As we near the 2008 mark and reflect on the happenings in 2007, I wanted to share some of the accomplishments and highlights from the past year of our Associates and Friends.

With best wishes to everyone for a Wonderful New 2008 Year!

Anna Nagurney
Center Director

Congratulations to Center Associates!

Dr. Tina Wakolbinger successfully defended her doctoral dissertation, A Dynamic Theory for the Integration of Social and Economic Networks with Applications to Supply Chain and Financial Networks in April 2007 and in August 2007 she assumed her position as an Assistant Professor in the Fogelman
School of Economics and Business at the University of Memphis in Tennessee. Congratulations to Dr. Wakolbinger!

Zugang "Leo" Liu successfully defended his doctoral dissertation proposal in 2007 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. In addition, together with Professor Anna Nagurney, Leo completed a major report on electric power supply chains in New England, An Integrated Electric Power Supply Chain and Fuel Market Network Framework: Theoretical Modeling with Empirical Analysis for New England. The report is available on the Virtual Center for Supernetworks site.

Qiang "Patrick" Qiang's research with Professor Anna Nagurney on network efficiency/performance measurement, vulnerability analysis, and robustness analysis has appeared in articles in Europhysics Letters and in the POMS Dallas Conference Proceedings. Other related publications will appear in early
2008 in the journals: Optimization Letters and the Journal of Global Optimization, and in an edited volume by Professor Peter Winker. Patrick presented the research at the World Conference in Transport Research (WCTR) held in Berkeley, California, June 24-28, 2007 and received a fellowship to attend and present at the conference. The research has been applied to assess the performance and vulnerability of a variety of network systems including transportation networks, electric power generation and distribution networks, supply chains, the Internet, as well as financial networks. The research has been covered in such publications as WebWeek, Network World, Computerworld, and others and has been featured in ScienceDaily.com.

Trisha Woolley has been very active presenting her research at conferences in 2007. She presented the paper, Spatially Differentiated Trade of Permits for Multipollutant Electric Power Supply Chains (co-authored with Professors Anna Nagurney and John K. Stranlund) at the 7th Meeting in Game Theory and Practice Dedicated to Energy, Environment, and Natural Resources in Montreal, Canada, May 28-30, 2007. Trisha also attended the INFORMS Puerto Rico Conference, July 8-11, 2007 and presented the paper at the November 2007 INFORMS Meeting in Seattle, Washington. In addition, Trisha taught a required course in Management Science in the Operations Management major at the Isenberg School
of Management at UMass Amherst in Fall 2007. Trisha served as the 2006-2007 UMass Amherst INFORMS Speaker Series Coordinator and continues to serve as the Speaker Series Coordinator for 2007-2008. This series brings renowned speakers to the Isenberg School of Management to present talks of interest to the operations research / management science communities.

In November 2007, at the INFORMS Annual Meeting in Seattle, Washington, the UMass Amherst INFORMS Student Chapter received the "Summa Cum Laude" Award for its various activities. Former Chapter Presidents, Christian Wernz and Zugang "Leo" Liu, accompanied Professor Anna Nagurney, the Chapter's Faculty Advisor, to the awards breakfast and received the plaque from Professor Mehrotra of Northwestern University. Patrick Qiang is the 2007-2008 Chapter and he had been at the Future Academicians Colloquium in Seattle prior to the awards breakfast. Congratulations to all the Umass Amherst INFORMS Student Chapter Officers (past and present) and to all of its members for this special
recognition! This was the first time that the award was given.

Center Associates continue to make breakthroughs in research and notable papers published in 2007 (besides the above already mentioned) include the following:

Sustainable Supply Chain and Transportation Networks, by Anna Nagurney, Zugang Liu, and Trisha Woolley, appeared in the inaugural issue of the International Journal of Sustainable Transportation 1 (2007), pp 29-51.

Modeling of Electric Power Supply Chain Networks with Fuel Suppliers via Variational Inequalities, Dmytro Matsypura, Anna Nagurney, and Zugang Liu, International Journal of Emerging Power Systems 8, Iss. 1, Article 5 (2007).

