A Few of My Favorite Places, Thus Far, as a Visiting Fellow at Oxford University

Yesterday was a glorious day here in Oxford, England with warm temperatures and the sun shining brightly.  Since I have had many requests to share more of my experiences as a Visiting Fellow at All Souls College at oxford University, with requests coming even from Italy and Colombia, in this blogpost I highlight, through photos, some of my favorite places in Oxford.

Of course, I must begin with All Souls College, which has been so warm and welcoming to the Visiting Fellows. The support provided in such an exquisite ambience in both energizing and spiritually and intellectually uplifting. I enjoy the meals, the fellowship, and conversations immensely. The garden outside my office and fountain are special favorites as is the Codrington Library.

The beauty of the Radcliffe Camera always captivates me as does the natural foods at the restaurant close by.

Downtown Oxford is a short walk from my office and I visit the Museum History of the History is Science which has Einstein's blackboard.

 I also enjoy the covered market with specialty shops and outstanding chocolates and gelato and also fresh produce but the cakes are extra special.

And, of course, for inspiration I love to walk and explore and think. Such places as Trinity College at Oxford University, University Park, and the walk along the Thames River are special to me.

And since downtown is so close to my office, besides the street musicians, and shops, I managed to capture a parade the other day celebrating Oxford's soccer team getting elevated to a higher league. Maybe it will be the new Leicester.

And, when it comes to afternoon tea, I sometimes go to the oldest  coffee house in England, which is on High Street.

With the beauty and support here, it is such a pleasure to work. Thank you All Souls College at Oxford University for this incredible experience! Also, for the new friendships made.

And today and tomorrow I will be at a very interesting Responsible Business Forum at the Said School of Business.

Relevance of Operations Management Research and the POMS Conference in Orlando with Isenberg School Supernetwork Scholars

Recently, Distinguished University Professor Chris Tang, from the UCLA Graduate School of Management shared with us through INFORMS Connect a very provocative article that he had written as Editor of the MSOM journal. The article, Making OM Research More Relevant: "Why?" and "How?" struck a chord with many readers. Interestingly, it was forwarded shortly before the Production and Operations Management Society (POMS) conference, which just ended in Orlando, Florida. At this conference, the Supernetwork Center at the Isenberg School of Management had a nice presence. I was there only virtually, since I am now a Visiting Fellow at Oxford University in England and arrived here just 10 days ago. Below is a photo of several of the Supernetwork Center Associates at the POMS conference - I love the backdrop of the palm trees.

All the above: Professors Tina Wakolbinger, Amir H. Masoumi, Fuminori Toyasaki, and Min Yu, were my doctoral students in Management Science at the Isenberg School of Management and are very successful academics.  My doctoral student Shivani Shukla, also a Supernetwork Center Associate, was selected to take part in the POMS colloquium, a day long affair on Saturday, and sent the photo below. She is Isenberg's most recent Outstanding Doctoral Student Teaching Award recipient and is with Tulay Varol Flammand, who received the Doctoral Student Researcher Award from the Isenberg School.

Chris Tang, I might also add, is the Editor of the new Springer Supply Chain Management series, in which my book with Dong "Michelle" Li, Competing on Supply Chain Quality: A Network Economics Perspective, is now in press in. Tang emphasized in his article that we should engage more with practitioners and even noted the importance  of blogging (I concur!).  If one looks at just the presentations of the Supernetwork Center Associates, I can attest to relevance. For example, Professor Masoumi, with whom I have written several papers on blood supply chains, and there were multiple on-site discussions and interviews with the Red Cross for this work, as well as followups, spoke at the POMS conference on: The Impact of Recent Demand Trends on Blood Bank Operations.

I have also hosted several speakers from the Red Cross in the Humanitarian Logistics and Healthcare class that I teach, including Mr. Jeff Meyer, who is responsible for the Red Cross blood supply chains in Connecticut and Massachusetts.
Professor Wakolbinger, who organized the session in which Amir spoke, had the following paper at the POMS conference: Outsourcing Humanitarian Logistics Activities to Commercial Logistics Providers.

