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Today, September 6^th, our Student Chapter organized its first meeting for the academic year 2019-2020. Old and new members gathered in Isenberg School of Management to elect the new officers and commence coordinating activities for the exciting events that are coming up during Fall 2019. Our new president, Mojtaba, welcomed everyone at the meeting and shared wishes for a great new semester. Our former president, Katerina, described to our new members the Chapter’s main goals and purposes as well as the responsibilities that arise from each officer’s position. After the elections, everyone was excited with their new roles in our Chapter for this academic year!

New members and officers are posing for a group photo.

Our Chapter would like to wish everyone an amazing new academic year! We hope to see you all soon at our first event!

Today, 04/26/2019, our Student Chapter organized enthusiastically our last event for this academic year, the traditional “End of Semester” party! Students, as well as faculty members, from different departments of our University joined us in an event that included vivid discussions and plenty of food. Our Chapter’s advisor, Prof. Nagurney, awarded our current officers with certificates to recognize their exceptional service to our Chapter. Certificates were also awarded to former officers who keep supporting our Chapter strongly and consistently. Finally, the event closed with many wishes for a good end of the semester and an amazing summer!

Many friends of our Chapter joined us to celebrate the end of Spring ’19 semester!

Relaxing discussions were held among the participants.

Prof. Nagurney welcomed everyone to our party!

Rodrigo Mercado received his certificate from Prof. Nagurney, who highlighted his truly outstanding service to our Chapter. 

Our President, Katerina Deliali, cut our party cake! 

Our Student Chapter would like to thank our advisor, Prof. Anna Nagurney, for her valuable guidance and support . We would also like to thank everyone who joined our events during Spring 2019 Semester! 

We hope to see you all again this Fall! 

Today, March 22nd, our Student Chapter organized with pleasure a talk by Dr. Thiago Serra who is a visiting research scientist at Mitsubishi Electric Research Labs. His presentation was entitled: “Bounding and Counting Linear Regions of Deep Neural Networks”. Dr. Serra presented both theoretical and empirical approaches for investigating the number of linear regions of the function modeled in the framework of a piecewise linear neural network. Numerous useful graphs were included in his presentation, thus allowing for the audience to fully comprehend his work. As a result, a vivid discussion on the content of the presentation was held at the end of his talk.

Prof. Anna Nagurney, our chapter’s advisor, performed the speaker’s introduction and emphasized on the prestigious awards that he has received.

Our chapter’s President, Katerina, referred to our speaker’s academic and research background.

Dr. Serra started his presentation with a slide entitled “The Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything” that intrigued all attendees.

Many graphs and figures in the presentation made its content clear, which led to several valuable questions on behalf of the attendees.

The audience showed vivid interest and developed a fruitful discussion with our speaker.

The presentation was followed by the speaker’s interview! The content will be available soon on our YouTube Channel! Don’t forget to subscribe for updates!

Today, March 8th, our Student Chapter enthusiastically organized an exciting talk by Dr. Jurij Paraszczak who is a consultant to IBM’s Corporate Communications and Corporate Affairs group. His presentation was entitled: “Smarter Cities and their Analysis”. Dr. Paraszczak highlighted the value of Information Technology and its role in enhancing city operations efficiency. His presentation included useful insights into the analytical approaches that IBM follows in their projects, as well as very interesting videos that traveled us around the world. It is noteworthy that Dr. Paraszczak encouraged the audience’s vivid participation by asking questions and commenting on the received feedback.

Prof. Nagurney, our Chapter’s advisor, introduced our speaker to the attendees.

Our President, Katerina, presented our speaker’s academic and professional background.

Dr. Paraszczak demonstrated interesting videos to further explain and support his statements.

By the end of the presentation, the attendees asked many questions that led to a valuable discussion.

Our Student Chapter would like to wish a Happy Spring Break to everyone! Don’t forget to stay tuned to our Youtube Channel!

Today, February 22^nd, our Student Chapter was thrilled to organize its second event for Spring 2019 semester. Our speaker has been Dr. Peter Haas who is a Professor at College of Information and Computer Sciences at University of Massachusetts, Amherst. His presentation was entitled: “Temporally-Biased Sampling Schemes for Online Model Management”. With his talk, Dr. Haas emphasized on the importance of having accurate data over time and presented his developed methods and approaches in order to achieve this goal. His presentation included very interesting and useful graphs that allowed the audience to comprehend both fundamental and more sophisticated parts of his study.

Prof. Nagurney welcomed everyone to the event and introduced our speaker to the audience.

Our President, Katerina, referred to our speaker’s academic and professional background. She also introduced Yalda, our new Vice President.

