The speakers are: September 19: Professor Daron Acemoglu, Economics Department, MIT; October 3: Dr. Grace Lin, IBM, Yorktown Heights; October 24: Professor Ahmed Ghoniem, ISOM, UMass Amherst; November 7: Professor Senay Solak, ISOM, UMass Amherst; November 14; Mr. Tom Vanderbilt, the author of the book, "Traffic;" December 5: Professor Kevin Fu, Computer Science Department, UMass Amherst. Professor Acemoglu's talk will be co-hosted by the Finance Speaker Series.

All the above talks will take place in the Isenberg School of Management (ISOM) in Room 112 from 11AM until noon that day, except for Professor Fu's presentation, which will take place in ISOM Room 128 at 11AM-noon. This Speaker Series is organized by the UMass Amherst INFORMS Student Chapter, whose Faculty Advisor is Professor Anna Nagurney. We are looking forward to a very exciting set of talks!

August 4, 2008

We are pleased to announce the publication of Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us) by Tom Vanderbilt. Professor Nagurney enjoyed speaking with Mr. Vanderbilt and discussing Braess' Paradox with him. The Braess/Nagurney/Wakolbinger translation of Braess' original paper is noted in the book. Mr. Vanderbilt will be speaking in the Fall 2008 Speaker Series in Operations Research / Management Science at UMass Amherst.  The full details on the entire Speaker Series will be posted soon.

July 31, 2008

We are pleased to report that the article, Multiperiod effects of corporate social responsibility on supply chain networks, transaction costs, emissions, and risk, by Center Associates Jose M. Cruz and Tina Wakolbinger has been accepted for publication in the International Journal of Production Economics.

July 30, 2008

We are pleased to welcome new Doctoral Student Center Associate Min Yu who has joined the doctoral program in Management Science at the Isenberg School of Management, University of Massachusetts Amherst.

July 28, 2008

We would like to congratulate Center Associate Dr. Ke "Grace" Ke who will be joining the Department of Finance and Operations and Supply Chain Management at Central Washington University, Seattle, Washington this fall as a tenure track Assistant Professor. For the past 4 years Dr. Ke has been an Assistant Professor at the School of Business at the University of Arkansas in Monticello. This relocation will allow Dr. Ke to
to be with her husband, Dr. Haizheng Zhang, who is a computer scientist at Microsoft. It is nice to see a solution to the dual career issue!

We appreciate all the support that the School of Business at the University of Arkansas has provided to Dr. Ke the past four years!

July 20, 2008

We would like to congratulate Mr. Oleksij Teplinsky for winning the 2008 Mathematics Competition sponsored by the Shevchenko Scientific Sociey (USA) and the U.S.-Ukraine Foundation! Professor Anna Nagurney was honored to be a member of this Mathematics Award Committee.

July 18, 2008

We are pleased to welcome new Doctoral Student Center Associate Amir  Masoumi who has joined the doctoral program in Management Science at the Isenberg School of Management, University of Massachusetts Amherst.

July 14, 2008

Professor Nagurney's Fulbright Senior Specialist Award was listed in the Italian Fulbright Commission Newsletter and the Humanitarian Logistics Workshop in Bellagio, Italy was featured in the South African CSIR Newsletter. Links to these two items are in the Media Coverage page.

July 12, 2008

We are pleased to announce that Professor Anna Nagurney has accepted an invitation to speak at the Frontiers in Game Theory and Networked Control Systems Conference that will take place October 10-12, 2008 at MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts. This promises to be an outstanding conference and Professor Nagurney expresses her sincerest thanks to the organizers for inviting her.

July 9, 2008

Professor Anna Nagurney's Letter-to-the-Editor, Biking in Paris, was published in the New York Times. The Commentary, OpEd, and Letter-to-the-Editor page was redesigned and updated.

July 6, 2008

New articles and updated publication information has been added to the Downloadable Articles page.

July 4, 2008

Happy July 4th from the Center Director and Associates! Several new items have been added to the Media Coverage page.

July 2, 2008

An article on our recent conference presentations in Paris, France appears in In the Loop.

June 30, 2008

We are delighted to share with you photos from the Third International Conference on Funding Transportation Infrastructure and the 14th International Conference on Computing in Economics and Finance which were held in Paris during the past 2 weeks.

June 24, 2008

The 14th International Conference on Computing in Economics and Finance will be taking place June 26-28, 2008 in Paris, France. Professor Anna Nagurney is looking forward to speaking at the conference and meeting with her fellow Society for Computational Economics Advisory Board members.

June 20, 2008

The Third International Conference on Funding Transportation Infrastructure is now over. We thank the organizers for a wonderful venue and conference. Professor Anna Nagurney enjoyed seeing many of her international colleagues in transportation.

June 16, 2008

Professor Nagurney's Op-Ed, A New Roadmap for Transit Planning, was published in the Daily Hampshire Gazette today.

This summer we are busy getting ready for the Fall 2008 semester. As part of the activities, we will be having new doctoral students joining the Supernetworks Center as Associates. In addition, Professor Anna Nagurney, as the Faculty Advisor of the UMass Amherst INFORMS Student Chapter, is hard at work helping to finalize the Fall 2008 Speaker Series in Operations Research / Management Science.

June 14, 2008

We are delighted to announce that three publications by Center Associates have recently made the Top 25 Hottest Articles in journals.

Specifically, the paper on dynamics of corporate social responsibility by Professor Jose M. Cruz of the School of Business at the University of
Connecticut, Storrs, is number 20 on the latest listing in the European Journal of Operational Research (EJOR) and the paper on a network equilibrium model of Internet advertising by Professor Lan Zhao of SUNY at Old Westbury and Professor Anna Nagurney is number 16 on the same list. EJOR Top 25 List.

In addition, the paper on e-cycling networks and reverse supply chain management by Professor Anna Nagurney and Professor Fuminori Toyasaki of York University is number 12 on the Top 25 Hottest Articles of the journal Transportation Research E.  Complete List.

June 13, 2008

The talks/papers presented at the Caltech Microeconomic Dynamics Workshop are now posted online.

Professor Anna Nagurney, again, thanks the organizers of this workshop for such a wonderful venue and conference!

June 11, 2008

The Downloadable Articles page has been updated with new publications and information.

June 7, 2008

Professor Anna Nagurney thanks Mr. Peter Brandriss and Mr. Tito Yepes for being such wonderful hosts during her recent lecture and visit to the World Bank in DC!

We would like to bring your attention to two exciting upcoming conferences at which papers by Center Associates will be given. At the Third International Conference on Funding Transportation Infrastructure, Paris, June 19-20, 2008, the paper, Environmental Impact Assessment of Transportation Networks with Degradable Links in an Era of Climate Change, by Anna Nagurney, Qiang "Patrick" Qiang, and Ladimer S. Nagurney will be presented and at the 14th International Conference on Computing in Economics and Finance, the paper, An Integrated Electric Power Supply Chain and Fuel Market Network Framework: Theoretical Modeling with Empirical Analysis for New England, by Zugang Liu and Anna Nagurney will be presented.

June 3, 2008

Now that the Academic Year has ended, the pages of Center Associates have been updated to reflect accomplishments during the past year. Congratulations to all!

June 1, 2008

The Summer 2008 Issue of The Supernetwork Sentinel highlighting center activities and accomplishments is now online.

May 30, 2008

Professor Anna Nagurney will deliver a lecture on Network Economics next week at the World Bank in Washington, DC, as part of its Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and Spatial Economics in World Bank Projects three day course.

May 26, 2008

Professor Anna Nagurney congratulates all those who received their undergraduate and graduate degrees this past weekend from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Center Associate Zugang "Leo" Liu received his PhD in Business Administration. His major was Management Science and his minor was Computer Science. Congratulations, Dr. Liu.

Professor Nagurney thanks the organizers of the Caltech Conference on Microeconomics Dynamics for bringing together such an interdisciplinary group of speakers to Pasadena, California. It was terrific to be able to discuss different perspectives for dynamic modeling from the disciplines of engineering, applied mathematics, operations research/management science, computer science, economics, and even biology.

May 21, 2008

A Microeconomic Dynamics Workshop will take place May 23-25, 2008 at Caltech (the California Institute of Technology) in Pasadena. Professor Anna Nagurney will be one of the invited speakers and will be speaking on joint work with Professor David Parkes of Harvard University, Professor Patrizia Daniele of the University of Catania, who is a Center Associate, and Center Associate Patrick Qiang. Their presentation is available on Visuals.

May 19, 2008

On May 10, Center Associates: Zugang "Leo" Liu, Qiang "Patrick" Qiang, and Trisha Woolley traveled to Boston to take part in the 2008 SIAM (Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics) Conference on Optimization. They presented posters based on their co-authored papers with Professor Anna Nagurney entitled, respectively: An Integrated Electric Power Supply Chain and Fuel Market Network Framework: Theoretical Modeling with Empirical Analysis for New England, An Efficiency Measure for Dynamic Networks with Application to the Internet and Vulnerability Analysis, and Environmental and Cost Synergy in Supply Chain Network Integration in Mergers and Acquisitions.

The full program for this SIAM conference is online.

May 17, 2008

The final report on the conference, Humanitarian Logistics: Networks for Africa, has been completed and added to its website. Once again, Professor Nagurney thanks all who made the conference a success.

May 13, 2008

The Center Director, Professor Anna Nagurney, acknowledges the suffering of the people devastated by both Cyclone Nargis in Myanmar/Burma and the recent earthquake in China. Such events only reinforce the relevance of the importance of further developing the discipline of humanitarian logistics from different perspectives.  An article on the conference appeared on the Isenberg School of Management Website.

May 10, 2008

The conference, Humanitarian Logistics: Networks for Africa, organized by Professor Anna Nagurney at the Rockefeller Foundation's Bellagio Center on Lake Como in Italy has now come to an end. The website for the conference contains the program, the presentations, photos, and additional information. The conference and associated discussions and experiences were intellectually, professionally, and personally tremendously rewarding.

May 7, 2008

Professor Nagurney reports from the Rockefeller Foundation's Bellagio Center on Lake Como that the Humanitarian Logistics: Networks for Africa Conference has completed its first full day of activities. Four presentations were delivered on Tuesday, May 6, and the discussions and panel were very lively and thought-provoking. The conferees were hosted to a banquet to meet with the Bellagio residents at the Villa Serbelloni. The beauty and magic of the venue and location of the conference have helped to create a wonderful cameraderie amongst the conferees!

May 3, 2008

Photos of recent celebratory activities in which Center Associates have been involved in have been updated on Center Photos.

May 1, 2008

The latest information on the Humanitarian Logistics: Networks for Africa conference, which will take place May 5-9, 2008 at the Rockefeller
Foundation's Bellagio Center on Lake Como, Italy, is available at the conference website.

The organizer, Professor Anna Nagurney, is very much looking forward to working with all the invited participants at this special venue and important theme.

April 29, 2008

Today, Center Associate Zugang "Leo" Liu successfully defended his doctoral dissertation entitled, Transportation and Dynamic Networks: Models, Theory, and Applications to Supply Chains, Electric Power, and Financial Networks. His dissertation committee consisted of Professor June Dong of SUNY Oswego, Professor Robert Moll of the Computer Science Department at UMass Amherst, Professor Nathaniel Whitaker of the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at UMass Amherst, with Professor Anna Nagurney as the Chair of the Committee. (Dissertation Abstract)

Congratulations to Leo and many thanks to his committee members for their excellent assistance and support!

April 24, 2008

Center Associates Zugang "Leo" Liu and Qiang "Patrick" Qiang will be inducted tomorrow into the honor society Beta Gamma Sigma (BGS) at the Isenberg School of Management at a special ceremony in the afternoon. BGS recognizes outstanding students in Business Administration. The Center Director congratulates both Leo and Patrick on this distinctive honor and recognition for their academic excellence in their doctoral studies.

April 22, 2008

We are delighted to announce that the program for the Humanitarian Logistics: Networks for Africa conference that has been organized by Professor Anna Nagurney, under the auspices of the Rockefeller Foundation's Bellagio Center Conferences Program, is now online on the conference website.

A press release on the conference has been posted today by UMass Amherst in In the Loop.

April 19, 2008

We would like to thank Professor John Birge of the Graduate School of Business at the University of Chicago for the excellent lecture that he gave yesterday in the Spring 2008 Speaker Series in Operations Research / Management Science at UMass Amherst. With his lecture we conclude the 2007-2008 Speaker Series. This year Center Associate Trisha Woolley was the Speaker Series Coordinator and we
all thank her for the excellent job that she did. The series is organized by the UMass Amherst INFORMS Student Chapter and Professor Nagurney is the Faculty Advisor.

On Tuesday, April 29, 2008, Center Associate Zugang "Leo" Liu will be defending his doctoral dissertation. The title of his dissertation is  Transportation and Dynamic Networks: Models, Theory and Applications to Supply Chains, Electric Power and Financial Networks. The notice along with a link to the abstract can be found on the Isenberg School of Management website.

April 17, 2008

We are delighted that Professor John Birge of the Graduate School of Business at the University of Chicago will be giving the final talk in the Spring 2008 Speaker Series in Operations Research / Management Science. His talk will be tomorrow at 11AM in ISOM Room 112.

April 12, 2008

We would like to thank Dr. Chadalavada, the Senior Vice President -- Market  & Systems Solutions at ISO New England in Holyoke, MA, for delivering his excellent talk yesterday in the 2008 Spring INFORMS Speaker Series at UMass Amherst. The audience learned an immense amount about the crucial role that ISO New England plays in regulating electricity markets and in making sure that the electric power systems work in New England. He was accompanied by Ms. Ellen Foley, the Director of Corporate Communications. The discussions between the audience members and Dr. Chadalavada provided a wonderful informative session for everyone.

In addition, we have updated the media page on the supernetworks site.

April 10, 2008

Tomorrow, Friday, April 11, 2008, Dr. Vamsi Chadalavada of ISO - New England will be speaking in the Spring 2008 UMASS Amherst Speaker Series in Operations Research / Management Science. His talk, Overview of New England's Power System and Markets, will take place in Room 112 of the Isenberg School of Management. We are honored to be able to host Dr. Chadalavada.

April 6, 2008

We would like to thank Dr. David Wypij of Harvard University for the excellent presentation that he gave in the Spring 2008 UMASS Amherst Speaker Series in Operations Research / Management Science this past Friday! His research on malaria studies in Africa and the associated challenges of gathering data and conducting statistical analyses was fascinating.

Also, we are pleased to report that the Downloadable Articles page has been updated.