Also, her doctoral student, Christian Burkart, who was in the Humanitarian Logistics class that I taught at the Vienna University of Economics and Business a few years ago, and is now Professor Wakolbinger's doctoral student (nice to see the academic family growing), delivered the paper: Beneficiaries' Choice in Disaster Relief Logistics.

And to demonstrate the scope of relevance of research in Operations Management, Shivani Shukla's presentation was on cybersecurity and it can be downloaded here. Our research in cybersecurity has also been supported by grants from the Advanced Cyber Security Center and we organized in September 2014 a marvellous conference at the Sloan School at MIT that brought practitioners and academics together on this important topic.

Professor Min Yu forwarded the nice photos above to me and although she missed the deadline for paper presentations, her paper with me: Competitive Food Supply Chain Networks with Application to Fresh Produce, Min Yu and Anna Nagurney, European Journal of Operational Research 224(2): (2013) pp 273-282, was selected by the Editors of one of my favourite journals, the European Journal of Operational Research, as one of the most impactful papers published in the journal in recent years and I will have the honor of presenting it and some related work at the EURO conference in Poznan, Poland in July. My presentation will be delivered with another paper at a special panel of EJOR editors at this conference. Hence, research in Operations Management and, of course, Operations Research, in general, are tackling very practical and relevant problems whether it is in terms of blood supply chains, disaster relief, food supply chains, or cybersecurity, and more!

Magical First Week as a Visiting Fellow at Oxford University

Only last Friday I arrived in England to begin a new adventure - that of being a Visiting Fellow at All Souls College at Oxford University.
 


During this week, I have settled into my apartment in Iffley Turn, explored my surroundings, and have garnered so many wonderful impressions and experiences.
My office at All Souls College overlooks a rose garden and water fountain and the gardener keeps the flowers and greenery immaculate. I have brought good weather to Oxford (as my colleagues in Gothenburg used to say I would do there as well).



I have met Visiting Fellows, and, coincidentally, Dr. Su Fang Ng, who was also a Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University in 2005-2006, when I was there, is also a Visiting Fellow now and has an office close to me. I have also met fellows and even Emeriti Fellows.

Many mornings I have been walking to work, which is about a 40 minute walk, but, given the delicious, multiple course meals that we are served for lunch and dinner, getting exercise is a necessity! I have enjoyed riding the double decker busses and marvel and the number of cyclists and pedestrians in this city.I have had lunch with the Dean of Visiting Fellows, Professor Simon Hornblower, who is a classicist, and fellow lover of Greece and have even met a Fellow who was visiting my friend and operations researcher at MIT, Professor Asu Ozdaglar. The academic world is so small and filled with surprises.

For dinner, I wear my black gown, which has my name in it, and we dine by candlelight in a great Hall, which is wood-panelled, and filled with oil paintings. The painting below is of the staff and I am trying to learn many of their names.

I have enjoyed the tea time and also we were treated to a magnificent lecture (at 8:30PM) this past Tuesday by Visiting Fellow Nicholas Shakespeare (and, yes, a relative of THE Shakespeare), who spoke on 6 Minutes in May. He is an award-winning novelist and biographer.

This experience reminds me of being at the Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center on Lake Como and also a bit of being at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. However, this experience has many original features and aspects to it.

Today I had the pleasure of meeting a PhD student at the Said Business School at Oxford,  who is as obsessed with networks as I am, and who had contacted me a few weeks ago, while I was still in Amherst. Ellen has 6 graduate degrees, including a law degree, and is researching knowledge networks in companies, especially those in China. Plus. she is from Massachusetts!

After a wonderful research conversation in the garden she took me to the Mathematical Institute and we took the photos below there. The café is, appropriately, called the Pi Café. I also got to see a class in session and narvelled at all the boards one could write on!

She also took me to the building which houses Oxfam, which was founded in Oxford and is very close to All Souls. Since I teach a course on Humanitarian Logistics and Healthcare at the Isenberg School of Management, this was extra special. And she presented me with a souvenir.

Also, in my first week at Oxford, as I mentioned in my previous post, we are nearing completion of the editing of the Dynamics of Disasters volume with 19 papers!

