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Operations Research and Management Science Experts to Speak at UMass Amherst

Jan. 25, 2008

Contact:Trisha Woolley

AMHERST, Mass. – Transportation corridors in Asia, malaria research, gang homicides in Chicago, and airplane boarding are among the topics to be covered in the Operations Research/Management Science Spring Speaker Series at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

Sponsored by the UMass Amherst student chapter of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS) in the Isenberg School of Management, the series begins Feb. 15.

All talks take place on scheduled Fridays at 11 a.m. in 112 Isenberg School of Management and are open to the public.

The six speakers are:

• Denise Sumpf of the Transport Facilitation Section of the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UNESCAP) in Bangkok, Thailand, who will speak on “The Development of Transport Corridors in Asia.” (Feb. 15)

• Andrew Papachristos of the UMass Amherst sociology department, who will discuss “Murder Markets: Group Dominance and the Social Contagion of Gang Homicide in Chicago.” (Feb. 22)

• Jenna Marquard of the department of mechanical and industrial engineering at UMass Amherst will lecture on “The Decision to Use an Analysis is a Decision Process in Itself: How a Business Framework Can Help Us Rigorously Study This Process.” (March 7)

• Eitan Bachmat of the computer science department at Ben Gurion University in Israel, who is currently visiting Brandeis University, will speak on “Airplane Boarding and Space-Time Geometry.” (March 28)


• David Wypij of the department of biostatistics at the Harvard School of Public Health at Harvard University will speak on, “Lessons Learned from Malaria Research in Africa (Or How I Moved from Operations Research Training to a Career in Biostatistics).” (April 4)

• Vamsi Chadalavada, senior vice president, market and system solutions, ISO New England in Holyoke, will talk on an “Overview of New England’s Power System and Markets.” (April 11)

• John R. Birge, the Jerry W. and Carol Lee Levin Professor of Operations Management at the Graduate School of Business at the University of Chicago, will speak on “A News-vendor Model for Dynamic Investment and Financing Decisions: Capital Structure Implications and Empirical Results.” (April 18)

Support for the speaker series is provided by the Isenberg School of Management and its department of finance and operations management, the John F. Smith Memorial Fund and the Institute for Operations Research and Management Sciences (INFORMS). Anna Nagurney, the John F. Smith Memorial Professor at the Isenberg School of Management, serves as the faculty advisor to the speaker series.

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