April 3, 2008

We are delighted that Dr. David Wypij of the School of Public Health at Harvard University will be speaking tomorrow (Friday, April 4,2008) in the Spring 2008 UMASS Amherst Speaker Series in Operations Research / Management Science. His talk on malaria research in Africa will take place in the Isenberg School of Management Room 112.

March 31, 2008

We are delighted to share the following great news. Center Associate, Dr. Tina Wakolbinger, has been elected Junior Vice President of Communications of Women in Operations Research and Management Sciences (WORMS). This is a fora of INFORMS (The Institute of Operations Research and the Management Sciences). Congratulations to Dr. Wakolbinger  for becoming an officer of WORMS.

In addition, we are delighted to report that Center Associates Patrick Qiang and Trisha Woolley have co-authored an invited overview of the UMass Amherst INFORMS Student Chapter, due to its recent award, which will be appearing in a forthcoming issue of OR/MS Tomorrow. The article is available at the link: http://student.som.umass.edu/informs/n/Spotlight_student_chapter_2008.pdf

Finally, we are honored and delighted to have the UMass Amherst INFORMS Student Chapter recognized for its Summa Cum Laude Award in the Spring 2008 issue of the Commonwealth, which also contains a writeup on Professor Anna Nagurney's recent Fulbright in Italy.

March 29, 2008

Professor Nagurney's commentary, The Fulbright Experience -- Education Without Borders, was posted.

March 28, 2008

Several congratulations are in order. Center Associate Zugang "Leo" Liu was busy interviewing this past semester for faculty positions since he will be defending his doctoral dissertation in 2008. Leo secured several wonderful interviews and had to turn down several more. We are very pleased to announce that he has accepted an offer of a tenure-track Assistant Professor position in the Penn State University system. Congratulations to Leo!

Also, Center Associate, Dr. Tina Wakolbinger of the Fogelman College of Economics and Business, has been selected by INFORMS to participate in the Young Researchers Connection at the 2008 INFORMS Practice Meeting that will take place in mid-April in Baltimore, MD.

Dr. Wakolbinger was nominated by her department chair, Professor Stafford, and by Professor Nagurney. Congratulations to Dr. Wakolbinger!

March 27, 2008

Tomorrow, March 28, 2008, Professor Eitan Bachmat of the Computer Science Department at Ben Gurion University in Israel, who is visiting Brandeis University this year, will deliver the fourth Spring 2008 UMass Amherst Seminar in Operations Research / Management Science. We are delighted that Professor Bachmat will be coming to the Isenberg School of Management! His seminar on airplane boarding and space-time geometry will take place in ISOM Room 112 at 11AM.

March 23, 2008

An additional page of numerous photos from Professor Nagurney's Fulbright in Catania, Italy has been added.

March 22, 2008

Several photos from the Fulbright experience in Catania, Italy have been added to the Senior Specialist Award page.

March 21, 2008

We have now posted the presentations available in pdf format of the talks given at the workshop: Complex Networks -- Equilibrium and Vulnerability Analysis with Applications, organized by Professors Anna Nagurney and Patrizia Daniele, as part of Professor Nagurney's Fulbright Senior Specialist Award in Business Administration at the University of Catania.

March 20, 2008

We wish everyone a wonderful new Spring!

We are pleased to report that the Institute of International Education (IIE) has funded Professor Anna Nagurney's proposal for travel support for several conferees from developing countries so that they can participate in the Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center Conference on Humanitarian Logistics: Networks for Africa that will take place May 5-9, 2008 at the Center on Lake Como in Italy. We thank IIE for its support.

March 16, 2008

Professor Anna Nagurney has been enjoying the Fulbright Senior Specialist Award at the University of Catania immensely. The Workshop on Complex Networks - Equilibrium and Vulnerability Analysis was a great success. She enjoyed very much the participants' presentations and the lively discussions. One of the highlights of her Fulbright thus far was lecturing in Professor Patrizia Daniele's undergraduate course in Optimization. The hospitality extended to Professor Nagurney by Professor Daniele, Professor Antonino Maugeri, and many colleagues at the University of Catania has been outstanding.  Professor Nagurney is indebted to her hosts. For Professor Nagurney's three lectures and the workshop program please refer to the page Senior Specialist Fulbright in Catania, Italy.

March 11, 2008

Professor Anna Nagurney reports that the Workshop on Complex Networks organized by Professor Nagurney and Professor Patrizia Daniele has begun and the first full day of lectures has taken place. The workshop participants come from various universities in Italy including the University of Catania. There are different disciplines represented and quite a few students are participating which makes for very interesting and lively discussions.

The food at the workshop has been fantastic and Professor Nagurney was especially touched by a huge cake decorated as an Italian flag and with her name on it.

March 9, 2008

Professor Anna Nagurney reports that her Senior Specialist Fulbright in Catania, Italy is off to a great start. She already has met wtih Professor Patrizia Daniele and tomorrow their three day workshop on complex networks and equilibrium and vulnerability analysis begins.

March 6, 2008

We are delighted to announce that the paper, An Efficiency Measure for Dynamic Networks Modeled as Evolutionary Variational Inequalities with Application to the Internet and Vulnerability Analysis, co-authored by Anna Nagurney and Qiang "Patrick" Qiang, is now in press in the journal Netnomics. Publications by Center Associates are available.

March 5, 2008

This Friday, March 7, 2008, Professor Jenna Marquard of the Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering at UMass Amherst will deliver the third lecture in the Spring 2008 UMass Amherst INFORMS Speaker Series. More information on Professor Marquard's talk.


March 2, 2008

We are pleased to announce that the website for the Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center Conference, Humanitarian Logistics: Networks for Africa, is now online. Professor Anna Nagurney is the organizer of this conference, which will take place at the Bellagio Center on Lake Como, Italy, in May 2008. Professor Nagurney is indebted to the Rockefeller Foundation for approving and funding her proposal to organize this conference.

February 29, 2008

Professor Anna Nagurney is pleased to announce that her paper, A System-Optimization Perspective for Supply Chain Network Integration: The Horizontal Merger Case, has been accepted for publication in the journal Transportation Research E.  She will be presenting related work, joint with Trisha Woolley, entitled, Environmental and Cost Synergy in Supply Chain Network Integration in Mergers and Acquisitions, at the Fulbright Senior Specialist Workshop at the University of Catania in March 2008. More info on Professor Nagurney's latest Fulbright.

February 28, 2008

The  information regarding the Workshop on Complex Networks to be held in Catania, Italy in  March 2008 and co-organized by Professors Patrizia Daniele and Anna Nagurney as part of Professor Nagurney's Senior Specialist Fulbright is now complete.

Also, the Center Photos page has been updated.

February 26, 2008

Today, Center Associate Qiang "Patrick" Qiang will defend his doctoral dissertation proposal entitled, Network Efficiency/Performance Measurement with Vulnerability and Robustness Analysis with Application to Critical Infrastructure. His proposal defense will take place in ISOM Room 206 at 10:30AM. Patrick's major is Management Science. and Professor Anna Nagurney is his dissertation chair. The proposal abstract is available on the ISOM Website.

February 24, 2008

During Professor Nagurney's visit to the University of Catania, Italy as part of her Fulbright Senior Specialist in Business Administration award, several lectures and a workshop are planned. The details of the visit are now posted.

February 23, 2008

Yesterday, Professor Andrew Papachristos gave a fascinating lecture as part of the UMass INFORMS 2008 Spring Speaker Series in Operations Research / Management Science. Despite the inclement weather and the fact that UMass Amherst closed at noon yesterday, he attracted a standing room only crowd. It was especially wonderful to see so many doctoral students from various departments at UMass Amherst in attendance. We thank Professor Papachristos for a lecture that will be discussed for many weeks to come! Information about his title and abstract is here.

February 19, 2008

We are delighted that this Friday, February 22, 2008,  Professor Andrew Papachristos of UMass Amherst will be giving the second lecture in the Spring 2008 Speaker Series in Operations Research / Management Science. More information on Professor Papachristos and his talk.

February 14, 2008

Dr. Denise Sumpf will be the first speaker in the Spring 2008 UMass Amherst Speaker Series in Operations Research / Management Science. Her talk is tomorrow in ISOM Room 210 at 11AM. For more information.

On February 26, 2008, Center Associate Patrick Qiang will be defending his dissertation proposal. The title of his proposed dissertation is:
"Network Efficiency/Performance Measurement with Vulnerability and Robustness Analysis with Application to Critical Infrastructure." More information, including the abstract.

February 9, 2008

We are delighted that Dr. Denise Sump of the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific and based in Bangkok, Thailand will be opening up our Spring 2008 INFORMS Speaker Series in Operations Research / Management Science at UMass Amherst. Her presentation will take place on Friday, February 15, 2008 from 11AM until noon in ISOM Room 210. The title of her presentation is: The Development of Transport Corridors in Asia. More information on Dr. Sumpf and her presentation.

All talks in this series are open to the public.

February 5, 2008

Professor Anna Nagurney is pleased to report that some of the Center's international achievements are highlighted in the UMass System International Newsletter, Passport UMass- Winter 2008.

February 2, 2008

Professor Anna Nagurney and Professor Patrizia Daniele of the University of Catania are delighted to announce a workshop on "Complex Networks -- Equilibrium with Vulnerability Analysis" to take place at the University of Catania in Italy, March 10-12, 2008. The workshop is part of Professor Nagurney's Senior Specialist Fulbright Award to the University of Catania. Call for presentations and additional information in pdf format is attached here.

January 26, 2008

The Spring 2008 semester begins next Monday, January 28, 2008, at UMass Amherst and we are excited about the new term. Several Center Associates will be teaching classes and we will also be busy hosting speakers in our Spring 2008 UMass Amherst INFORMS Speaker Series. UMass Amherst press release.

Finally, Professor Anna Nagurney is also very much looking forward to her Senior Specialist Fulbright at the University of Catania in Italy in March 2008 and to the Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center Conference on Humanitarian Logistics: Networks for Africa that she will be convening in May 2008.

January 22, 2008

Professor Anna Nagurney was interviewed by Ms. Lily Ladewig for the Mellon Mutual Mentoring Project funded by the Mellon Foundation in a grant given to UMass Amherst. The interview with photos is on the web.

January 18, 2008

We are delighted to announce that the Spring 2008 Speaker Series is now official. The series will include talks on transportation in Asia, electric
power in New England, gangs and social networks, airplane boarding, operations management, and public health research in Africa. We are delighted to have such a distinguished list of speakers coming to the Isenberg School of Management!

January 14, 2008

Professor Anna Nagurney has returned from the 19th MCDM (Multi Criteria Decision Making) Conference in Auckland, New Zealand. Photos from the conference have been posted.

January 12, 2008

Professor Nagurney's Fulbright Senior Specialist Grant has been reported in the Ukrainian Weekly and on the Italian Fulbright Commission website.

January 8, 2008

Professor Anna Nagurney writes from Auckland, New Zealand where she is attending the 19th MCDM (Multi Criteria Decision Making) Conference. The venue is wonderful and the conferees were even treated to a formal welcome ceremony by the Maori, the indigenous people of New Zealand. Professor Nagurney gave her plenary talk yesterday (one day time difference) and enjoyed discussions with the audience members that followed. She especially thanks Professor Matthias Ehrgott of the University of Auckland for hosting her visit and for organizing such an interesting conference with the general theme of sustainability, which has attracted participants from 37 countries!

January 4, 2008

The UMass-Amherst INFORMS Student Chapter celebrated the End of the Semester and the Holiday Season with a party. Photos of the event are now on this site.

January 3, 2008

The UMass Report on Research 2007 features the research of Professor Nagurney and her students.

December 31, 2007

We have been updating many of our center website pages, so please have a look at some of our latest exciting activities in terms of new presentations, projects, lab activities, and associated media coverage.

As always, in order to keep you on top of our latest updates and information, we regularly update the What's New page as well as this News and Announcements page.

Happy New 2008 Year!

Professor Anna Nagurney -- Center Director

December 24, 2007

The Center Director, Professor Anna Nagurney, and the Center Associates wish everyone a joyous holiday season and a wonderful New 2008 Year! Many thanks for your support!

December 20, 2007

Professor Anna Nagurney is delighted to be serving on  the Awards Committee for the 2008 Mathematics Competition sponsored by the Shevchenko Scientific Society (USA) and the U.S.-Ukraine Foundation (Конкурс Наукового товариства ім. Шевченка в Америці та фундації  "Україна-США" для молодих математиків в Україні). The goal of the competition is to help young mathematicians who are working  at research institutions in Ukraine, and to stimulate the interest of young people in pure and applied science.  The competition is open to citizens of Ukraine who are working permanently in Ukraine, 35 years old, or younger, and who possess the degree of Kandydat, or D.Sc., in physico-mathematical  sciences. The deadline for submitting applications is February 15, 2008. Information about the application process can be found at: http://shevchenko.org/MatPhysTech/competition.htm   (In Ukrainian)

December 16, 2007

The Winter 2008 Supernetwork Sentinel highlighting Fall Semester actvities and previewing the Spring Semester is now online.

December 12, 2007

Professor Anna Nagurney has received a Fulbright Senior Specialist Grant in Business Administration at the University of Catania in Italy. Professor Nagurney will spend two weeks in Italy on this Fulbright grant in March 2008. The theme of her grant is: Complex Networks and Vulnerability Analysis. A press release on the award can be found on the Isenberg School of Management website.

December 8, 2007

On behalf of the UMass Amherst INFORMS Student Chapter, Professor Anna Nagurney would like to thank Professor Arnold Barnett of the Sloan School at MIT for delivering his lecture, Is it Safe to Fly? yesterday as part of the Fall 2007 Speaker Series in Operations Research / Management Sciences.

Professor Barnett's lecture was fascinating, instructional, illuminating, and brilliantly delivered. The audience members were informed and entertained at the same time. We can't thank Professor Barnett sufficiently for the time that he took to come out from MIT to share his extraordinary experiences and expertise regarding flight safety with us. His lecture was a terrific ending to the Fall 2007 Speaker Series.

We also take this opportunity to thank all of our Fall 2007 speakers! The UMass Amherst community as well as interested guests benefited immensely from your presentations and visits. More information on the Speaker Series.

For more information on the award-winning UMass Amherst INFORMS Student Chapter, which hosts this speaker series and other activities, see its website.

December 5, 2007

This coming Friday, Professor Arnold Barnett from the Sloan School of Management at MIT will deliver the lecture, "Is it Safe to Fly?" as part of
the Fall 2007 UMass Amherst INFORMS Speaker Series.

