2014 was another outstanding year for the Virtual Center for Supernetworks and Center Associates! Below we provide a few of the highlights.

The Center Director, Professor Anna Nagurney, was informed that she was selected as a Fellow of All Souls College at Oxford University in England for the Trinity term in 2015-2016. While there she will continue her research on complex supply chain networks and quality issues. This year she spent almost two months as a Visiting Professor of Business, Economics and Law at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden. In Gothenburg she collaborates with her colleague, Professor Jonas Floden. Another highpoint was receiving a second grant from the Advanced Cyber Security Center (ACSC) along with Co-PIs from the Isenberg School and the College of Engineering. As part of the grant, they organized a very successful workshop at the Sloan School at MIT on September 19, 2014 on Cybersecurity Risk Analysis for Enterprise Security.

This year, the Center Director gave invited talks at the Energy Workshop in Erice, Sicily, and at conferences in Taormina, Sicily and Chalkidiki, Greece. At the Chalkidiki conference, in honor of Professor Panos M. Pardalos, Professor Nagurney was joined by Center Associate Professor Dmytro Matsypura of the School of Business at the University of Sydney in Australia. Professor Anna Nagurney is one of the co-organizers of the Dynamics of Disasters symposium that will take place in Kalamata, Greece in the summer of 2015. Also serving on the Program Committee with her are Center Associate Professor Patrizia Daniele of the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science at the University of Catania in Italy and Center Associate Professor Tina Wakolbinger of the Vienna University of Economics and Business.

Center Associate Professor Patrizia Daniele had an exceptional year in terms of scholarship and scientific organizing activities with several papers published in the European Journal of Operational Research, one with Center Associate Professor Tina Wakolbinger and Professor Fuminori Toyasaki of York University in Canada. She was the organizer of the minisymposium on Recent Advances on Equilibrium Problems with Applications to Networks, ECMI 2014, Taormina, June 9-13, 2014, at which the Center Director gave an invited paper, as did Professor Daniele and Professor Toyasaki. After the conference she hosted the Center Director at the University of Catania at which the Center Director, after her lecture, received the University Medal.

Professor Wakolbinger has been very active professionally and serves as the Deputy Head of the Institute for Transport and Logistics Management and as the Director of the Research Institute for Supply Chain Management at her university.

Center Associate Professor Jose M. Cruz of the School of Business at UConn Storrs completed another year as the highly prestigious Ackerman Scholar He continues to serve as the Director of the Master's Program in Business Analytics and Project Management.

We congratulate Professor Zugang "Leo" Liu for his receipt of promotion to Associate Professor and tenure at the Pennsylvania State University of Hazleton! In addition, he had a co-authored paper on stochastic network equilibrium published in Transportation Research B. He was recognized by his campus with the Research Scholar Award.

Center Associate Professor Ladimer S. Nagurney of the University of Hartford as been serving as the Interim Department Head of the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department. He has collaborated on several papers with the Center Director and doctoral students on research ranging from supply chains to duration-based contracts for the Internet.

Center Associate Professor Trisha Anderson of the School of Business at Texas Wesleyan University continues to receive publicity for her selection as an Exemplary Teacher at her university. Congratulations! Professor Anderson and several other Center Associates gave invited talks at the INFORMS Annual Conference in San Francisco in November 2014 in sessions organized by Professor Jose Cruz and the Center Director. Center Associate Professor Ke "Grace" Ke of the School of Business at Central Washington University spoke on her latest work on financial networks there.

Center Associate Professor Patrick Qiang of the Graduate School of Professor Studies at Penn State Malvern is working on his 2 year grant from the China National Science Foundation for his project: Competition, Efficiency and Coordination Mechanism of Express Service Providers of Online Shopping Supply Networks. He continues to be very active in speaking at conferences and conducting research. His research on sustainability and closed loop supply chains as well as on network vulnerability, done with the Center Director, is being widely cited.