Editing the Dynamics of Disasters Volume

Ten months ago, the Dynamics of Disasters conference took place in Kalamata, Greece. This conference I co-organized with Professor Panos M. Pardalos of the University of Florida and Professor Ilias Kotsireas of Wilfrid Laurier University in Canada. It was a challenging time for Greece, given the financial crisis, but the camaraderie of the conferees was outstanding as were the papers presented and the discussions. Great friendships were made as well. For example, George Karagiannis of Cyprus, who is an expert on national risk assessments, visited me at UMass Amherst last September and gave a fabulous talk, which was co-hosted by the Transportation group. Plus, in March, Rasmus Dahlberg of the Disaster Center in Copenhagen, Denmark, who had been working at the University of Colorado in Boulder for a few weeks, gave two lectures at the Isenberg School of Management at UMass Amherst. One lecture was in my Humanitarian Logistics and Healthcare class and the other was in our UMass Amherst INFORMS Speaker Series. The students and audience members, to this day, recall fondly his exceptional energy and knowledge in disaster management. He is a true Renaissance man - he is also a novelist and television and radio personality.

Below is a photo of the conferees.

The past few months, Kotsireas, Pardalos, and I have been very busy editing the proceedings volume from the conference, which is under contract from Springer,  In addition to paper submissions from many of the conferees, we have also invited additional contributors. Each paper has had 2 to 3 reviews and the authors have done a good job revising their papers.

I am delighted that the volume is almost ready to be shipped to the publisher.

It is a collection of 18 papers spanning all 4 disaster management phases: risk mitigation, preparedness, response, and recovery, and contains conceptual as well as analytical contributions.  Applications are wide-ranging - from the Ebola healthcare crisis to the Syrian crisis, and there are many novel mathematical models (optimization and game theory ones), as well; several of which are network-based. There are some truly innovative and original papers in this volume, which I believe that many will appreciate.

We have written the Introduction to the volume, which is,  in itself, a contribution, since it demonstrates the scope of challenges associated with disasters as well as concepts and tools for disaster management. The volume contains approaches not only for natural disasters but also for technological ones, and for both sudden onset and slow-onset ones. Both academic as well as practitioner perspectives are included.

It has been a true pleasure working with my colleagues, Professors Pardalos and Kotsireas, on this book project! The finishing aspects of this project I am completing in my exciting new role as a Visiting Fellow at All Souls College at the University of Oxford in England.

First 36 Hours in Oxford, England with Photos

Yesterday morning my flight on Delta from Boston Logan landed in London Heathrow at 7AM. The flight was early and it had been so comfortable - I managed to even stretch out over 3 middle seats and can't remember when I had this luxury in the recent past.

All Souls College at Oxford University had arranged for me to be picked up at Heathrow. Both my suitcases arrived quickly in baggage claim and although customs was a mass of humanity especially the "all passports" queue, I took advantage of the wait by speaking to the female in front of me, who, was from DC and was returning to Oxford for a visit since she had received her Master's last year from Oxford University in environmental sciences. She was wonderful to talk to and told me of several places that I should go to, including University Park, which I strolled through today.

My driver brought me to my apartment, which is gated and requires a combination to get past the gate and another one to get into the building. The apartment has views of greenery from each window and as I am writing the birds outside are keeping me company. The air is very crisp and the temperature just perfect for research, walking, and exploring.

I will be reporting to All Souls College on Monday, which will be by first day as a Visiting Fellow. I am very excited about this great opportunity.

Yesterday I walked to downtown Oxford and found a favorite tea room and restaurant that we had been to last year when we were in Europe for multiple conferences from Greece through Scotland.

I walked at least 10 miles which is always my way of avoiding jet lag since one then switches to the new time zone and collapses in a deep sleep at night. I even managed to get to a Sainsbury food store to purchase some fresh produce, other food, and household supplies.

Everyone is so friendly here and my ears are getting adjusted to the variety of British accents that I hear. I managed to get a monthly bus pass at Debenham's but have been walking exclusively, so far.

Below are some photos taken in my first 36 hours in Oxford.

The first photo below is of Trinity College, Oxford University, which is very close to All Souls College.