We are very much looking forward to Professor Barnett's presentation which will take place in ISOM Room 106 (there has been a room change) at 11AM on December 7, 2007.

Professor Barnett's seminar will conclude the 2007 Fall Series!

December 2, 2007

We are very pleased that the paper, A Network Equilibrium Framework for Internet Advertising: Models, Qualitative Analysis, and Algorithms, by Professor Lan Zhao and Professor Anna Nagurney is appearing in the European Journal of Operational Research 187: (2008), pp 456-472.

The paper is the first to develop a network equilibrium modeling framework for Internet-based advertising.  It builds upon the authors' previous paper, A Network Modeling Approach for the Optimization of Internet-Based Advertising Strategies and Pricing with a Quantitative Explanation of Two Paradoxes, Netnomics 7: (2005), 97-114.

November 27, 2007

We are pleased to announce that the INFORMS Computing Society Fall 2007 Newsletter, edited by Professor Harvey Greenberg, is now online.

In the newsletter, which has several news features and many interesting articles, is an invited essay by Professor Anna Nagurney, entitled, Supernetworks: The Origins, Some Applications, and Possibilities. The essay highlights a lot of research conducted by Center Associates of the
Virtual Center for Supernetworks.

November 24, 2007

Photos taken by Professor Anna Nagurney at the RSAI Fellows Luncheon on November 9, 2007, organized by Professor David Boyce, at the RSAI Annual Meeting in Savannah, Georgia, have now been posted.

November 22, 2007

The Cowles Foundation of Yale University has now made the Beckmann, McGuire, and Winsten classic book, Studies in the Economics of Transportation, available for download in pdf format. A link to the download as well as the background history of this book can be found at: http://supernet.som.umass.edu/classics.htm#bmw.

In addition, we have now posted the presentation by Professor Michael Florian given at the 50th anniversary celebrations of the publication of this book in sessions organized by Professors David E. Boyce and Anna Nagurney at the INFORMS National Meeting in San Francisco in 2005. Professor Florian's presentation as well as those of the other presenters in these special sessions can be found at the above link.

November 21, 2007

The Center Director, Professor Anna Nagurney, and the Center Associates would like to wish everyone a safe and Happy Thanksgiving!

November 17, 2007

On behalf on the UMass Amherst INFORMS Student Chapter, Professor Anna Nagurney would like to thank Professor Sundar Krishnamurty who gave an outstanding presentation yesterday as part of the Fall 2007 Speaker Series in Operations Research / Management Sciences. The research team in decision-making and engineering design that Professor Krishnamurty heads has developed such innovative products as a portable seat belt and a hugging vest as part of its assistive technologies initiatives. His work has been featured in the Boston Globe and on CNN.

Photos from the awarding of the Robert Herman Lifetime Achievement Award in Transportation Science to Profesor Michael Smith were added to Photos of Network Innovators.  The article on the Isenberg School of Management website on the INFORMS Student Chapter Award was added to Media Coverage.

November 15, 2007

Tomorrow, November 16, 2007, we welcome Professor Sundar Krishnamurty of the College of Engineering at UMass Amherst, who will deliver his talk, Decision Model Development in Engineering Design, as part of the 2007 Fall Speaker Series in Operations Research / Management Sciences at the Isenberg School of Management in Room ISOM 112 from 11:00AM until noon. Professor Krishnamurty has done fascinating research with his students and collaborators regarding the design of portable seat belts and calming vests for autistic patients. We are very much looking forward to his presentation tomorrow! More information about Professor Krishnamurty, his talk, and the other speakers in our series.

In addition, the Isenberg School of Management is delighted that tomorrow (Friday), the Nobel Laureate, Professor Robert F. Engle, will be speaking in ISOM Room 210 from 1:30-3:00PM as part of the Finance Seminar Series. More information about Professor Engle's talk.

November 13, 2007

The paper by Professor Anna Nagurney and Center Associate Qiang "Patrick" Qiang, "Robustness of Transportation Networks Subject to Degradable Links," appears in Europhysics Letters volume 80 (2007). Please see: http://supernet.som.umass.edu/dart.html

We are very excited about the results in this paper which build upon our research into network systems, performance/efficiency measurement, and vulnerability analysis.

Also, the UMass Amherst INFORMS Student Chapter has recently posted photos from the INFORMS Seattle meeting on its website. Photos of both the Student Chapter Awards ceremonies and the awarding of the 2007 WORMS Award for the Advancement of Women in OR/MS are included in this set.

November 12, 2007

What an amazing week it was with both the INFORMS Seattle meeting and the RSAI meeting in Savannah taking place in the same week! To follow up on the previous news and announcements below, a summary of additional events that took place is given below.

On Tuesday, November 6, 2007, at the Forum for Women in OR/MS 2007 Business Meeting at the INFORMS Annual Meeting in Seattle, Professor Anna Nagurney received the 2007 Award for the Advancement of Women in OR/MS. She was thrilled to be surrounded by several colleagues and students (present and past) at the awards luncheon. It was very special to have Dr. Radhika Kulkarni, the R&D Director of the Operations Research Department of SAS Institute Inc., and the 2006 WORMS Award winner, present the plaque to Professor Nagurney. In her acceptance speech, Professor Nagurney thanked her colleagues and students and singled out the great influence of Professor Stella Dafermos on her research career. Coincidentally, Center Associate Dr. Padma Ramanujam is a colleague of Dr. Kulkarni's at SAS!

Following the INFORMS conference in Seattle, Professor Anna Nagurney flew to Savannah, Georgia to take part in the RSAI meeting. On November 10, 2007, Professor Anna Nagurney was inducted an RSAI (Regional Science Association International) Fellow at the awards luncheon of the 54th Annual North American Meetings of the Regional Science Association International. The text of her acceptance speech will soon be posted as well as many additional photos from both conferences. She thanked numerous individuals for their intellectual leadership, support, and collegiality in her acceptance speech.

Many thanks to the organizers of both the INFORMS Seattle conference and the RSAI conference for such outstanding venues and scientific programs! It was so wonderful to see so many friends and colleagues from around the globe!

November 8, 2007

On Tuesday, November 6, 2007, the University of Massachusetts Student Chapter of INFORMS (Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences) received the INFORMS Student Chapter Annual Award Summa Cum Laude at the INFORMS Conference, which took place in Seattle, Washington. This is the highest distinction given to a student chapter and it recognizes the outstanding achievements of the  chapter in 2006. A plaque representing the award was given at the Chapters/Fora Officers Breakfast, which was attended by two past Presidents of the Student Chapter, Center Associate Zugang "Leo" Liu of the Isenberg School of Management and Christian Wernz of the College of Engineering. John F. Smith Memorial Professor Anna Nagurney, the Faculty Advisor of the chapter, was also at the awards ceremony as well as several additional members of the Student Chapter. The 2007-2008 Chapter President is Center Associate Patrick Qiang.

The chapter is noted for its Speaker Series which brings outstanding speakers to the Isenberg School of Management, its variety of social and community activities, and the esprit de corps of its members. Members of the chapter include students from the Isenberg School of Management, the College of Engineering, the Department of Computer Science, the Department of Resource Economics, as well as other departments at UMass Amherst.

More information about the UMass Amherst INFORMS Student Chapter, its present officers, members, and activities can be found on its website.

There are approximately 60 INFORMS student chapters, with the majority of them in the US.

November 7, 2007

Last Monday evening, November 5, 2007, Professor Michael Smith of York University in England was awarded the Robert Herman Lifetime Achievement Prize in Transportation Science at the Transportation Science & Logistics Society Business meeting at the INFORMS Annual Meeting in Seattle, Washington. It was a historic occasion and the room was packed to capacity. The chair of the award selection committee, Dr. Jaume Barcelo, read one of the nomination letters which highlighted Professor Smith's extraordinary contributions. Professor Anna Nagurney was very touched when Professor Smith in his acceptance speech noted the important contributions of her dissertation advisor at Brown University, Professor Stella Dafermos, who passed away in 1990. After the meeting, members of the award selection committee, which included Professors Michael Ball, Michel Gendreau, and David Boyce, accompanied Professor Smith, his wife, and Professor Barcelo, together with Professors Hani Mahmassani and Anna Nagurney to dinner to continue the celebrations. Professor Smith regaled us with stories of gliding in the UK and of being hit by lightning twice in so doing!

More news from the INFORMS National Meeting will follow. It has been an amazing couple of days in Seattle.

November 4, 2007

This week, the Center Director, Professor Anna Nagurney, and several of the Center Associates will be presenting and participating at the INFORMS Annual Meeting in Seattle, WA and at the North American Meeting of the Regional Science Assocation International in Savannah, GA.

November 3, 2007

First, on behalf of the UMass Amherst INFORMS Student Chapter, we would like to thank Dr. Joanne Hill of Goldman Sachs for delivering a brilliant lecture yesterday as part of the 2007 Fall INFORMS Speaker Series. Dr. Hill was co-hosted by the Finance Seminar Series of the Isenberg School of Management. In her talk Dr. Hill interwove operations research advances with applications in finance over the past three decades and emphasized what existing methodological tools and models do not capture. She left the audience with numerous important and fascinating research problems to tackle and demonstrated that academics and practitioners can learn a lot from one another!

November 1, 2007

We are pleased to welcome Dr. Joanne Hill of Goldman Sachs who will be presenting, Investment Strategy Design Meets Capital Markets - The Fit and Misfit of Operations Research, at the Joint Operations Research/Management Science -Finance Seminar tomorrow. This is a homecoming for Dr. Hill who once served on the faculty of the School of Management faculty at UMass - Amherst.

October 31, 2007

Today, the UMass Amherst INFORMS Student Chapter was notified by Dr. John Fowler of ASU, the INFORMS Student Chapter Annual Award Committee Chair, that it has been chosen to receive  the INFORMS Student Chapter Annual Award Summa Cum Laude. This is the highest distinction given to a student chapter and it recognizes the outstanding achievements of the chapter in 2006. A plaque representing the
award will be given out at the 2007 INFORMS Seattle meeting on November 6, 2007. As Faculty Advisor of the UMass Amherst Student Chapter, Professor Anna Nagurney, congratulates the chapter on its outstanding speaker series, many other activities, and for the collegiality of its members. Photos of some recent chapter activities and its activities can be found on the chapter website.

Christian Wernz and Zugang "Leo" Liu will accompany Professor Anna Nagurney to the chapters meeting and awards ceremony in Seattle and will receive the award on behalf of the chapter. Patrick Qiang, the 2007-2008 chapter president, will be taking part in the Future Academicians Colloquium prior to the INFORMS Seattle Meeting on November 3, 2007.

October 28, 2007

The presentations, An Efficiency Measure for Dynamic Networks with Application to the Internet and Vulnerability Analysis, by Professor Anna
Nagurney and Qiang "Patrick" Qiang, and An Integrated Electric Power Supply Chain and Fuel Market Network Framework: Theoretical Modeling with Empirical Analysis, by Zugang Liu and Professor Anna Nagurney have now been posted.

These presentations will be given at the 2007 INFORMS Meeting in Seattle, Washington, November 4-7, 2007.

October 27, 2007

Yesterday, Professor David Jensen of the Computer Science Department at UMass Amherst gave a fascinating presentation entitled, Learning and Exploiting Statistical Dependencies in Networks, as part of the Fall 2007 UMass Amherst INFORMS Speaker Series. The application that he discussed in depth was securities fraud detection. The way he interwove computer science, statistics, and even philosophy in his presentation was captivating. On behalf of the UMass Amherst INFORMS Student Chapter, we express our appreciation to Professor Jensen for his terrific seminar! (Photos from the seminar.)

October 24, 2007

This past Monday, Professor Ben Branch of the Department of Finance and Operations Management received the Chancellor's Medal after his Distinguished Faculty Lecture. It was a very special event followed by a reception and banquet. Many of our department and school colleagues were present and many Branch family members as well as students. Congratulations to Professor Branch on this special achievement!

This Friday, Professor David Jensen of the Department of Computer Science at UMass Amherst will be delivering the next Fall 2007 Operations Research / Management Science lecture, Learning and Exploiting Statistical Dependencies in Networks. This event will take place in Room 112 of the Isenberg School of Management at 11AM. We are all very much looking forward to his presentation!

October 21, 2007

We are delighted that our colleague, Professor Ben Branch, will be giving a Distinguished Faculty Lecture tomorrow, Monday, October 22, 2007,  at the Massachusetts Room at the Mullins Center at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Professor Branch will be speaking at 4PM and the title of his presentation is: If Markets Aren't Efficient, Why Aren't You Getting Rich? More information on his presentation.

After his presentation, Professor Branch will be awarded the Chancellor's Medal, and a reception will follow.

October 20, 2007

Yesterday, Dr. Elaine Chew gave a fascinating talk, Music and Operations Research -- The Perfect Match, in the Fall 2007 Speaker Series in Operations Research / Management Science at UMass Amherst. Dr. Chew visited with her husband, Dr. Alexandre Francois, and in her presentation, which contained sound, animations, and visualizations, captivated the audience by discussing the relationships among music, mathematics, operations research, and computing. Both Dr. Chew and Dr. Francois are 2007-2008 Science Fellows at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University and have appointments at USC. (Photos from their visit.)

October 19, 2007

The Austrian Office of Science and Technology Bridges Newsletter reported that Center Associate Professor Tina Wakolbinger has joined the Unversity of Memphis Faculty. Congratulations Tina!

October 17, 2007

We are delighted that Dr. Elaine Chew will be giving the third talk in the 2007 Fall Speaker Series in Operations Research / Management Science this coming Friday at 11AM in the Isenberg School of Management Room 112. Dr. Chew is spending this academic year as a Science Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study.

We are all very much looking forward to her visit!

October 13, 2007

Yesterday, October 12, 2007,  was a historic day -- Dr. Drew Gilpin Faust was inaugurated as the first female President of Harvard University! Dr. Faust was the Founding Dean of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, where Professor Anna Nagurney was a Science Fellow from 2005-2006, and where many friends were made that year. The inauguration was made available via a live webcast and more information on this historic inauguration can be found at: http://www.president.harvard.edu/news/inauguration

Many sincerest congratulations to President Faust and many thanks to her for her outstanding leadership of the Radcliffe Insitute for Advanced Study and now Harvard University!

October 6, 2007

Professor Nagurney thoroughly enjoyed her visit to the University of Minnesota and thanks her hosts, Professors Henry Liu, David Levinson, and Gary Davis, for their efforts in making her visit a success. Photos from the visit and of the I-35 Bridge Collapse Site and the lecture announcement have been posted.