Dr. Haas explained thoroughly the motivation for the presented study, which was Dynamic Interaction Graphs.

All the attendees demonstrated vivid interest for Dr. Haas’ study.

Stay tuned to our Youtube Channel for Dr. Haas’ interview that followed his presentation!

Today, February 1^st, we were excited to organize our first event for the new semester! Our first speaker for Spring 2019 was Dr. Aurora Liu, Assistant Professor of Strategic Management at Isenberg School of Management, University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Her presentation was entitled: “Horizontal M&A and Firm Innovation: Contingency Roles of Collaboration and Knowledge Network Embeddedness”. Dr. Liu informed us about her research on how multiple network embeddedness of technological firms may change the effects of horizontal merger and acquisition (M&A) on firm innovation performance. The audience was very enthusiastic about the thorough description of the theoretical research background, as well as the empirical analysis that was presented.

The event started with the attendees introductions.

Prof. Anna Nagurney, the chapter’s advisor, performed the speaker’s introduction.

The chapter’s President, Katerina, referred to our speaker’s academic and research background.

Dr. Liu presented her work using examples to make her models development clear to all attendees.

The presentation was followed by the speaker’s interview! The content will be available soon on our YouTube Channel! Don’t forget to subscribe for updates!

A new semester has just begun, and our Student Chapter is excited to welcome everyone back on campus!

We would also like to wish you a happy and productive semester, full of unique experiences and valuable lessons.

Keeping the good work of the past, our Chapter is enthusiastically organizing many interesting events for the Spring 2019 Semester. Learn more about them on:

• Website
• Facebook
• Twitter
• YouTube

Stay tuned and hope to see you all soon!

Today, 12/13/2018, our Student Chapter organized successfully the traditional “End of Semester Party” that was eagerly expected! Many students, as well as faculty members, joined us in an event that included a little bit of everything: friendly mood, relaxing talks and delicious food. As in every event we organize, of course, interesting research discussions and exchange of valuable ideas have been held among participants. Above all, though, we had the chance to make a recollection of the good moments of this semester and all the lessons that it has taught us.

Our menu included a wide variety of flavors, such as pizza, traditional Indian food and festive cookies!

Our President, Katerina, cut our delicious cake and wished everyone “Happy End of Semester!”

Our Advisor, Prof. Anna Nagurney, wrote warm wishes on the blackboard on behalf of UMass INFORMS Student Chapter.

Our Student Chapter would like to thank all those who joined our events and activities during Fall 2018 Semester and, thus, made our efforts matter. We hope to see you all again during Spring 2019! Until then, we wish you have a happy Winter Break!

Today, November 30^th, our Student Chapter hosted Prof. Michael Knodler from the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department of our University. His presentation was entitled: “Connecting the Threads of Transportation Safety and Traffic Operations”. Prof. Knodler’s talk emphasized on the role of humans within Transportation Systems. More specifically, his work addressed the investigation of human behavior and its potential impacts on traffic safety, infrastructure and operations. Prof. Knodler kept the audience’s interest vivid by presenting useful examples, impactful real-life applications and a Segway demonstration!

Our chapter’s advisor, Prof. Anna Nagurney, introduced the speaker.

Our chapter’s President, Katerina, referred to our speaker’s academic and research background.

Prof. Knodler performed part of his talk on a Segway!

Our speaker received many interesting questions from the attendees and provided them with detailed answers.

By the end of his talk, our guest welcomed everyone to try a Segway! In the photo below we can see our President, Katerina, being guided by Prof. Knodler and our Vice President, Hossein, on how to use it properly.

Also, today’s talk was preceded by the celebration of our Cum Laude Award! Our Chapter received this prestigious Award in the frame of the INFORMS Annual Meeting in Phoenix, AZ (more information on this Award can be found here).

We would like to thank Prof. Anna Nagurney for her valuable guidance and support that led to this Award, as well as all past and current Officers for their fruitful efforts!

We are very proud to announce that our student chapter has received the prestigious Cum Laude Award, in the framework of the INFORMS National Meeting in Phoenix! This award aims to recognize student chapters’ excellence and enhance their motivation for performing well. We would like to thank cordially all past and current members of our chapter for their efforts and achievements that led to this award!

Our chapter members are posing for a group photo, holding the award and sharing smiles.

Photo of the Cum Laude Award which has been awarded to our Chapter for the 12th consecutive year.

Congratulations Deniz, Sayeeda, Vijeta, Rodrigo, Mojtaba, Katerina, Franklin, Emre, Amro and, of course, Prof. Anna Nagurney!

More information about the award as well as a full list of past awardees can be found here: https://www.informs.org/Recognizing-Excellence/INFORMS-Prizes/Student-Chapter-Awards