All Souls College was closed today (but it is a Saturday). I took the photo below of the entrance.

There were various sports teams and many families enjoying University Park today.

The tree below in the park charmed me - yes, being from Amherst, Massachusetts, I am certainly at tree hugger.

The arch below on the Oxford University campus caught my eye.

The bus I will take advantage of sooner or later since there will be quite a few late evening lectures to attend.

But, this afternoon, I walked the scenic way back from downtown to my apartment.

The beauty of Oxford from the architecture to the natural environment is captivating.

I do believe that living abroad, as an academic, enriches one intellectually, culturally, spiritually, and research-wise.  Tonight, I will enjoy reading a nice, thick British newspaper followed by my copy of the latest issue of The Economist.

Off to Oxford University

I am almost packed and later today will be heading to catch a flight to London Heathrow and then will be picked up and taken to Oxford. My Visiting Fellowship at All Souls College at Oxford University is about to begin.

I am very much looking forward to being able to focus on supply chain network research with emphasis on quality and product perishability, a theme that I have been pursuing with multiple students and colleagues over the past few years.

Next Monday I will be settling into my office, meeting new colleagues, and neighbors, as new adventures in the academic life begin.

The past 4 years I was a Visiting Professor at the School of Business, Economics and Law at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden and spent about 44 days per year there. The research conducted, friendships made, cultural experiences enjoyed, and beautiful natural scenes explored, I will always treasure and they are part of me.

I do believe that putting oneself into new situations in various countries enriches not only scholarship and mutual understanding but also pedagogy since experiences are shared with students in classes.

I thank the Visiting Fellowship Selection Committee at Oxford for this great honor and opportunity.

I also hope to see Dr. Louise Richardson, the first female Vice Chancellor of Oxford in its history, who was the Executive Dean at the Radcliffe Institute at Harvard University, when I was a Science Fellow there in 2005-2006. She then went on to head St. Andrews in Scotland, and now Oxford.

So, expect postings from England on this blog during my Fellowship at Oxford.

And I heard this morning that one of my Operations and Information Management colleagues will be in England for several weeks in June so it will be nice to see a fellow Isenberg School of Management faculty member!

New England Security Day at Harvard University

Tomorrow, April 28, New England Security Day (NESD) Spring 2016  is taking place at Harvard University. There will be both paper presentations and posters and the program looks terrific. Many thanks to the organizers.

I enjoyed the first New England Security Day last Fall at UMass Amherst and was on the Organizing Committee. I blogged about this conference and posted photos. It's great to see this event becoming  a regular one since the topic of cybersecurity  is extremely timely and fascinating.

Tomorrow, one of my doctoral students, Shivani Shukla, will be presenting our most recent research on cybersecurity investments.

 The full presentation can be downloaded here.

According to the NESD website, there are only 12 slots for paper presentations, so this is quite the honor. Also, there will be an interesting format to promote discussion and further research: Each slot is 15 minutes long. However, we would like to use an unconventional slot structure. Each speaker will be given 8 minutes to present their material (strict). Then for 4 minutes, members of the audience will form groups of 3-5 people, discuss the talk, filter and form questions. The last 3 minutes of each slot will involve Q&A between the speaker and the audience. This structure encourages members of the audience to interact with each other and exchange opinions, and clarify their understanding of the talk. It is especially beneficial for students as it will allow them to interact with senior researchers. Moreover, the quality of questions filtered up to the speaker is improved.

Shivani has a lot of material to get across on our game theory cybersecurity investment framework including case studies in the retailer, financial services, and energy sectors.

There will be presenters from Yale University, Brown, MIT, Harvard, Northeastern University, Cornell University, the University of Connecticut, and our paper is one of two selected from UMass Amherst.

It is great to have representation from the Isenberg School of Management there.

I wish all the participants at NESD a very stimulating and rewarding conference.

And just this morning, I completed the galleys for our paper, A Supply Chain Network Game Theory Model of Cybersecurity Investments with Nonlinear Budget Constraints, Anna Nagurney, Patrizia Daniele, and Shivani Shukla, to appear in Annals of Operations Research, so it is very exciting to see research in game theory and cybersecurity flourishing.