UMass Amherst Professor Anna Nagurney Given Fulbright Grant to the University of Catania, Italy

Dec. 12, 2007

Contact:

Anna Nagurney 413/545-5635

AMHERST, Mass. – Anna Nagurney, a professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, has received a Fulbright grant to serve as a senior specialist in business administration at the University of Catania in Italy in March.

Nagurney is the John F. Smith Memorial Professor of operations management at the Isenberg School of Management at UMass Amherst and director of the Virtual Center for Supernetworks.

During her two weeks at the University of Catania in March, Nagurney will give graduate and undergraduate lectures, conduct a workshop and will also evaluate curricular and educational materials, including datasets. The theme of her project is: “Complex Networks and Vulnerability Analysis: From Innovations in Theory to Education and Practice.” Nagurney will address a variety of applications including congested urban and other transportation networks, electric power generation and distribution networks, supply chains, financial networks and the Internet.

Nagurney’s expertise on the subject has been highlighted in publications, including articles and co-authored papers with her doctoral student, Patrick Qiang, in such journals as Europhysics Letters, the Journal of Global Optimization and Optimization Letters. Their joint research on the identification of the most important nodes and links in networks, subject to deteriorations or outright failures due to natural disasters, terrorist attacks, critical failures, etc., has been featured in such publications as WebWeek magazine, Science Daily, Network World and Computerworld.

The network efficiency measure developed by Nagurney and Qiang has been used to determine the importance and rankings of nodes and links in transportation networks, electric power supply chains, financial networks and the Internet. It has been shown to outperform earlier proposed measures in applications to the German highway system as well as the well-known Braess paradox network. The research has implications for national security as well as for the study of climate change effects on infrastructure network efficiency.

Nagurney’s host at the University of Catania will be Professor Patrizia Daniele, who is a center associate of the Virtual Center for Supernetworks at UMass Amherst.

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