October 3, 2007

On Friday, October 5, 2007, Professor Nagurney will be delivering the Warren Lecture at the University of Minnesota on Transportation Science and the Dynamics of Critical Infrastructure Networks with Applications to Performance Measurement and Vulnerability Analysis.

September 29, 2007

Dr. Stavros Siokos of Citigroup, London, England gave a fascinating presentation yesterday in the Isenberg School of Management as part of the 2007 Fall INFORMS Speaker Series. He regalled us with information as to how the financial industy has changed over the past decade and the influence of technology and regulations on these changes. He also contrasted the financial industry in US and in Europe. Link to Presentation.

In addition, we have posted photos from Dr. Siokos' visit and the panel at the Women  and Information Technology Summit.

September 28, 2007

The Mind the Gap -- Women and Information Technology (IT) Summit that took place yesterday at the UMass Amherst Campus Center brought together women in IT as speakers and panelists as well as moderators. The audience was filled with students, males and females, as well as faculty and staff from UMass and from neighboring colleges and institutions, plus practitioners. The venue was great and Professor Anna Nagurney very much enjoyed serving on the first panel. Background on the points that she raised.

September 23, 2007

On Thursday, September 27, 2007, the Mind the Gap! Summit for Women & Technology conference will take place at the UMass Amhert Campus Center from 10:00AM to 4:00PM. Professor Anna Nagurney will be on the luncheon panel, Leading Experts Speak: Why Women are Turned Off by Technology and How to Overcome It.

On Friday, September 28, 2007, Dr. Stavros Siokos, Managing Director of Citigroup in London, England, will deliver the second 2007 Fall Seminar in Operations Research / Management Sciences at 11:00AM in Room 112 of the Isenberg School of Management. Dr. Siokos is a UMass PhD and a leader in financial algorithmics. We are delighted that he is coming to speak and to meet with interested students, faculty, and guests. His visit is co-sponsored by the Finance Seminar Series at the Isenberg School.

September 20, 2007

With the new academic year now in full gear we are pleased to announce that the UMass Amherst INFORMS Student Chapter is planning exciting activities in addition to the 2007 Fall Speaker series, which began on September 14.

Please visit the Student Chapter Website to find out about its scheduled 2007 Fall activities.

September 15, 2007

On behalf of the UMass Amherst INFORMS Student Chapter, Professor Anna Nagurney would like to thank Dr. Brenda Dietrich of IBM Yorktown Heights for delivering a brilliant lecture yesterday on Services Sciences. Dr. Dietrich was the first speaker in the 2007 Fall Operations Research / Management Sciences Seminar Series, which is organized by the UMass Amherst INFORMS Student Chapter.  Photos from yesterday's seminar and visit.

September 12, 2007

We are delighted that this Friday, September 14, we will be hosting Dr. Brenda Dietrich of IBM, Yorktown Heights. Dr. Dietrich will be the first speaker in the 2007 Fall INFORMS Speaker Series in Operations Research / Management Sciences, which is organized by the UMass Amherst INFORMS Student Chapter. Dr. Dietrich is an IBM Fellow and the Director of Mathematical Sciences at IBM. She is also the President of INFORMS (The Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences). She will give her presentation at the Isenberg School of Management this Friday at 11AM in Room 112. More information about Dr. Dietrich, her talk, and the speaker series can be found at Fall 2007 UMass Amherst INFORMS Speaker Series.

September 7, 2007

As the new academic year begins, the Fall 2007 INFORMS Speaker Series was announced In the Loop. In addition, Professor Nagurney and Qiang "Patrick" Qiang's research on supernetwork efficiency measurement and vulnerability analysis was reported in the Daily Collegian. Links to both of these items may be found in Media Coverage.

September 2, 2007

This week we begin officially the new 2007-2008 academic year!

To keep you informed of our activities and upcoming events, invited seminars, and conferences, the 2007 Fall Supernetwork Sentinel is now online.

Many thanks for your support!

Dr. Anna Nagurney, Center Director

August 29, 2007

There is good news to report as we approach the beginning of a new academic year.

The paper entitled, A Supply Chain Network Perspective for Electric Power Generation, Supply, Transmission, and Consumption, and co-authored by Professors Anna Nagurney and Dmytro Matsypura was recently listed on the Social Science Research Network's (SSRN) Top Ten download list for Supply Chain Management: Empirical. To view the top ten list click here  and to view all the papers in the journals click here.

The abstract and download statistics for the paper.

Plus, Patrick Qiang, doctoral student center associate, has received notification that he has been accepted into the INFORMS Future Academician Colloquium to be held in Seattle, Washington, prior to the Annual INFORMS (Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences) Meeting in November 2007. Congratulations, Patrick!

August 28, 2007

Professor Nagurney has been appointed to the Editorial Board of the Journal of Computational Optimization in Economics and Finance by the Editor, Professor Constantin Zopounidis of the Technical University of Crete, Greece. The journal will publish its first issue in 2008.

August 25, 2007

As we gear up for the new 2007-2008 academic year, we are pleased that new appointments have been made in the Isenberg School of Management (ISOM) and we welcome Dr. Tony Butterfield as the new Interim Dean. Dr. Butterfield was our PhD Director for many years. Professor Ray Pfeiffer will be assuming his position as the Director of the PhD program. We also thank Professor Soren Bisgaard for serving as the Interim Dean of ISOM this past year.

August 23, 2007

A new paper on an efficiency measure for dynamic networks by Professor Nagurney and Qiang "Patrick" Qiang has been posted.

Yesterday, the UMass Campus honored Chancellor John Lombardi as he departs for Louisiana State University. Center Associate Qiang "Patrick" Qiang was interviewed by WWLP TV.

August 21, 2007

The results of a new study on the modeling and empirical analysis of electric power supply chains with fuel markets with a large-scale application to New England, co-authored by Zugang Liu and Professor Anna Nagurney, and funded by the National Science Foundation, have now been posted.

In addition, the publication information of many of our journal articles and book chapters on topics ranging from dynamic networks to vulnerability analysis with applications to critical infrastructure networks ranging from electric power networks to financial networks and the Internet has also been updated on the Downloadable Articles page.

August 17, 2007

The Press Release for the Fall 2007 UMass Amherst INFORMS Speaker Series was issued.

August 13, 2007

An article on the research of Professor Anna Nagurney and doctoral student Qiang "Patrick" Qiang on  network vulnerability, funded by the National Science Foundation, appears in ScienceDaily.com. Additional coverage of this research and other center activities can be found  in Media Coverage.

August 10, 2007

We are delighted to be able to announce the Fall 2007 UMass Amherst INFORMS Speaker Series. This is the seventh semester of the INFORMS Speaker Series at UMass Amherst and we are delighted to be able to help with this very informative and exciting series. The talks take place on prescheduled Fridays at 11AM in the Isenberg School of Management in Room 112 (except where noted). This Fall, two speakers, Dr. Stavros Siokos and Dr. Joanne Hill, will be co-hosted with the Finance Seminar series at the Isenberg School. The speaker series is organized through the support of the UMass Amherst INFORMS Students Chapter.

August 7, 2007

The Center Director, Professor Anna Nagurney, extends her deepest sympathies to all those affected by the Minnesota bridge collapse on August 1, 2007. This tragedy demonstrates the criticality of maintaining our transportation infrastructure and understanding the underlying scientific and engineering principles of network and bridge design, construction, and maintenance.

August 4, 2007

Professor Nagurney and Qiang "Patrick" Qiang's work on network vulnerability was reported in Webweek.

August 3, 2007

Center Associates have been busy with various activities.

Professor Anna Nagurney has returned from the National Science Foundation where she served on a panel.

Dr. Tina Wakolbinger will soon be moving to the University of Memphis where she will be an Assistant Professor at the Fogelman School of Economics and Business. Congratulations to Professor Wakolbinger!

Professor Ding Zhang, who is the MBA Director at the School of Business at SUNY Oswego, has spent the past several weeks in China working on establshing various partnerships with Chinese universities and has now returned to the US. Welcome back to Professor Zhang!

Professor Jose M. Cruz of the School of Business at the University of Connecticut at Storrs had the unique experience of having his research presented at two conferences which took place simultaneously on two continents. He presented his paper on corporate social responsibility and environmental decision-making at the INFORMS Puerto Rico conference in July while his co-author, Dr. Dmytro Matsypura, from the University of Sydney was presenting their co-authored paper at the Euro conference in Prague, Czechoslovakia.

July 31, 2007

The just released study, Securing and Protecting America’s Railroad System: U.S. Railroad and Opportunities for Terrorist Threats, prepared for CITIZENS FOR RAIL SAFETY, INC. by Professors Jeremy F. Plant and Richard R. Young of Penn State - Harrisburg references Professors Nagurney and Dong's book, Supernetworks: Decision-Making for the Information Age.

July 28, 2007

Professor Anna Nagurney was interviewed by Ms. Kristin Palpini from the Daily Hampshire Gazette for an article on Research on Campus. The article, which appears in the July 27, 2007 issue of the newspaper, is available here.

July 25, 2007

The University of Massachusetts issued a Press Release on Professor Nagurney and Qiang "Patrick" Qiang's work on network vulnerability.

July 22, 2007

Both the Downloadable Articles and  the Media pages have been updated.

We are especially pleased to have made available the offprint of the paper by Professor Anna Nagurney and doctoral student, Qiang Patrick Qiang, published in Europhysics Letters and entitled, A Network Efficiency Measure for Congested Networks.

July 20, 2007

The Isenberg School of Management Associate Dean, Dr. Jay Gladden, has completed the compilation and editing of the 2006 Research Beat, which is now available online on the Isenberg School of Management website.

Thank you, Dean Gladden, for producing this most important document which highlights the breadth and depth of research activities at the Isenberg School of Management at the University of Massachusetts Amherst!

July 19, 2007

We are pleased to announce that the Fall 2007 INFORMS (Institute for Operations Research and The Management Sciences) Speaker Series at UMass Amherst has now been finalized. This series is organized by the UMass Amherst Student Chapter of INFORMS with support provided by the Department of Finance and Operations Management, the Isenberg School of Management, and the John F. Smith Memorial Fund, plus INFORMS. Professor Anna Nagurney is the Faculty Advisor to the student chapter and its speaker series and Trisha Woolley is the chapter speaker series coordinator for 2007-2008.

In the 2007 Fall semester, we will be hosting: Dr. Brenda Dietrich of IBM and a recently elected IBM Fellow and President of INFORMS, Dr. Stavros Siokos, Managing Director  of Citigroup, London, England, Professor Elaine Chew of USC and a Science Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University,  Professor David Jensen of the Computer Science Department at UMass Amherst, Dr. Joanne Hill of Morgan Stanley, Professor Sundar Krishnamurthy of the Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering at UMass Amherst, and Professor Arnold Barnett of the Sloan School and Operations Research Center at MIT. We thank these outstanding speakers for their willingness to speak in our series. Updated information will be posted at: http://supernet.som.umass.edu/informs/speakernew.html where info on previous speakers and their presentations can be found.

The talks/visits of Dr. Siokos and Dr. Hill will be co-sponsored by the Finance Seminar Series of the Department of Finance and Operations Management at the Isenberg School.

July 16, 2007

Photos from the INFORMS conference in Puerto Rico have been added. Also, while in Puerto Rico, Professor Anna Nagurney was interviewed for a story on congestion pricing by bloomberg.com


July 14, 2007

The INFORMS (Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences) Conference in Puerto Rico, which took place July 8-11, was a huge success! Professor Anna Nagurney thanks the organizers -- Professor Karla Hoffman of George Mason University and Dr. Robin Lougee-Heimer of IBM for selecting such a gorgeous venue for the conference -- the Wyndham Rio Mar hotel, which is located on the ocean, less than an hour from San Juan. The sessions and the presentations were excellent and it was especially wonderful to have so many excellent talks from industry and, in particular, from IBM, which was very well-represented at the conference. Professor Nagurney was delighted to see Dr. Brenda Dietrich of IBM at the conference, who is a newly elected IBM Fellow and who will be opening up the UMass Amherst INFORMS Speaker Series in the Fall of 2007! In addition, it was very special to see Dr. Igor Frolow of IBM at the conference. Dr. Frolow received his PhD in Applied Mathematics from Brown University, as did Professor Nagurney. Finally, discussions with Dr. Paul Thompson of IBM on humanitarian logistics were very thought-provoking and moving.

The venue made it possible to enjoy not only the scientific presentations which were of very high quality by researchers from North American, Latin and South America, Europe, and Asia, but to also make new friends and to see old friends. The setting with its natural beauty and relaxing atmosphere provided a perfect balance in which to discuss research findings and to catch up.

To all the organizers and participants of the INFORMS conference in Puerto Rico, July 8-11, 2007, and to INFORMS itself, thank you for such an
outstanding conference, which will long stay with us in terms of wonderful memories!

July 5, 2007

As the INFORMS 2007 International Conference nears, a presentation by Center Associate Professor Jose Cruz  of the University of Connecticut has been uploaded to Visuals.

July 2, 2007

Next week, the INFORMS 2007 International Conference will be held in Puerto Rico. The presentations of Professor Nagurney and the Center Associates can be found in Visuals.

June 30, 2007

Professor Anna Nagurney has accepted the invitation from Professor Matthias Ehrgott to be a plenary speaker at the 19th International Conference on Multiple Criteria Decision Making to be held in Auckland, New Zealand in January 2008.

Patrick Qiang has returned from the World Conference in Transport Research. See Photos of Network Innovators.

June 27, 2007

Patrick Qiang reports from the World Conference in Transport Research (WCTR) in Berkeley, California, that his presentation yesterday went very well and that he is enjoying the conference tremendously.

We are gearing up for several conferences in early July. Professor Anna Nagurney has organized an invited session on sustainable supply chains at the INFORMS Puerto Rico conference, July 8-11, 2007.  Several center associates will be speaking in this session, including Professor Jose Cruz from the University of Connecticut and Trisha Woolley, who will present a paper co-authored with Professors Nagurney and John Stranlund, and Zugang Liu. Professor Nagurney will also be presenting a joint paper at this conference with Center Associate Patrick Qiang on a unified network efficiency measure that can handle either fixed or elastic demands. Professor Cruz will have a  paper with Professor Dmytro Matsypura of the University of Sydney, Australia, presented at the Euro XXII conference, to be held in Prague, the Czech Republic, July 8-11, 2007. Professor Matsypura will present their research, which is on the modeling of grid computer systems as multitiered networks.

