A short while ago, we returned from NYC, where we took part in an event on September 17 at the Harvard Club in support of Ukraine that was organized by the Kyiv School of Economics (KSE) with assistance provided by Razom for Ukraine and […]

My oldest daughter started college this month, which was a milestone for her and for me. I drove her to her university and moved her into her dorm. When I said good-bye, I left her with a personalized letter expressing my confidence in her and other […]

I recently published an article in ORMS Today entitled “10 Principles for Changing your Name as a Mid Career Academic” that, as the name suggests, describes my process of changing my name five years ago and the lessons I learned along the way. […]

I would like to thank the organizers of the outstanding Optimization and Decision Science Conference that took place August 30-September 2, 2022 in the stunning city of Firenze, Italy.It was a conference of great scientific value, with wonderful […]

I have three public outreach items to share from this summer. Details are below. I also recorded a podcast for the IISE Operations Research podcast series about OR for social good. This podcast should be released in September 2022. All my previous […]

 Academics work very hard on their research and enjoy seeing their work published. One also hopes that one's work is appreciated and recognized and, in academia, getting cited and also doing impactful research is deeply rewarding.I'd like to first […]

I’m at the National Science Foundation (NSF) Safe and Trustworthy Computing (SaTC) Principal Investigators’ (PIs) Meeting in Arlington, VA for my grant with Prof. Jim Luedtke entitled “An Optimization Framework for Identifying Dynamic Risk […]

“[I]t seems to me that the term `linear programming’ is a most unfortunate phrase for this promising technique, particularly since many possible extensions appear to be in nonlinear directions. A more general yet more descriptive term, such as […]

Now is the time of the year in academia, when we mark major milestones, such as the completion of degrees by our students. Yesterday, was a very special day, during which we had the Isenberg School PhD robing ceremony of the class of 2022.It was […]

Now that the Spring 2022 semester has come to a close (except for some grading), I thought it important to publicly thank and recognize the outstanding guest speakers in my Humanitarian Logistics and Healthcare class this term.  In this class, we […]

The invasion of Ukraine by the Russians on February 24, 2022 is impacting food prices and food insecurity globally, creating major hardships with a pending hunger catastrophe.I have worked on agricultural supply chains for quite a few years, since […]

When I was a PhD student in the early 2000s, my advisor, Sheldon Jacobson, told me that some had once predicted the death of operations research. This came as a surprise to me, because it seemed like the discipline was flourishing. He agreed with me […]

It’s hard to believe that I started this blog fifteen years ago on April 2, 2007. Here are some milestones in the life of the blog: I published 762 posts. I started 105 drafts of blog posts that I never finished. Most of those drafts are a quick […]

Already in January 2022, I started being approached by journalists asking me whether I thought that an invasion of Ukraine was imminent, and my interview with a Bengali journalist was published on January 25, 2022 (in Bengali) in the Daily Amader […]

This year’s Final Four is set in the NCAA men’s basketball tournament, with Duke, the University of North Carolina (UNC), Kansas, and Villanova facing off this weekend. This is the first time Duke and UNC will play in the tournament. At first […]

In an academic's life, one of the many joys is seeing one's students achieve milestones.Today was a very special day, since Mojtaba Salarpour,  my PhD student in Management Science at the Isenberg School of Management at UMass Amherst, successfully […]

This blogpost is co-authored with Dr. Ladimer S. Nagurney. Since the latest war on Ukraine began on February 24, 2022, we, as many others around the globe, have been preoccupied with the unprovoked, unjustified invasion of this democratic, sovereign […]

Happy International Women’s Day! I encourage you to join me in celebrating women’s achievements, raising awareness against bias, and taking action for equality. I am going to focus on women in academia today, since the COVID-19 pandemic has been […]

Last week I was on a panel about science communication hosted by the Women in OR & Analytics Network (WORAN), a network for female academics and practitioners created by the Operational Research Society of the UK. Marco Luebbecke (@mluebbecke) […]

As we begin the New 2022 Year, it is time to take stock and to reflect on the year that has passed.2021 was a remarkable year in many respects, not the least of which was that it marked the second year of the COVID-19 pandemic.  As the Center […]