggestions.

In about 40 minutes or so, the plane was cleared for flying and the passengers had boarded (but two who were having lunch were not let back on board once the doors were shut).

And  I went to thank the Southwest gate agents when I heard that the plane from Chicago to Manchester would be held for the mother, her baby, and their valuable cargo!

In my research, I came upon this interesting post about shipping perishables, including blood and breast milk, in disasters, such as Haiti.

About an hour later, I got on my American Airlines flight to Chicago and eventually made it back to Massachusetts. On my leg from O'Hare to Bradley I was seated next to an executive and we talked non-stop. He had been to 116 countries and was in Vienna, Austria when I had been there in March. We discussed everything from our favorite cities to the US healthcare system and how he, at age 72, cannot even think of retiring since work is so interesting. He works in the international insurance business so we also talked about trust, reputation, and the importance of meeting people face-to-face -- and, hence, one of the reasons we fly so much!

A Thank You to the School of Industrial & Systems Engineering at the University of Oklahoma

I made it back late last night from the University of Oklahoma where, on April 1, I had had a whirlwind day, as part of the Dream Course, Understanding and Engineering Systems, that I had been invited to speak in. I delivered two lectures, one in the afternoon, and one in the evening, on supply chains and network vulnerability, respectively.

This post is to thank the School of Industrial & Systems Engineering at the University of Oklahoma for the outstanding hospitality!

I stayed two nights in a Sooners Suite, which is actually a  large cabin. My suite had 2 bedrooms,  a huge livingroom, kitchen, and dining area, and I could not resist taking the photos, which feature a lot of University of Oklahoma (OU) decorations and memorabilia. Plus, there was a welcome bag for me upon my arrival.

One of the high points of my visit to OU included getting a quick  (my schedule was packed with meetings with faculty and students) drive around tour of campus by Dr. Randa Shehab, the Director of the School, and I managed to take a few snapshots below. The flowers were blooming, the sun was shining, it was warm (in contrast, it was snowing back home in Massachusetts), and the buildings and landscaping are simply stunning at OU!

 

Several groups of Master's and doctoral students presented overviews of their research projects to me -- very impressive and interesting work that is pushing both conceptual and methodological frameworks as well as applications from supply chains to energy to material science.

I also met with some faculty from the School of Computer Science and the Director of the School of Computer Science and had heard that my UMass CS colleague, Professor Don Towsley, had given a talk there a few months ago. It is such a small world in academia!

After my Dream Course lecture, and prior to my evening public lecture, I had dinner with the Faculty Advisors of the University of Oklahoma INFORMS Student Chapter, Professors Kash Barker and Hillel Kumin, in a room in the beautiful Student Union building -- to prove that I was actually there the photo below is of me standing in one of the rooms -- yes, those are oriental carpets and real flowers and plush chairs:

 

 

The Faculty Advisors for the OU INFORMS Student Chapter are standing to the right of the student chapter team leaders  in the photo above that I took after our dinner. The student chapter was very happy to have received the cum laude award from INFORMS (for the second time) at the Phoenix Annual meeting last Fall. We discussed the activities of the UMass Amherst INFORMS Student Chapter that I have been the Faculty Advisor of for the past 9 years and compared notes and activities, including taking advantage of the great INFORMS Speakers Program!

Finally, I have to thank my host and the one resposible for this Dream Course, Professor Janet K. Allen, the John and Mary Moore Chair, for such outstanding hospitality. It even included a sumptuous buffet of Indian food at the Himalayas restaurant in Norman on Sunday evening, with her husband, Professor Farrokh Mistree, the Director of the School of Aerospace & Mechanical Engineering, and L.A. Comp Chair.

They also made sure that I saw the stunning engineering practice building (as told to me if athletes have practice buildings, engineers, should, too) in which I captured some of the student projects that will be entered in various competitions. Would you believe that the College of Engineering at OU has 200 National Merit Scholars!

I carried back an autographed copy of the book, A Letter to America, by David Boren, the President of the University of Oklahoma, given to me by Dr. Shehab.

The University of Oklahoma set new standards for academic hospitality -- thank you and congratulations on all the achievements from research scholarship to education!