More information on the above conferences and the papers.

June 23, 2007

Please visit the updated Center Associates page for the full list of associates and links to their individual center pages for their most recent contributions and updated curriculum vitae. Congratulations to all the Center Associates for their outstanding contributions to the Virtual Center for Supernetworks!

June 21, 2007

The 11th World Conference on Transport Research (WCTR) will take place June 24-28 in Berkeley, California. Center Associate Patrick Qiang  will present a paper co-authored with Professor Anna Nagurney at the conference entitled, A Transportation Network Efficiency Measure that Captures Flows, Behavior, and Costs with Applications to Component Importance Identification and Vulnerability. The conference will be headlined by a plenary talk by the Nobel Prize Winner, Professor Daniel McFadden. Patrick has received a fellowship from the organizers of the WCTR conference to attend and present the paper.

June 20, 2007

Professor Anna Nagurney and Center Associate, doctoral student Qiang "Patrick" Qiang, have had their paper, A network efficiency measure for congested networks, accepted for publication in Europhysics Letters.

This paper generalizes a network efficiency/performance measure proposed by Italian physicists over half a decade ago and demonstrates how essential it is to capture behavior of decision-makers and the induced flows and costs on congested networks as varied as urban transportation networks and electric power generation and distribution networks as well as the Internet. The paper also gives a network component importance indicator which allows for the ranking of nodes and links from most important to least important with major implications for security purposes.

Photos from the 2007 CEF conference held in Montreal, Canada, June 14-16, 2007, have now been posted.

June 18, 2007

The Computing in Economics and Finance (CEF) Conference, which took place June 14-16, 2007 at HEC in Montreal, Canada, was a great success! Speakers came from as far as Australia and New Zealand to present their research. The conference was organized by Professor Simon van Norden and many thanks are extended to him for not only the great venue but also for the lovely weather! Professor Anna Nagurney had a wonderful time at the conference.

While at the conference, Professor Nagurney also enjoyed the luncheon for the editorial board members of the Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control and the luncheon for the Advisory Council of the Society for Computational Economics. It was terrific to see so many great friends!

Next year's CEF conference will take place in late June 2008 in Paris, France and the 2009 conference wil be in Sydney, Australia! For additional information on these activities as well as others of the Society for Computational Economics , see its website.

June 11, 2007

Professor Anna Nagurney has accepted the invitation to join the Editorial Board of the International Transactions in Operational Research (ITOR) from Dr. Celso Ribeiro, who, himself, was recently appointed as the journal's Editor-in-Chief.
 
According to Dr. Ribeiro, ITOR is very important for IFORS, who is making a great effort to develop ITOR quickly and to have it successfully indexed shortly. IFORS will  strongly support proposals and initiatives to improve and develop its  journal. The resources provided by IFORS will be essential to bring ITOR to a new level. IFORS is the International Federation of Operational Research Societies.

Considering IFORS far-reaching international profile, Dr. Ribeiro strongly believes ITOR  can play a major role in the international Operational Research community, providing a solid, vigorous, and well regarded journal, attracting a broad  readership and offering its contributors an effective platform for publicizing  their most relevant research.

Professor Nagurney is very much looking forward to working with Professor Ribeiro and the editorial board!

June 9, 2007

The 13th Annual Conference on Computing in Economics and Finance will take place next week, June 14-16, 2007 in Montreal, Canada.   Professor Anna Nagurney will be presenting two co-authored papers with Patrick Qiang at this conference. During the conference Professor Nagurney will also be attending a meeting of the Advisory Council of the Society for Computational Economics, which she was elected to this past year, and a meeting of the editorial board of the Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control.

June 3, 2007

Professor Nagurney's Op-Ed, UMass should act more like family unit, was published in today's Sunday Republican (Spingfield, MA) . A link to the piece was added to Commentaries. The organizers of the March Brown SUMS Conference have added video clips. See Professor Nagurney's lecture clip.

June 1, 2007

The 2007 summer issue of The Supernetwork Sentinel, the Newsletter of the Virtual Center for Supernetworks, is now online.

Read about the UMass Amherst INFORMS Student Chapter and how it builds community for interdisciplinary research and fellowship; about Dr. Stavros Siokos headlining TradeTech2007 in Paris, France; about the worldwide press coverage of the Nagurney and Qiang network efficiency/performance measure and vulnerability analysis, and other highlights!

Enjoy!

May 30, 2007

Center Associate Trisha Woolley has returned from the 7th Meeting on Game Theory and Practice Dedicated to Energy, Environment and Natural Resources held May 28-30 in Montreal, Canada. Trisha presented the paper co-authored with Professor Anna Nagurney and Professor John K. Stranlund entitled, Spatially Differentiated Trade of Permits for Multipollutant Electric Power Supply Chains. Hers was the first scheduled talk after the opening plenary. The presentation and a link to the conference.

We thank the organizers of the conference for a fantastic venue and very interesting paper presentations!

May 27, 2007

Please see the photos from the UMass Amherst Graduate Graduation along with a link to a page of photos from the celebration that took place yesterday at the home of Professor Anna Nagurney.

May 25, 2007

Today is the Graduate Graduation Ceremony at UMass Amherst and Center Associate, Tina Wakolbinger, will be marching in the procession to receive her diploma. Congratulations to Dr. Tina Wakolbinger!

Dr. Dmytro Matsypura will also be on the graduation program. He is presently a Lecturer (equivalent to an Assistant Professor) at the University of Sydney in Australia and is in the midst of a semester there and busy teaching so he will not be participating in the ceremony today.

In addition, the wife of Center Associate Zugang "Leo" Liu, Jia Wang, and the husband of Center Associate Professor Ke Ke, Haizheng Zhang, will also be receiving their PhDs today. Dr. Wang majored in Finance whereas Dr. Zhang majored in Computer Science.

Finally, Dr. Diogo Monteiro-Souza will be back from England, where he is now an Assistant Professor to receive his PhD diploma in Resource Economics. Professor Anna Nagurney served on his dissertation committee.

Tomorrow the Undergraduate Graduation Ceremony will take place at UMass Amherst.

Congratulations to all the graduates and their proud and happy families and friends!

May 23, 2007

Professor Anna Nagurney will be at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University May 22-23, 2007 for the celebration of the appointment of Dr. Drew Gilpin Faust as the President of Harvard. Dr. Faust will be honored Tuedsay evening, May 22nd, at the Radcliffe Institute reception. She served as the first Dean of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. Professor Nagurney was a Science Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute from 2005-2006.

May 18, 2007

Photos from the POMS Conference in Dallas, Texas and the UMass Amherst INFORMS Student Chapter End-of-Year Party are now posted.

May 17, 2007

The abstract of the doctoral dissertation of Center Associate, Dr. Tina Wakolbinger, is now available at dissertations.

May 13, 2007

We have now updated the Photos of Center Activities page of our many Center activities. This page will continue to have many updates in the coming weeks since the month of May is a big celebratory month in academia, especially with the upcoming graduations!

Thanks to Center Associate, Zugang "Leo" Liu, for posting wonderful photos from the UMass Amherst INFORMS Student Chapter end of the semester party, which took place last Thursday. Please visit the Chapter Website to view the photos from the party and many more, along with recent announcements.

Professor Anna Nagurney thanks all the 2006-2007 INFORMS UMass Amherst Student Chapter Officers: Christian Wernz, President; Patrick Qiang, Vice President; Tara Demeyer, Secretary; Thomas Lenk, Treasurer, Baris Hasedmir and Zugang Liu, Webmasters, and Trisha Woolley, Speaker Series Coordinator for their outstanding service to the chapter this past year. The officers were recognized at the Chapter Party with special plaques and letters from the Faculty Advisor, Professor Nagurney.  Tina Wakolbinger was also recognized with a plaque for her numerous contributions over the past 3 years to the chapter.  Christian Wernz, Chapter President, also presented Tina with a special plaque making her an "Honorary Member" of the chapter, since she will be receiving her PhD later this month and then assuming a position as an Assistant Professor at the University of Memphis.

In addition, the following staff members from the Isenberg School of Management were also recognized with plaques, which they received earlier, for all their support of the chapter: Ms. Irene Benoit, Ms. Diane Kelley, Ms. Mary Parker, Ms. Kristen Rup, and Ms. Lynda Vassallo. Thank you!

May 10, 2007

This evening is the UMass Amherst INFORMS Student Chapter end of the semester party! It will be held at the Isenberg School of Management in Room 112 from 4 - 7PM. We will be recognizing outstanding staff members who have supported the various activities of the chapter, including its wonderful Speaker Series. We will also be thanking our 2006-2007 Chapter Officers as well as all those who have supported us. Please come and join us for great food and conversation. Several of our former speakers will be attending.

In the meantime, more congratulations are in order. Chapter member and former officer, Deanna Kennedy, has been named an Isenberg Fellow! Congratulations to Deanna! Also, last Friday, Chapter members, Tina Wakolbinger and Shenghan Xu, were inducted into the Beta Gamma Sigma honor society! Congratulations to Tina and Shenghan!

 It's been a distinct pleasure serving as the Faculty Advisor of this Chapter -- Professor Anna Nagurney.

May 8, 2007

Professor Anna Nagurney is deeply honored that she has been selected as a Regional Science Association International (RSAI) Fellow. She was informed of this wonderful news while she was at the Computational Management Science Conference in Geneva, Switzerland.  The President of RSAI, Dr. Roger Stough, announced that the new RSAI Fellows elected in 2007 are:

Dr. Yoshitsugu Kanemoto
Dr. Harry Kelejian
Dr. Anna Nagurney
Dr. Yorgos Papageorgiou
Dr. Alan Wilson.

A complete list of earlier elected RSAI Fellows can be found on the RSAI Website.

Professor Nagurney will be presented with her fellowship plaque at the 2007 North American Meeting of the RSAI to be held in Savannah, Georgia in November 2007.

May 7, 2007

Professor Anna Nagurney thanks the organizers of the 18th Annual POMS Conference in Dallas, Texas, held May 4-7, 2007 for a very stimulating and successful conference! The article, A Network Efficiency Measure with Application to Critical Infrastructure Networks, by Anna Nagurney and Qiang Qiang to appear in the Journal of Global Optimization was added to Downloadable Articles.

May 4, 2007

Professor Nagurney and Center Associates Zugang Liu, Qiang Qiang, and Trisha Woolley are at the 18th Annual Conference of the Production and Operations Management Society (POMS) in Dallas, Texas. Their presentations may be found in Visuals.

May 3, 2007

Due to the many requests that we have received, the presentation of Tina Wakolbinger at her dissertation defense on April 30 and that of Professor Anna Nagurney at the Women in Science panel on April 17 have been posted.

We have also included a link to the Women in Science panel page, which includes additional presentations and information, under professor Nagurney's presentation at the link above.

May 1, 2007

It is with pleasure that we announce that Center Associate Tina Wakolbinger successfully defended her doctoral dissertation in Business Administration with a concentration in Management Science yesterday. She will be marching in the UMass graduate ceremony to receive her PhD diploma on May 25. The Center Director and Associates congratulate Tina on this achievement! Tina has accepted a tenure-track Assistant Professorship position at the Fogelman College of Business and Economics at the University of Memphis in Tennessee, which houses the world-renowned Fedex Center.

It was wonderful to see such a nice turnout for Tina's presentation yesterday and even Center Associate Professor Jose Cruz (Ph.D. UMass '04) from UConn was in attendance.

April 29, 2007

Tomorrow, April 30, Center Associate Tina Wakolbinger will be defending her doctoral dissertation entitled, A Dynamic Theory for the Integration of Social and Economic Networks with Applications to Supply Chain and Financial Networks. The Chair of her dissertation committee is Professor Anna Nagurney and her committee members are: Professors Julie Caswell, June Dong, and Ana Muriel. More information on the defense, including an abstract of the dissertation.

In addition, we are pleased to announce that the photos from the Computational Management Science conference held recently in Geneva, Switzerland and the seminar of Professor Anna Nagurney in Imperial College, London are now posted.

April 28, 2007

On behalf of the UMass Amherst INFORMS Student Chapter, Professor Anna Nagurney, who serves as the chapter's Faculty Advisor, would like to thank Professor David J. McLaughlin for his seminar presentation, "Chasing Interdisciplinarity while Chasing Tornadoes: an Overview of the CASA Engineering Research Center," which he gave yesterday as part of of UMass Amherst INFORMS Speaker Series in Operations Research and the Management Sciences. This presentation completes our 2007 Spring Series! It was a tour de force and overviewed the successes and challenges of placement of weather radars and resource allocation and optimization with a focus on tornadoes and with empirical results for the Oklahoma area. The presentation demonstrated how engineers, computer scientists, mathematicians, including operations researchers/management scientists/decision scientists, and even sociologists must work together on such problems. It was a fantastic end to a truly extraordinary series and we thank all the speakers this year!

April 26, 2007

The Center Director, Professor Anna Nagurney, would like to thank Professor Berc Rustem, along with Professors John Polak and Stratos Pistikopoulos of Imperial College in London, England, for their extraordinary hospitality in hosting her visit on April 23-24, 2007. The initiative in systems engineering at Imperial College is to be commended and Professor Nagurney was absolutely delighted to be the first speaker in the new speaker series! More information on her talk and her presentation are available.

Professor Nagurney very much enjoyed the questions from the audience following her seminar and the dessert buffet was a lovely added touch. Many thanks to all involved for such a special visit.

Professor Anna Nagurney would also like to thank Professor Manfred Gilli and all those involved for organizing an exceptional Computational Management Science Conference in Geneva! Professor Nagurney's Conference Presentation. Special thanks also go to Professor Peter Winker for the kick-off COMISEF meeting on the project funded by the European Union, which followed the Computational Management Science Conference!

April 21, 2007

Professor Nagurney is at the 4th International Conference on Computational Management Science at the University of Geneva. There, in addition to presenting her work with Patrick Qiang, she will be introducing the plenary speaker, Professor Dimitri Bertsekas of MIT. Before returning to Amherst, she will also be presenting the System Engineering Seminar at Imperial College in London, England.

Her Letter to the Editor, Making investments in the state's infrastructure, was published in the The Daily Hampshire Gazette on April 14, 2007.

April 18, 2007

Many thanks to Dr. Barbara Pearson, RL&D, MassAwis, NEAGAP, TWIST, and the UMass Amherst INFORMS Student Chapter for hosting such a special panel event on Women in Science: Changing the Climate from the Bottom Up and the Top Down yesterday at the Isenberg School of Management. It is clear, given the size of the audience, who included teachers from high schools, faculty from community colleges, 4-year colleges, and UMass, as well as students from different schools, and administrators, that such an event was more than timely. The discussions were excellent. At 7:30PM so many still did not want to leave and wanted to continue talking and networking.

