Tuesday, July 5, 2016

Fabulous Operations Research Conference - EURO 2016 in Poznan, Poland

I would like to thank the organizers of the 28th European Operational Research (Operations Research) Conference in Poznan, Poland, taking place July 3-6, 2016, for the great organization, high quality scientific papers, venue, hospitality, and warmth extended to all the conferees.

It has been a wonderful experience since we arrived late on Saturday evening, having flown WizzAir from Luton London Airport to Poznan.

The venue is the Poznan University of Technology, which had big banners welcoming us on Sunday afternoon.


 The registration was also very smooth and friendly.




The opening ceremony was grand with even the university choir entertaining us and with both the EURO Gold Medal awarded to Professor Nesterov and Professor Queyranne with Professor Sisko receiving the Service Award.

Poznan is filled with operations researchers and just upon arriving we saw INFORMS Fellow Bob Fourer and Graham Rand, who was one of my hosts just last week at Lancaster University. The Old Town of Poznan is especially beautiful.

And when we are not being served delicious luncheons at the conference venue we have managed to sample a variet of peirogies as well as schnitzels in Old Town.
The coffee breaks are also spectacular with the conference organizers treating us to delicious pastries.
Another reason that this conference is extra special to me is that I can figure out alot of the Polish since my first language is Ukrainian, plus Springer has my new book, written with my former Isenberg PhD student, Dong "Michelle" Li, "Competing on Supply Chain Quality: A Network Economics Perspective," on display at its booth.
 I was honored that yesterday I had the chance to present our European Journal of Operational Research paper on food supply chains, that was published in 2013 and that was written with Professor Min Yu, also a former doctoral student of mine. I had been invited (one of two presenters) to speak on this work by the Editors of the journal, along with outgrowths of this research. Professor Roman Slowinski had earlier in the same session given a wonderful presentation on the success of this journal, which is one of my favorites, with over 3,000 paper submissions now per year! Professor Slowinski noted that our paper was selected because of the high citations that it has received and its impact.

Today was another very busy day, since I had two talks in a session organized by Professor Patrizia Daniele, a great collaborator of mine from the University of Catania in Italy. As for scheduling, my first talk this morning took place at the same time as a co-authored talk with my husband on the Braess paradox. My first presentation today was on cybersecurity with co-authors Professor Daniele and my doctoral student Shivani Shukla and my second presentation was on a game theory model for freight services in humanitarian/disaster relief. All these presentations are available for download on the Supernetwork Cemter website at the Isenberg School of Management.

Plus, I got to see two of my very successful former doctoral students, Professor Tina Wakolbinger and Professor Dmytro Matsypura and I took the photo of them with Professor Daniele below. Tina organized a very interesting session on humanitarian logistics, which we attended this afternoon after a yummy lunch that we ate outside.

It was also fabulous to see Professor Ariela Sofer who seems to have the same fashion sense as I do.
Another wonderful meeting was with Dr. Mauricio Resende of Amazon, who gave a keynote talk, and then hosted a tour of Amazon's fulfillment center in Poland.


And later today we will be hearing the Nobel Laureate n Economic Sciences Robert Aumann speak. This has been a conference that raises new standards for organization, attention to detail, and also scientific contributions. Many, man thanks to the organizers for such a wonderful conference!

It is great to be part of the Operations Research community and I even exchanged a few words with Melissa Moore, the Executive Director of INFORMS, who is also here.