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!

UMass Tough

Yesterday, I had the pleasure of dining at the UMass University Club in Amherst, in the building which dates to 1728.

The occasion was to discuss opportunities for our students, in terms of projects and internships, and opportunities for the faculty in the Isenberg School, in terms of research, that would be of interest/relevance to our guest from the Boston area. The guest at the lunch is a top exec at a financial services firm. He had met with some Computer Science faculty that morning.

Our guest was a UMass Amherst alum who had graduated over 35 years ago. He was going to meet with our Chancellor after our lunch.

Joining me at the lunch was a colleague of mine, a representative from the top administration for development, and also a representative responsible for UMass industry partnerships.

The conversations that we had were fabulous -- from high technology to network and cyber security to how it was to be a UMass student back in the days -- late 1960s and early 1970s. He was impressed that UMass dining services are now consistently recognized with national awards and I have even dined on lobster in one of our Dining Commons!

Our guest of honor was so engaging and interesting and it was fascinating to discuss some of the challenges faced by industry on the topics above. As someone who loves computer programming, we also had great discussions about computing from mainframe computing and cloud computing to mobile apps.

Our guest of honor had lived, as an undergrad, in Southwest, in one of the high rise dorms. He had lived on the 22nd floor (my daughter has freshman friends who now reside on the 21st and 22nd floors and one has an elevator phobia).

He was an undergrad during the Richard Gere days (yes, the movie star) and Dr. J. of basketball fame.

In our conversations, I noted that UMass students, including those who live in Southwest (many of whom, honestly, love the experience),  develop a kind of resiliency that is very useful in their professional careers.


I told him that right on the Isenberg School of Management homepage we have what may be our motto:

Resilient Leadership for an Evolving Business Climate.

He responded that the UMass motto maybe should be: UMass Tough, which, frankly, I really like! I told him to suggest this motto to our Chancellor. According to Wikipedia, we do have a motto but, honestly, this is the first time I have ever heard of it.

Later, he was going to meet his college room-mate, whom he had not seen in 35 years, and who is an architect in Conway.

A delightful time with a wonderful UMass alum. I do hope that we can build some strong partnerships -- he told me that his firm has over 300 UMass alums in high positions.

 

Felt Like the Chairman of General Motors

Now that I am back from another wonderful stint in Europe I have some time to reflect on my great experiences as a Visiting Professor in Sweden and as a Guest Professor in Austria.

I have blogged over the past several weeks about academic and travel experiences in Europe but today I would like to share with my readers some photos.

On March 12, 2013, I gave a big seminar at the Vienna University of Economics and Business (WU), after teaching that morning the Humanitarian Logistics and Healthcare course that I was offering there. The seminar was on Perishable Product Supply Chains in Healthcare: Models, Analysis, and Computations and  the nice announcement for it is online here.  My hosts during my stay in Vienna were Professor Manfred Fischer and Professor Tina Wakolbinger with great hospitality also provided by Dr. Petra Staufer-Steinnocher.

I was impressed by the seminar room, in the photos below, with the largest corporate-looking table I had ever seen.

 

I felt like I was the Chairman of General Motors (GM) speaking to my board!

I must admit that I do have a connection to one former Chairman of GM and that is to Mr. John F. Smith Jr. (or "Jack" when we converse and correspond). I hold the John F. Smith Memorial Professorship of Operations Management at the Isenberg School of Management, which is named after his father. Both graduated from UMass Amherst and Jack studied Operations Management, whereas his father.had graduated from the Stockbridge School at UMass Amherst. Jack had also been the President and the CEO of GM.

He is a fabulous role model and I am sure that he would be delighted to hear that one of my former PhD students, Dr. Tina Wakolbinger, is now the Director of the Supply Chain Management Institute at  WU in Vienna.

 

And you can read from The New York Times what Jack Smith did once he stepped down from the board of GM. Transportation, whether by land, or air, is simply in our blood!

I am preparing a package to mail to him, which will include my new book:

As for alternative modes of transportation that I saw in Vienna, I liked those below.

Enjoy the flowers from Vienna and Happy Spring!