The panelists, who included Dr. Joanne Kamens from Abbott Labs, Dr. Sandy Petersen and Dr. Anna Nagurney from UMass Amherst, as well as Liesell Trinidad, a doctoral student at UMass, spoke about their professional experiences as female scientists and researchers and what can be done to enhance the climate for women (as well as for minorities). The event was also sponsored, in part, by the Virtual Center for Supernetworks. More information on this event.

As we all reflect upon the tragedy at Virginia Tech, the Center  Director and the Center Associates would like to send their deepest sympathies and prayers to the entire Virginia Tech Community and to the families and friends of all those who  died senselessly in the horror.  We are all united with Virginia Tech.

April 16, 2007

On Tuesday, April 17, there will be a panel on "Women in Science: Changing the Climate from the Bottom Up and the Top Down"  sponsored by the Massachusetts Association for Women in Science (AWIS) with additional support provided, in part, by the Virtual Center for Supernetworks and the UMass Amherst INFORMS Student Chapter. The panel will take place from 5-7PM in ISOM Room 112 and a light dinner will be provided. More information on this event.

April 14, 2007

We would like to thank Professor David Parkes of Harvard University for the excellent presentation that he gave yesterday in the 2007 Spring INFORMS Speaker Series. All those in attendance, who included faculty and students from the Isenberg School of Management, the School of Engineering, the School of Natural Sciences and Mathematics, as well as visitors from outside learned a great deal about online auctions. It was especially wonderful to see how the audience interacted with Professor Parkes. We also thank Professors Victor Lesser and Shlomo Zilberstein from Computer Science for joining us for lunch afterwards. The wonderful conversations continued with Professor Parkes in the Supernetworks Lab!

Please see the media coverage of the research conducted by Professor Anna Nagurney and doctoral student Qiang "Patrick" Qiang on network efficiency measurement and the identification of critical nodes and links. The research was supported by the National Science Foundation under the Management of Knowledge Intensive Dynamic Systems (MKIDS) program.

April 12, 2007

Yesterday was a marvelous day with the UMass Alumni Award ceremonies and festivities taking place in the Great Hall of the Massachusetts State House in Boston. Dr. Tom OBrien, who served as the Isenberg School Dean for 19 years, was honored with the 2007 Honorary Alumnus Award. For more information, including the names of the other honorees, see the UMass Website. We will be posting some photos on the supernetworks site as soon as possible from this fabulous event! We congratulate all the award recipients on their terrific achievements!

Tomorrow, April 13, we will be hosting Professor David Parkes of the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Harvard University. He will be speaking in the UMass Amherst 2007 INFORMS Speaker Series and we are delighted that Professor Parkes will be coming to Amherst! More information about Professor Parkes, who is a computer scientist, and his presentation.

Professor Nagurney and Patrick Qiang's research in featured in Network World and reprinted in other publications from around the world.

April 11, 2007

Please have a look at our recently posted papers on a new network efficiency measure and identification of the most critical nodes and links in
transportation networks, supply chains, electric power networks, financial networks, and, of course, the Internet.

This research was conducted by Professor Nagurney and doctoral student, Qiang "Patrick" Qiang and was funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) under the Management of Knowledge Intensive Dynamic Systems (MKIDS). This research has been recently covered by Network World, TechWorld, Computerworld, and LinuxWorld.

April 6, 2007

Some congratulations are in order!

Next Wednesday, April 11, former Isenberg School of Management Dean, Dr. Tom O'Brien, who served as Dean for 19 years, will be honored at the Massachusetts State House with the 2007 Distinguished Honorary Alumni Award. The Center Director, Professor Anna Nagurney, and all the Center Associates would like to congratulate Dean O'Brien and to thank him for his wonderful support throughout the years and especially his support of the students in numerous ways! Professor Nagurney will be at the State House to join in the celebrations next week.

Next Tuesday, April 10, Center Associate, Mr. Zugang "Leo" Liu, will be defending his doctoral dissertation proposal, entitled, Transportation and Dynamic Networks: Models, Theory, and Applications to Supply Chains, Electric Power, and Financial Networks.  Leo's major is Management Science and his minor is Computer Science. More information including the abstract of his proposal.

April 5, 2007

Professor Anna Nagurney would like to thank Professor Karen R. Polenske and Beaudry Kock for hosting her visit to the Department of Urban Studies and Planning (DUSP) at MIT on April 4. Professor Nagurney very much enjoyed giving her presentation in the Multi-Agent Seminar Series and in interacting with the multidisciplinary audience, including a medical doctor! She especially enjoyed the comments and questions regarding the Braess paradox and the demand-varying extension over time that she discussed in her presentation.

On April 17, there will be a panel, Women in Science: Changing the Climate from the Bottom Up and the Top Down, from 5-7PM at the Isenberg School of Management in Room 112 with a light dinner being served. Professor Anna Nagurney will be on the panel which is part of a series organized by the Massachusetts Association for Women in Science (AWIS) Chapter. The UMass Amherst INFORMS Student Chapter is also helping with the arrangements and the publicity as is RL&D and CPPA. More information regarding the panelists and their affiliations.

April 1, 2007

This coming Wednesday, April 4, Professor Anna Nagurney will be at MIT to give her presentation, entitled, Multi-Agent Network Models, Dynamics, and Applications to Vulnerability Analysis. She will be hosted by Professor Karen R. Polenske of the Department of Urban Studies and Planning (DUSP).

The UMass Amherst INFORMS Student Chapter would like to thank Professor Daiheng Ni of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at UMass for his excellent presentation, Transportation Modeling and Simulation: An Effort of 50+ Years, which he gave last Friday!

March 29, 2007

There is more good news regarding our very active UMass Amherst INFORMS Student Chapter!

The interview with Tina Wakolbinger, who also serves as a Center Associate, on her co-winning of the 2006 INFORMS Judith Liebman Award appears in ORMS Tomorrow, under Features.

Congratulations to Tina for such a wonderful interview!

March 25, 2007

This past week has been Spring Break week at UMass Amherst and we have posted several recent papers on network topics on the Downloadable Articles page.

Next Friday, Professor Daiheng Ni of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at UMass Amherst will present in the UMass Amherst INFORMS Speaker Series in Operations Research/Management Science. We are very much looking forward to his talk on 50 years of research in transportation!

April will be a very busy month with many exciting activities, so please check the news and announcements for regular updates.

March 20, 2007

Professor Anna Nagurney is honored and delighted to have been elected for a three year term, 2007-2010, to the Advisory Council of the Society for Computational Economics. More information on the council.

The Society for Computational Economics (SCE) is an international society, which also hosts an annual conference, typically, in a wonderful location, and the venue alternates between Europe and North America. More information on SCE and its associated activities

The 2007 SCE conference will be held in Montreal, Canada from June 14-17, 2007 and the venue for 2008 conference will be Paris, France!

March 18, 2007

The UMass Amherst INFORMS Student Chapter and its Faculty Advisor, Professor Anna Nagurney, along with all those who attended Professor Karen Polenske's seminar on March 16, will surely remember it for a long time. Professor Polenske discussed the role of coke and coal in the global supply chain with a focus on steel production in China and with sidebars to Brazil. She brought samples of coke and coal from China and let the audience view them. Professor Polenske also shared many photos with us of her travels to conduct research on the subject. There were both Chinese and Brazilian scholars in the audience and the timeliness of the topic in terms of economics and environmental pollution fascinated all those in attendance.

Professor Polenske returned to MIT after her talk safely despite the major snowstorm that hit Massachusetts late last Friday!

March 15, 2007

We are very pleased that, tomorrow, Professor Karen R. Polenske of MIT will be delivering the third talk in the 2007 UMass Amherst Spring Speaker Series in Operations Research / Management Science. Her presentation will take place on March 16 at 11AM in Room ISOM 112 and the title is: Coke and Steel: The Strategic Significance of their Regional Development in China and the Global Supply Chain. More information on Professor Polenske and her presentation.

March 13, 2007

It's always gratifying when one's scholarly research impacts also practice and policy. Professor Anna Nagurney's paper, Congested urban transportation networks and emission paradoxes, published in Transportation Research D, was recently noted by Ms. Jeannette Fitzsimmons, a member of the New Zealand Parliament, as one of two important studies. The citation to Professor Nagurney's paper can be found on the New Zealand parliament site under "roading." The citation as reported in the New Zealand newspaper Scoop site.

March 10, 2007

The UMass Amherst INFORMS Student Chapter and its Faculty Advisor, Professor Anna Nagurney, would like to thank Professor Richard C. Larson of MIT for delivering an extraordinary presentation yesterday in the 2007 Spring Seminar Series in Operations Research / Management Science. The seminar attracted students and faculty from the Isenberg School of Management, the School of Engineering, the School of Natural Sciences and Mathematics, as well as the School of Social and Behavioral Sciences! Not only did the audience get to hear about Professor Larson's model(s) of pandemic flu progression and social distancing and control, based on a paper to appear this Spring in Operations Research, but Professor Larson also talked about Engineering Systems Fundamentals, a course that he teaches at MIT, and about project LINC, which involves distance learning. The lunch that followed at the University Club, after a stimulating Q&A session, continued the fascinating streams of conversation.

In addition, Professor Larson informed us about MIT World where many videotaped lectures on OR/MS topics can be found! Finally, we were so pleased to hear about the conference that Professor Larson is chairing next Fall in Amman, Jordan, whose special patron is Her Majesty Queen Rania Al-Abdullah of Jordan. More conference information. The President of the UMass System, Dr. Jack Wilson, will be one of the plenary speakers at the conference!

Amazingly, this was Professor Larson's first trip to Amherst and all those who had the distinct pleasure of hearing him speak and in interacting with him will remember this special event for a long time!

March 8, 2007

We are honored and delighted that Professor Richard C. Larson of MIT will be delivering the second seminar in the 2007 UMass Amherst INFORMS Speaker Series! His presentation, Simple Models of Influenza Progression and Control, will take place tomorrow, March 9, 2007 at 11AM in the Isenberg School of Management, Room 112. More information on his presentation. The talk is open to the public.

March 4, 2007

The 2007 Brown Symposium for Undergraduates in the Mathematical Sciences (SUMS) held March 3, was a great success! The Center Director, Professor Anna Nagurney, thoroughly enjoyed listening to both the invited faculty presentations and those of the undergraduates. This year's symposium theme was Operations Research, and topic presentations included: combinatorial optimization, fractals and fixed points, a variational principle for locating periodic orbits of dynamical systems, and the determinants of free agents' salaries in major league baseball! Professor Anna Nagurney's presentation, Operations Research and the Captivating Study of Networks and Complex Decision-Making, is now online.

The presentations will also be available in video format as well and more information will follow. Photos from the symposium can be found at Photos of Center Activities.

Special thanks to Adam Merberg and Michael Schwarz of Brown University for organizing and hosting such a wonderful 2007 Brown SUMS!

March 2, 2007

On March 3, 2007, Professor Anna Nagurney will be one of five featured faculty speakers at Brown SUMS, the Brown Symposium for Undergraduates in the Mathematical Sciences. The Brown Symposium is funded by the National Science Foundation, the Brown Department of Mathematics and the Division of Applied Mathematics, and the Brown University Lecture Board.  Professor Nagurney will be representing Operations Research/Management Science and her talk is entitled, Operations Research and the Captivating Study of Networks and
Complex Decision-Making. The other faculty speakers are: Professors John H. Conway from Princeton University, David Dumas and Meinoff Sellmann, both of Brown University, and Noam Elkies from Harvard University.

The symposium is designed to foster greater undergraduate interest in mathematics throughout the sciences and what the National Science Foundation calls the mathematization of sciences.

In addition, there will be presentations by undergraduates who will be showcasing their research. Students who will be giving presentations include students from the University of Connecticut, Harvard, Tufts, and the City University of New York.

All members of the academic community are welcome to attend, including high school students and teachers.

This should be a fascinating experience for all involved and Professor Anna Nagurney is so pleased to be representing the Isenberg School and UMass Amherst and, of course, to be speaking on Operations Research!

February 28, 2007

We are very pleased to announce that the Encyclopedia of Life Support Systems (EOLSS) on Mathematical Models in Economics, edited by Dr. We-Bin Zhang, and published by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) is now in production. Professor Anna Nagurney contributed the invited chapter, Mathematical Models of Transportation and Networks.

Additional information on the Encyclopedia and the names of other contributors to this specific volume, along with the titles of their chapters.

February 24, 2007

The Center Director, Professor Anna Nagurney, would like to thank Professor Asu Ozdaglar of MIT for opening up the Spring 2007 INFORMS Speaker Series with her presentation yesterday on Competition and Efficiency in Congested Networks. The talk discussed new network game theoretic models with different degrees of oligopolistic behavior, along with measurements of efficiency loss due to congestion and competition. The talk, which combined an integrated perspective to such problems of operations research and economics, was fascinating and further emphasized how relevant such concepts such as Wardropian equilibrium and user-optimization versus system-optimization (Beckmann, McGuire, and Winsten (1956) and Dafermos and Sparrow (1969)) are today. We thank Professor Ozdaglar for her outstanding presentation and visit to the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and the Isenberg School. More information on her presentation and on upcoming talks

February 18, 2007

We are pleased to announce that the IAEE Conference  From Restructuring to Sustainability: Energy Policies for the 21st Century, taking place February 18-21, 2007 has now begun. More information on the conference and the full program can be found on the conference website.

Dr. Dmytro Matsypura, who completed his doctorate at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, with a concentration in Management Science at the Isenberg School, will be presenting the invited paper, co-authored by Dr. Matsypura, Professor Anna Nagurney, and Zugang Liu, entitled, Modeling of Electric Power Supply Chain Networks with Fuel Suppliers via Variational Inequalities, at this conference. The visuals of the presentation are available.

Dr. Matsypura has assumed his position as a Lecturer at the University of Sydney in Australia, which is  a rank similar to that of Assistant Professor in the US. He is on the Faculty of Economics and Business at the University of Sydney and is enjoying that lovely part of the world very much!

February 16, 2007

On February 23, 2007, Dr. Asu Ozdaglar from MIT, will be launching the Spring 2007 UMass Amherst INFORMS Speaker Series in Operations Research/Management Science. We are delighted and honored that Dr. Ozdaglar will be coming to the Isenberg School of Management to speak. More information on Dr. Ozdaglar, along with upcoming speakers can be found in the article that recently appeared in In the Loop.