Center Associate Professor June Dong of the School of Business at SUNY Oswego is a Co-PI on the project: Developing an Interactive Web-Application for Instructions Involving Networks funded by an Innovative Instruction Technology Grant (IITG) from the State University of New York (SUNY). She is also collaborating with colleagues in China on supplier selection and risk using a supernetwork framework, research that she presented at INFORMS San Francisco.

Center Associate Professor Ding Zhang of the School of Business at SUNY Oswego has been busy teaching an operations management course in a newly customized MBA program for a company focused on R&D in the Syracuse area. He continues his extensive collaborations with colleagues in China. He has been very actively publishing on supply chain vs. supply chain network competition.

Professor Min Yu of the School of Business at the University of Portland had a very productive year in terms of research. Her paper, co-authored with Professors Anna Nagurney, Jonas Floden, and Ladimer S. Nagurney on supply chain network competition in time-sensitive markets was published in the journal Transportation Research E. Another paper, co-authored with the Center Director, appeared in the edited volume, Optimization in Science and Engineering, and an additional paper on fashion supply chains with ecolabelling with Dr. Floden and the Center Director is now in press in the first volume in a new Springer series on supply chains, which is entitled Sustainable Fashion Supply Chain Management. In addition, the paper, An Integrated Disaster Relief Supply Chain Network Model with Time Targets and Demand Uncertainty, appears in the edited volume, Regional Science Matters: Studies Dedicated to Walter Isard, P. Nijkamp, A. Rose, and K. Kourtit, Editors, Springer International Publishing Switzerland (2015). That paper is written with the Center Director and Center Associate Professor Amr H. Masoumi of the School of Business at Manhattan College.

Dr. Masoumi completed 3 semesters as an Assistant Professor at Manhattan College and continues to conduct research on a variety of healthcare and pharmaceutical supply chains. He is recognized for his outstanding performance as an educator.

Center Associate Dr. Stavros Siokos serves as the Chief Executive Officer at Sciens Fund of Funds Management Holdings Ltd. Dr. Siokos is responsible for the general management of the fund of funds and the managed account platform businesses based in London, Guernsey and Zurich.

Center Associate Dr. Padma Ramanujam is continuing working at SAS in Cary, North Carolina and she took part at the INFORMS meeting in San Francisco.

Professor Anna Nagurney, along with Doctoral Student Center Associates Sara Saberi and Dong "Michelle" Li, continues to work on the NSF-funded project: Network Innovation Through Choice. They have several papers accepted for publication or in press that acknowledge support from this major NSF grant. Professor Tilman Wolf is the PI and Professor Nagurney is a Co-PI. Other partners on this project include collaborators at the University of Kentucky, NCState, and RENCI. UMass Amherst was awarded a $100,00 supplement on this grant in 2014.

Sara Saberi was selected as a 2014 Isenberg Scholar Award recipient and also had the award renewed in 2014. Together with the Center Director and Professor Tilman Wolf of the College of Engineering at UMass Amherst, she co-authored a paper that was published in the December issue of the INFORMS journal Service Science.

We congratulate Doctoral Student Dong "Michelle" Li who successfully defended her doctoral dissertation proposal in 2014, which is focusing on supply chain network competition and quality. Also, Michelle was a recipient of the 2014 Outstanding Doctoral Student Researcher Award in 2014 from the Isenberg School of Management.

Doctoral Student Center Associate Shivani Shukla was elected President of the UMass Amherst INFORMS Student Chapter for 2013-2014 and was very active organizing activities.

The student chapter this year was recognized with the Cum Laude Award from INFORMS at the INFORMS Annual Conference in San Francisco.

Congratulations to all on the achievements! Wishing everyone a very productive and wonderful New 2015 Year!

Please visit the Supernetwork website regularly for the latest news and information.

Please visit the various pages on the supernetworks website for many of our recent publications as well as for photos of our events and activities, newsletter, and media coverage.s.

December 2013 Congratulations and Kudos!

December 2012 Congratulations and Kudos!

December 2011 Congratulations and Kudos!

December 2010 Congratulations and Kudos!

December 2009 Congratulations and Kudos!

December 2007 Congratulations and Kudos!
 
December 2006 Congratulations and Kudos!

January 2006 Congratulations and Kudos!