Financial Networks with Intermediation and Transportation Network Equilibria: A Supernetwork Equivalence and Reinterpretation of the Equilibrium Conditions with Computations, Zugang Liu and Anna Nagurney, Computational Management Science 4 (2007), pp. 243-281.

Dynamic Electric Power Supply Chains and Transportation Networks: An Evolutionary Variational Inequality Formulation, Anna Nagurney, Zugang Liu, Monica-Gabriela Cojocaru, and Patrizia Daniele, Transportation Research E 43 (2007), pp. 624-646.

The Internet, Evolutionary Variational Inequalities, and the Time-Dependent Braess Paradox, Anna Nagurney, David Parks, and Patrizia Daneiele, Computational Management Science 4 (2007), pp. 355-375.

Congratulations to Dr. Jose M. Cruz who is an Assistant Professor at the School of Business at the University of Connecticut in Storrs. His paper, Dynamics of Supply Chain Networks with Corporate Social Responsibility through Integrated Environmental Decision-Making, is scheduled to appear in the European Journal of Operational Research in February 2008! Dr. Cruz presented this work at the INFORMS Puerto Rico Conference held in July 2007 and at the INFORMS Seattle Meeting in November 2007. In addition, Dr. Cruz's co-author, Dr. Dmytro Matsypura of the University of Sydney in Australia, has presented their joint research in Prague, Czechoslovakia and in Melborune, Australia in 2007.

Congratulations to Dr. Ke "Grace" Ke, who is an Assistant Professor at the Babin School of Business at the University of Arkansas in Monticello. She gave an invited seminar in November 2007 at the Walton School of Business at the University of Arkansas in Little Rock. She spoke on her research on financial networks with intermediation and with variable weights.

Congratulaions to Professors June Dong and Ding Zhang of the School of Business at SUNY Oswego. Both of them continue to break new ground and to create new partnerships with colleagues in China. On December 29, 2007, Professor Dong will give an invited talk at the Annual Meeting of the Shanghai Operations Research and Management Science Association. In addition, she has been awarded a Distinguished Scholar Exchange Award from the Shanghai Municipal Science and Technology Commission to work with Professor Zhu Detong of the Shanghai Normal University. Professor Zhang spent weeks in China in the Summer of 2007 working on establishing new partnerships. Dr. Zhang is the MBA Director at the School of Business at SUNY Oswego. He and Professor Dong have received numerous awards from SUNY Oswego and the SUNY (State University of New York) system for the contributions to research and scholarly activity.

Congratulations to Dr. Stavros Siokos, Managing Director of Citigroup in London, the United Kingdom for his numerous successes in the financial world! The Isenberg School of Management was delighted to host Dr. Siokos' visit and presentation on September 28, 2007. Dr. Siokos' talk was co-hosted by the UMass Amherst INFORMS Speaker Series and the Finance Speaker Series. Dr. Siokos spoke on the changes in technologies and algorithms over the past decade and on the differences in the regulatory climate in the US and in the rest of the world.

We would also like to congratulate Dr. Padma Ramanujam for her successes in the corporate world. She is at SAS in Cary, North Carolina and, coincidentally, is a colleague of Dr. Kulkarni's. Dr. Kulkarni presented Professor Anna Nagurney the 2007 WORMS (Women in Operations Research and the Management Sciences) Award in Seattle, Washington at the WORMS Business Luncheon at the INFORMS Meeting on November 7, 2007. Dr. Kulkarni received the award in 2006. This was only the thid time that the award has been given.

Congratulations to Professor Ladimer S. Nagurney of the University of Hartford for his initiatives in securing a grant from the Tessco Corporation and for the approval of his sabbatical application for 2008-2009, which proposed a variety of professional actitivies, including international ones.


Thanks to the Friends of the Virtual Center for Supernetworks!

We thank the Friends of the Virtual Center for Supernetworks for their support in so many different ways and we congratulate them all on their professional achievements and numerous publications and awards!

December 2006 Congratulations and Kudos!

January 2006 Congratulations and Kudos!