February 11, 2007

Today, Harvard University announced that Dean Drew Gilpin Faust, the Dean of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, has been selected to be its next President. The Center Director, Professor Anna Nagurney, lauds this appointment!

Professor Anna Nagurney spent the 2005-2006 year as a Radcliffe (Science) Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard  and can personally attest to the outstanding leadership that Dean Drew Gilpin Faust provided. In her calm, elegant way she made everyone, males and females, feel welcome and valued. She listened and supported The Fellows from numerous states and several countries during one of the most challenging years of our lives as we, whether, writers, scientists, mathematicians, artists, historians, choreographers, dramaturgists, sociologists, etc., interacted and worked tirelessly on our projects, throughout the year.

A new era has begun for Harvard -- one of inclusion and reflection with Dean Drew Gilpin Faust as its new leader.

Professor Anna Nagurney's experiences as a Science Fellow at Radcliffe

For some photos of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study certificate/graduation ceremony from Spring 2006 (Scroll to May 24, 2006)

February 9, 2007

Professor Anna Nagurney is honored to have been invited to contribute a chapter, Mathematical Economic Models of Transportation and Networks, for the volume, Mathematical Models in Economics, edited by Dr. Wei-Bin Zhang. This volume is being prepared for the Encyclopedia of Life Support Systems (EOLSS) which is a joint project with United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). More information on the EOLSS project.

The Board of General Advisors for this project includes winners of the Nobel prize, the Japan prize, the Kalinga prize, and the World Food Prize.

February 6, 2007

Professor Nagurney's chapter, Network Economics, for the Handbook of Computational Econometrics, Elsevier, David Belsley and Erricos Kontoghiorghes, Editors, is now available.

January 27, 2007

Congratulations to Center Associates who have had their papers accepted for presentation at the POMS Conference to be held in Dallas, Texas, May 4-7, 2007! The paper, Sustainable Supply Chain Networks and Transportation, co-authored by Professor Anna Nagurney, Zugang Liu, and Trisha Woolley, will be presented there as well as the paper, Multiperiod Competitive Supply Chain Networks with Inventorying and a Transportation Network Equilibrium Reformulation, by Zugang Liu and Professor Nagurney, and the paper, A Transportation Network Efficiency Measure that Captures Flows, Behavior, and Costs with Applications to Network Component Importance Identification and Vulnerability, by Professor Nagurney and Qiang "Patrick" Qiang. POMS Conference website

January 25, 2007

The new academic (Spring) semester begins at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst next week and it will be very exciting to have all the students back on campus. It promises to be a very busy semester with the INFORMS Spring 2007 Speaker Series, many exciting conferences, as well as research activities. Welcome back students!

January 18, 2007

We are pleased to report that Dr. Dmytro Matsypura, who received his PhD from UMass Amherst in September 2006 under the supervision of Professor Anna Nagurney, has now arrived at the University of Sydney, Australia, and has assumed his position there as Lecturer (equivalent to Assistant Professor in the US). His dissertation was entitled Dynamics of Global Supply Chain and Electric Power Networks: Models, Pricing Analysis, and Computations.

We wish Dr. Matsypura all the best as he begins his academic career down under!

Dr. Dmytro Matsypura's latest paper, Modeling Electric Power Supply Chain Networks with Fuel Suppliers via Variational Inequalities, co-authored with Professor Anna Nagurney and Zugang Liu, is forthcoming in The International Journal of Emerging Power Systems. Dr. Matsypura will be presenting this paper at an energy conference in New Zealand in February.

January 15, 2007

Taylor and Francis has issued a press release announcing the launching of the new journal, International Journal of Sustainable Transportation. The inaugural issue will appear in March 2007 and a paper co-authored by Professor Anna Nagurney, Zugang Liu, and Trisha Woolley, entitled, Sustainable Supply Chain and Transportation Networks, is the lead article. The paper develops a new supply chain network model with distinct production plants and associated emissions and demonstrates how the model can be reformulated and solved as a transportation network equilibrium model.

January 11, 2007

We have been busy updating information regarding the Virtual Center for Supernetworks Center Associates' webpages with the latest available curriculum vitae and writeups.

January 2, 2007

The lineup for the Spring 2007 UMass Amherst INFORMS (Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences) Speaker Series is now available.

This speaker series is hosted by the UMass Amherst Student Chapter of INFORMS and brings acclaimed speakers to the Isenberg School of Management. Support for the series is provided by the Isenberg School of Management, the Department of Finance and Operations Management, and the John F. Smith Fund, along with a gift from Professor Anna Nagurney.

Beginning in February, the series will bring welcome Dr. Asu Ozdaglar, Dr. Richard C. Larson, Dr. Karen Polenske from MIT, Dr. David Parkes of Harvard, and Dr. Daiheng Ni and Dr. David McLaughlin from UMass Amherst. The topics this term include: viral epidemics and their progression, global energy supply chains, with a focus on China, traffic flow modeling over the past 50+ years, networks and game theory, and weather sensing.

The series is open to the public and Center Associate, Ms. Trisha Woolley, is the 2006-2007 Speaker Series Coordinator.

The press release for this series.

January 1, 2007

First of all, Happy New 2007 Year to everyone! We wish all of our readers, colleagues, collaborators, constituents, and supporters much health,
happiness, and success in 2007!

2007 promises to be a fascinating year with many exciting conferences, new projects on our agenda, our fabulous INFORMS UMass Amherst Speaker Series, and new international collaborations!

December 27, 2006

We are busy finalizing the UMass Amherst INFORMS Spring 2007 Speaker Series, which promises to be fantastic! Please check this site for upcoming information.

The downloadable articles page has been updated.

The media page has also been updated with a link to the INFORMS Ad Hoc Committee on Diversity report that Professor Anna Nagurney chaired and with comments from INFORMS President Mark S. Daskin in the December 2006 issue of ORMS Today.

December 23, 2006

The Center Director and Associates wish all of our visitors, collaborators, colleagues, and supporters a Very Happy New 2007 Year!

For those of you interested in learning more about environmental quality modeling, bicycle commuting, traffic safety on campus, as well as the
vulnerability of oil pipelines, please have a look at just some of the excellent projects presented in two of Professor Anna Nagurney's classes that she taught in the Fall of 2006: SOM 821 - Management Science I and FOMgt 341 - Introduction to Transportation and Logistics at:
http://supernet.som.umass.edu/visuals.html#Students

December 16, 2006

As the Fall 2006 academic semester comes to a close and faculty are busy grading final exams, the Center Director, Professor Anna Nagurney, thought that you would enjoy seeing photos from the UMass Amherst INFORMS Student Chapter party, which took place on December 13, 2006; see: http://supernet.som.umass.edu/cfoto/centerphotos.html The students prepared a fantastic buffet, complete with Vietnamese spring rolls and Chinese dumplings plus desserts galore and even had music playing in the background. Thank you, students -- it is a pleasure to be your Chapter Faculty Advisor, and to see your great work ethic, spirit, and camaraderie. It is especially wonderful to see students from various departments in the Isenberg School of Management and the College of Engineering working closely together in this endeavor.

This past semester, Professor Nagurney taught both an undergraduate class, Transportation & Logistics, and a graduate class, Management Science I. The students in these classes recently gave their project presentations. Since several of the student projects mesh beautifully with the center's themes, they will be posted at: http://supernet.som.umass.edu/visuals.html#Students Thank you, students, for doing such a terrific job! It was a pleasure to have you in class!

December 12, 2006

The Winter 2007 Supernetwork Sentinel, the newsletter of the Virtual Center for Supernetworks,  is now online and available at:
http://supernet.som.umass.edu/newsletters/winter2007.pdf

In the newsletter, you will find an essay by Professor Anna Nagurney on the highlights of the Fall 2006 semester and diversity. Confirmed speakers for the Spring 2007 UMass Amherst INFORMS Speaker Series in Operations Research / Management Science are also listed, as well as upcoming exciting conferences and our recent center publications.

Tomorrow, December 13, 2006, the UMass Amherst INFORMS Student Chapter will host its end of the semester party, which should be terrific. It will be in ISOM Room 112 from 5:00PM-6:30PM, so please stop by, if you can. The food and company should be superb, as is our tradition!

December 6, 2006

Tomorrow, December 7, 2006, Professor Anna Nagurney will give a talk at 2:30PM in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at UMass Amherst in Marston Hall.

The title and abstract of her presentation are below.

Title: Transportation Science and the Dynamics of Critical Infrastructure Networks

Abstract: In this presentation, we will discuss how traffic network equilibrium models can be used as a paradigm to formulate and study a variety of critical infrastructure networks, including financial networks, electric power generation and distribution networks, as well as the Internet. We will illustrate some new methodological tools for dynamic networks and will also describe a time-dependent Braess paradox with relevance to both transportation networks and the Internet. Finally, we will highlight some recent results regarding double-layered dynamics which allows us to study critical infrastructure networks over different time-scales.

December 2, 2006

Yesterday, Professor Nathaniel Whitaker of the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at UMass Amherst presented the final INFORMS Fall 2006 seminar. He discussed his research, some of which was even conducted with undergraduates, under the NSF Research Experiences for Undergraduates Program, and which has gotten accepted for publication! His topic of mathematical models in medicine was a captivating one and those in the audience learned about angiogenesis and how cells create pathways to tumors and the role of inhibitors. In addition, we heard about his modeling work on kidneys with a focus on the nephron. His research involves also collaborations with scientists at Baystate Medical Center and it was fascinating to hear how challenging it is to capture the parameters needed in the partial differential equations!

We also congratulate Professor Whitaker on his selection to receive the President's Award for Outreach to be awarded by the President of the UMass System, Dr. Jack Wilson, in a special ceremony in Boston next Friday, December 8, 2006. All the students and participants at the seminar and lunch that followed had an absolutely terrific intellectual as well as social time with Professor Whitaker.

On behalf of the UMass Amherst INFORMS Student Chapter, we thank all of our terrific speakers in the Fall 2006 UMass Amherst INFORMS Speaker Series in Operations Research / Management Science! Click here for more info on the Chapter. The Spring 2007 Semnar Series will be announced in early 2007.

In addition, Dr. Stavros Siokos of Citigroup in London visited the Supernetwork Center and UMass Amherst, November 29 - 30, 2006. On the 29th, he joined Professor Anna Nagurney for the First Annual Fulbright Dinner, hosted by the UMass Amherst Graduate School. The dinner took place at the Campus Center and it was wonderful to see so many colleagues who had participated in the extraordinary Fulbright program and to read and hear about their experiences. In addition, students from numerous countries who are on Fulbrighters presently at UMass were introduced. The dinner was delicious as was the company!

On November 30, 2006 the Supernetwork Center hosted a reception for Dr. Siokos from 9:30-10:30AM in the Supernetworks Lab and Dr. Siokos regaled us with his amazing stories about the financial industry and his travels in so many countries.  After his seminar, Dr. Siokos was joined at lunch at the University Club by several students and it was such a special occasion to have Dr. Siokos come back to UMass after having received his PhD in 1998. He noted many changes both on campus, and especially the beautiful expansion of the Isenberg School of Management and the increased development in Hadley. It was a terrific visit and we were so honored that during his around the world trip to meet his various international clients, he was able to come to visit the Supernetworks Center and UMass. We wish him much continued success! Link to Dr. Siokos' Presentation

Click here for Photos of Professor Whitaker's presentation and of  Dr. Siokos' Seminar and Visit.

November 27, 2006

We hope that everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving break!

This week will be a very busy one! Dr. Stavros Siokos of Citigroup, London is coming to UMass Amherst and will be giving a talk on Thursday, November 30, 2006 at 11AM in Room 112 at the Isenberg School of Management. The title of his talk is: Financial Engineering for Equities - A Sell Side Perspective. Dr. Siokos is giving this Distinguished Alum presentation under the sponsorship of the Virtual Center for Supernetworks and the UMass Amherst INFORMS Student Chapter. The evening before, he will be attending with Professor Anna Nagurney the first annual Fulbright dinner at UMass Amherst. We are very much looking forward to the visit of Dr. Siokos, who received his PhD from UMass Amherst in Operations Research in 1997!

Next Friday, December 1, 2006, Professor Nate Whitaker of the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at UMass Amherst will be giving the final INFORMS Fall 2006 seminar in Operations Research / Management Science. His presentation will take place in ISOM Room 112 at 11AM. Professor Whitaker will be speaking on some mathematical models in medicine and we are very much looking forward to his presentation! Professor Whitaker has been a Lilly Fellow and is also a recipient of the UMass Outreach Award for his mathematics educational activities in the public school system.

November 20, 2006

Last Friday, Dr. Les Servi gave a brilliant lecture on maritime tracking in the UMass Amherst INFORMS Student Chapter Speaker Series in Operations Research / Management Science and, as promised, he discussed applications to tracking pirates off the coast of Africa. His seminar attracted even researchers from the National Science Foundation sponsored Engineering Research Center at UMASS known as "CASA," which focuses on weather prediction using radars and sensors. It was terrific to have Dr. Servi, who is from MIT Lincoln Labs, arrive in time to participate also in the Celebration and Thanks party in honor of Tina Wakolbinger's receipt of the Judith Liebman Award. Tina received her award on November 7, 2006 at the INFORMS Annual Meeting in Pittsburgh.

With the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday, we wish everyone happy and safe travels and a restful Thanksgiving! Many thanks to everyone for their support!

November 13, 2006

The INFORMS Annual Meeting in Pittsburgh, November 5-8, 2006 was a big success with close to 4,000 registrants! This was the biggest operations research/management science conference ever! Center Associates presented seven papers and also enjoyed seeing many friends and colleagues! It was truly a fantastic conference from both the scientific perspective as well as the social one.

Center Associate, Tina Wakolbinger, received the Judith Liebman Award on November 7 at a breakfast awards ceremony at the INFORMS conference and the UMass Amherst INFORMS Student Chapter was well-represented at the breakfast meeting, including the Chapter President, Christian Wernz, and the Chapter Speaker Series Coordinator, Ms. Trisha Woolley. In ordet to celebrate Tina's award and to thank the staff, faculty, and students who have helped out so much with the student chapter, we are organizing a special celebration on Friday, Nobember 17, in Room ISOM at 10AM. Tina's award plaque will be on display.

