Abstract:
The COVID-19 pandemic, climate change, conflicts and wars have dramatically illustrated the importance of labor in supply chain networks in numerous economic sectors, from agriculture to healthcare. In this talk, I will discuss our research on the inclusion on labor in supply chains both in optimization and game theory frameworks to elucidate the impacts of disruptions of labor in terms of availability as well as productivity on product flows, prices, and the objective functions of organizations, both profit and nonprofit ones. I will also highlight what can be done to ameliorate negative impacts and will discuss the power of setting appropriate wages on supply chain links from production and transportation to storage and the ultimate distribution to points of demand. The use of international migrants to alleviate shortages will be discussed and the impacts of the war on Ukraine on global supply chains. The inclusion of labor in blood service supply chains in healthcare and in humanitarian organization models for disaster preparedness and response will also be highlighted along with resilience metrics. I will conclude with some of our experiences in influencing policy in the pandemic.
Bio:
Anna Nagurney is the Eugene M. Isenberg Chair in Integrative Studies at the Isenberg School of Management at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and the Director of the Virtual Center for Supernetworks, which she founded in 2001. She holds ScB, AB, ScM and PhD degrees from Brown University in Providence, RI. She is the author/editor of 15 books, more than 220 refereed journal articles, and over 50 book chapters. Professor Nagurney has been a Fulbrighter twice (in Austria and Italy), was a Visiting Professor at the School of Business, Economics and Law at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden, and was a Distinguished Guest Visiting Professor at the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) in Stockholm. She was a Visiting Fellow at All Souls College at Oxford University during the 2016 Trinity Term and a Summer Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard in 2017 and 2018. Anna has held visiting appointments at MIT and at Brown University and was a Science Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University in 2005-2006. She has been recognized for her research on networks with the Kempe Prize from the University of Umea, the Faculty Award for Women from the US National Science Foundation, the University Medal from the University of Catania in Italy, the 2019 Constantin Caratheodory Prize, and the 2020 Harold Larnder Prize, and was elected a Fellow of the RSAI (Regional Science Association International) as well as INFORMS (Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences) and the Network Science Society, among other awards. She is the 2022 IFORS Distinguished Lecturer. Anna has also been recognized with several awards for her mentorship of students and her female leadership with the WORMS Award, for example. Her research has garnered support from the AT&T Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation through its Bellagio Center programs, the Institute for International Education, and the National Science Foundation. She has given plenary/keynote talks and tutorials on 5 continents. She is an active member of professional societies, including INFORMS, POMS, RSAI, and the Network Science Society.
Anna's research focuses on network systems from transportation and logistical ones, including supply chains, to financial, economic, social networks and their integration, along with the Internet. She studies and models complex behaviors on networks with a goal towards providing frameworks and tools for understanding their structure, performance, and resilience and has contributed also to the understanding of the Braess paradox in transportation networks and the Internet. She has also been researching sustainability and quality issues with applications ranging from pharmaceutical and blood supply chains to perishable food products and fast fashion to humanitarian logistics. She has advanced methodological tools used in game theory, network theory, equilibrium analysis, and dynamical systems. She was a Co-PI on a multi-university NSF grant with UMass Amherst as the lead: Network Innovation Through Choice, which was part of the Future Internet Architecture (FIA) program and was recently a Co-PI on an NSF EAGER grant.