Photos from the conference can be found at: http://supernet.som.umass.edu/cfoto/centerphotos.html

We are very excited that Dr. Les Servi will be the next speaker in the UMASS INFORMS Seminar Series in Operations Research / Management Science. His talk will take place next Friday, November 17 at 11AM. More information about Dr. Servi, who is from MIT Lincoln Labs, can be found at:  http://supernet.som.umass.edu/informs/11_17_06new.htm
Dr. Servi will be talking about tracking with a maritime application to tracking pirates off the coast of Africa!

November 6, 2006

Professor Andrew McCallum of the Computer Science Department at UMass gave a fascinating talk last Friday, as part of the INFORMS Speaker Series in Operations Research/Management Science on Social Networks and Text. He was able to show, through his machine learning tools using Bayesian networks, clusters of groups in email communications from the Enron data and how voting groups at the United Nations have changed due to the fall of the Soviet Union. He was terrific at answering the many questions from the audience that included faculty and students from throughout the campus and from even Smith College. Thank you, Professor McCallum, for presenting your truly interesting research and applications in this forum!

Zugang "Leo" Liu reports from the Future Academicians Colloqium at the INFORMS Annual Meeting in Pittsburgh, PA, that all is simply wonderful and that he has had a very educational and rewarding experience at this doctoral colloquium. He especially enjoyed meeting so many distinguished scholars in operations research and in interacting with them and hearing their presentations. He also reports that the other students selected for this colloquium are very nice and interesting!

Many of the Center Associates, including Professor Jose Cruz of the University of Connecticut, Dr. Fuminori Toyasaki of McGill University,  Tina Wakolbinger, and Trisha Woolley, and Professor Anna Nagurney will be joining Leo at the INFORMS Meeting in Pittsburgh where they will be presenting papers on a variety of network topics. For some of the visuals of their presentations, see: Visuals

October 29, 2006

On behalf of the UMass Amherst INFORMS Student Chapter, Professor Anna Nagurney would like to thank Professor Cynthia Barnhart of MIT for presenting her talk, Optimization Approaches to Airline Industry Challenges, at the Isenberg School of Management on October 27, 2006 to an audience that included faculty from several departments and schools at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, undergraduate, MBA, Master's, and doctoral students, as well as invited guests from the community. Professor Barnhart's presentation captured the unique challenges of this industry and how operations research models and algorithms have evolved  to address these challenges and to result in quantifiable successes. The contributions of Professor Barnhart in terms of crew scheduling and even robust optimization to assist in the redistribution of "slack" in airline network problems to allow for more resilient airline networks in the presence of disruptions generated many lively questions and discussions. As one student said after the presentation, I could have listened to Professor Barnhart speak for forever!

We also congratulate Professor Barnhart for being elected the INFORMS President for 2008!

The next INFORMS speaker will be Professor Andrew MacCallum from the Computer Science Department at UMass Amherst. His talk is scheduled for Friday, November 3, 2006, in Room ISOM 112 at 11AM. We look forward to his presentation on social networks and text with applications even to the Enron investigation! For more information on the speaker series, see:
http://supernet.som.umass.edu/informs/speakernew.html

Supernetworks Center Director, Professor Nagurney, is very pleased to announce that Center Associate, Zugang Liu, will be taking part in the Future Academicians Colloquium preceding the National INFORMS Meeting in Pittsburgh, PA. The Colloquium will take place November 3-4, and the National Meeting, November 5-8. Mr. Liu will also be presenting papers at the National Meeting along with Center Associates Tina Wakolbinger and Trisha Woolley and Professor Nagurney.

October 22, 2006

The Radcliffe Exploratory Seminar on Dynamic Networks that was co-organized by Professor David Parkes of Harvard and Professor Anna Nagurney of UMass Amherst took place on October 20-21, 2006 at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University. The co-organizers thank all the speakers for their outstanding presentations and all the participants, including the doctoral students, for the very stimulating discussions. Special thanks go to Professor Barbara Grosz, the Dean of Science at the Radcliffe Institute for her welcoming remarks on October 20. Photos from the exploratory seminar are available at: http://supernet.som.umass.edu/radcliffe-seminar/seminar-photos.htm

Pdfs of the presentations will be posted on the Exploratory Seminar site; see:
http://www.eecs.harvard.edu/%7Eparkes/RadcliffeSeminar.htm


The Center Director is very pleased to announce that Center Associate, Ms. Tina Wakolbinger, a doctoral student in Management Science at the Isenberg School of Management, has been selected to receive the 2006 Judith Liebman Award from the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS) at the National INFORMS Meeting to take place in Pittsburgh, PA, November 5-8, 2006. This award is for outstanding service to an INFORMS Student Chapter. Tina helped to revitalize the UMass Amherst INFORMS Student Chapter, which had been dormant for a decade, and served as the Chapter President from 2004-2005 and as the Speaker Series Coordinator from 2004-2005 and 2005-2006. Tina will be presented with a plaque and will be recognized at an awards breakfast at the National Meeting. Congratulations, Tina, and many thanks for all of your hard work!

October 15, 2006

Professor William Hogan of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University gave an outstanding lecture on electricity restructuring, complete with excellent handouts, last Friday in the UMass Amherst INFORMS Speaker Series in Operations Research/Management Sciences. Some photos have already been posted on the student chapter site; see: http://student.som.umass.edu/informs/

We thank Professor Hogan for coming out to Amherst from Cambridge during this scenic, but very busy, time of year and for sharing his expertise with us!

Next Friday and Saturday, the Exploratory Seminar on Dynamic Networks at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard will take place. It is co- organized by Professor David Parkes of Harvard University and Professor Anna Nagurney. More information is available at:
http://www.eecs.harvard.edu/%7Eparkes/RadcliffeSeminar.htm

Professor Anna Nagurney congratulates Professor Peter Winker of Germany and all those involved in securing the COMISEF project, funded by the European Union! Professor Nagurney and Center Associate, Dr. Stavros Siokos, are serving on the project's Steering/Advisory Committee. For more information, please see:  http://supernet.som.umass.edu/misc/Comisef.html

October 8, 2006

Mark your Calendars!!!

Next Friday, Professor William Hogan, the Raymond Plank Professor of Global Energy Policy at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, will be speaking at 11AM in the Isenberg School of Management. He is the second speaker in the Fall 2006 UMass Amherst INFORMS Student Chapter Speaker Series. We are delighted that Professor Hogan will be coming to UMass on Friday, October 13, 2006 and will deliver the presentation, Electricity Market Restructuring, Economics and Operations Research. More information on Professor Hogan and his talk can be found at   http://supernet.som.umass.edu/informs/10_13_06new.htm

On Thursday, November 30, 2006, Dr. Stavros Siokos, will be visiting the Isenberg School of Management. Dr. Siokos is a Center Associate of the Virtual Center for Supernetworks and is a Managing Director of Citigroup and based in London. He also heads the Citigroup Global Markets, Equities Division, and is head of Alternative Execution (AE) Sales. He is co-author with Professor Anna Nagurney of the book, Financial Networks: Statics and Dynamics, published by Springer-Verlag in 1997.

We are delighted that Dr. Siokos will be speaking on November 30, 2006 at 11AM in ISOM Room 112. The title of his presentation is: New Trends in Financial Engineering for Equities. A Sell Side Perspective.

September 30, 2006

This week the Virtual Center for Supernetworks had the pleasure of hosting Professor Werner Rothengatter from the University of Karlsruhe, Germany, as part of the exchange, funded through President Jack Wilson's office, between the University of Massachusetts (campus-wide) with Baden Wurttenburg. On September 27, Professor Rothengatter visited the Isenberg School of Management and heard presentations given by several doctoral students in the Supernetworks Lab. He was also hosted to a lunch at the University Club by Professor Anna Nagurney and attended a Dean's Reception at the Isenberg School. Professor Nagurney and her doctoral students thank Professor Rothengatter for his great intellect and discussions on transportation-related topics throughout the globe. Visuals of the doctoral students' presentations can be found at:
Visuals and photos from the visit are available at: Centerphotos.

On September 29, 2006, Dr. Robin Lougee-Heimer delivered the first seminar in the Fall 2006-2007 UMass Amherst INFORMS Speaker Series in Operations Research / Management Sciences. Dr. Lougee-Heimer is a Research Staff Member in the Mathematical Sciences Department at IBM in Yorktown Heights and also the driving force behind COIN-OR, which makes available optimization-based software for research purposes. Christian Wernz, the new President of the UMass Amherst INFORMS Student Chapter introduced the speaker and also introduced the new officers of the student chapter for 2006-2007. More information on the chapter is available at: http://student.som.umass.edu/informs

Dr. Lougee-Heimer gave her presentation in the Isenberg School to a standing room only audience consisting of undergrads, graduate students, and faculty, from many different departments at UMass Amherst as well as guests from Western Massachusetts. Her presentation on research projects at IBM with a focus on applications was fascinating and generated so many questions and discussions. We then had the privilege of dining with Dr. Lougee-Heimer at the University Club and further conversations afterwards. Photos from Dr. Lougee-Heimer's visit will be available at: Centerphotos

The student chapter and its Faculty Advisor, Professor Anna Nagurney thank Dr. Lougee-Heimer for her outstanding presentation and for taking the time to come speak at UMass Amherst!

September 24, 2006

Professor Nagurney very much enjoyed her visit to Columbia University last week and besides giving her presentation on September 19, she enjoyed seeing and interacting with many wonderful colleagues at Columbia, in the Departments of Industrial Engineering and Operations Research and in Decision, Risk and Operations at the Business School. In particular, she thanks Professor Soulaymaine Kachani of the Department of Industrial Engineering and Operations Research for hosting her visit.

Next week, Professor Werner Rothengatter of the University of Karlsruhe will be part of a delegation from Germany visiting the UMass system. He will be escorted by Professor Nagurney and her doctoral students while at UMass Amherst.

For additional interesting events and activities, please see the Fall 2006 edition of The Supernetwork Sentinel which was released this weekend.

September 17, 2006

The Fall 2006 INFORMS Student Chapter Seminar Series has been announced in In the Loop.

September 16, 2006

The Center Director, Professor Anna Nagurney, would like to share photos from her service on the Experts Committee for the Fudan Premium Prize in Management Science and provided by the Fund administration in Shanghai, China. The recipient of the award will be announced later this month. See Centerphotos.

Next week, Professor Nagurney will present a seminar at Columbia University; for details see:
http://www.ieor.columbia.edu/droseminar/dro-ieor_seminars_Nagurney.html

September 8, 2006

The new 2006-2007 academic year has begun and the campuses are teaming with eager and enthusiastic students, faculty, and staff.

The Center Director welcomes a new Doctoral Center Associate, Mr. Emmanuel Agyei, who is from Ghana, and who will be working in the Supernetworks Lab with Mr. Zugang "Leo" Liu, Mr. Patrick Qiang, Ms. Tina Wakolbinger, and Ms. Trisha Woolley. Mr. Agyei, most recently, was at UMass Dartmouth studying transportation and was enrolled in the Master's program in Physics. We welcome Mr. Agyei to the Supernetworks Center and wish him all the best in his doctoral studies at UMass Amherst with a concentration in Management Science! For more information on the Center Associates, see: http://supernet.som.umass.edu/associates.htm

Doctoral Associate, Mr. Zugang "Leo" Liu, has been selected to participate in the INFORMS (Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences) Future Academicians Colloquium in November 3-4, 2006, just preceding the INFORMS National Meeting in Pittsburgh, PA. The theme of this year's colloquium is "Building your Academic Career." Last year, Center Associate Tina Wakolbinger participated in the 2005 Future Academicians Colloquium held in San Francisco.

Congratulations to Dr. Dmytro Matsypura, who on August 28, 2006, successfully defended his doctoral dissertation, Dynamics of Global Supply Chain and Electric Power Networks: Models, Pricing Analysis, and Computations. His committee members were: Professors Iqbal Agha, Robert Moll, and Ana Muriel, with Professor Anna Nagurney as the chair. Dr. Matsypura has accepted an Assistant Professorship at the University of Sydney and we wish him all the best! Dr. Matsypura's research was funded, in part, by an NSF grant awarded to Professor Nagurney and by two AT&T Industrial Ecology Fellowships. For an abstract of his dissertation see:  http://supernet.som.umass.edu/dissertations.htm

September 6, 2006

The Supernetworks Center Director, Anna Nagurney, the John F. Smith Memorial Professor, recently participated in the Fudan International Management Science Forum held August 18-19, 2006 at Fudan University, China. On August 18, she gave a keynote speech entitled, "Supernetworks: Management Science in the 21st Century," which was simultaneously translated from English to Chinese. Her ppt is available at: http://supernet.som.umass.edu/visuals.html

She was one of only six Westerners invited to give keynote speeches and hers was the first and the only presentation given by a female during the two day event. Also in attendance at the International Management Science Forum was Professor June Dong of the School of Business at SUNY Oswego, PhD 1994 ISOM, who is the co-author with Professor Nagurney of the book, Supernetworks: Decision-Making for the Information Age, published in 2002 by Edward Elgar Publishing.

Nagurney had an opportunity to meet the Mayor of Shanghai, Mr. Han Zheng,  and also Dr. Cheng Siwei, the Vice Chairman of the National People's Congress (NPC) of China. More information on the forum can be found at: http://supernet.som.umass.edu/media/loop081006.htm#FudanEnglish

In addition, Professor Nagurney was one of twelve judges for selection of the award winner of the first Fudan Premium Prize in Management Science. The award is valued at $62,500 US. Other judges included: Xie Qi Hua, Chairman of the Baosteel Group Corporation, Dr. Lawrence Lau, the President of The Chinese University  of Hong Kong, Dr. Kuo-Min, the President of Nan Kai Institute of Technology in Taiwan, Dr. Zhao  Chunjun, the Former Dean of the School of Economics and Management at Tsinghua University, as well as Professor Charles Colbert of the UCLA Graduate School of Management, and Professor Pierre-Jean Benghozi of the Ecole Polytechnique in Paris. Dr. Siwei was the chair of the prize committee. An article on the prize, whose winner  will be announced in late September, can be found at:
http://en.chinabroadcast.cn/3166/2006/08/19/164@128505.htm

Finally, Professor Nagurney participated on August 20 in a workshop on supernetworks at Fudan University organized by Professor Daoli Zhu, the chair of the Management Science Department at Fudan University. Professor June Dong, who also is an Associate of the Virtual Center for Supernetworks at the Isenberg School of Management at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, was also a participant in the workshop.

Photos from the trip to Shanghai are available at: http://supernet.som.umass.edu/cfoto/centerphotos.html