Visit of Dr. Kyrychenko from the Kyiv School of Economics (KSE) to UMass Amherst

This past week, we were delighted to have Dr. Kostyantyn Kyrychenko, the Vice Rector for International Cooperation at the Kyiv School of Economics (KSE), come to UMass Amherst. Those of you who have been reading my blog are aware of the global partnership between these two universities established shortly after Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022. 

It was a pleasure to have Dr. Kyrychenko join a group of us for lunch. At the delicious lunch at The Commonwealth Restaurant sponsored by the UMass Amherst Office of Global Affairs (OGA) even the one and only Associate Vice Chancellor Ken Toong stopped by! When I told our distinguished visitor from Ukraine that UMass Amherst had been voted as having the best college food 7 years in a row - he corrected me (thank you) - UMass Amherst has received this honor 8 times! Special thanks to Kimberly Stender and Claire Novotny of the Office of Global Affairs for the lovely time and to my great Isenberg School of Management, UMass Amherst colleagues, Professors Bogdan Prokopovych 🇺🇦 and Ina Ganguli, who also has an appointment in our Economics Department and who graciously shared the photo with Ken Toong in the collage below. It was extra special to also have exchange students from KSE join us.

I was touched by a lovely gift set that Dr. Kyrychenko presented me from Sumy, which is the city in eastern Ukraine that he is from and also where one of our exchange students is from. Kimberly Stender presented him with some gifts from the Office of Global Affairs and he gave her some KSE branded gifts. The conversations were wonderful and I am sure that they will continue. The exchange student program has brought 7 different students from KSE to UMass Amherst in the past two years and they have thrived on our beautiful campus. The students are fabulous ambassadors for Ukraine and their courage and work ethic inspire me.

We thank Dr. Kyrychenko for visiting us. The journey from Ukraine is quite long and I know that tomorrow he will be back for KSE Open Days!

Rerouting to Evade Tariffs - Our Latest Study

Tariffs and their impacts we have been researching for several decades now because of the relevance of the topic as well as the scientific interest in the mathematical modeling of supply chain networks and international trade. Furthermore, there are different types of tariffs, including unit tariffs, ad valorem tariffs, and even tariff rate quotas. We have studied the impacts of tariffs in perfectly competitive contexts such as spatial price equilibrium problems as well as in oligopolistic markets.

Recently, because of the escalating trade wars and imposition of various retaliatory tariffs in the second Trump administration, our research has included rerouting to evade tariffs. This topic has been quite newsworthy; see, for example, this article in The New York Times, which was published today: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/24/business/vietnam-china-transshipment.html

My paper, "Multicommodity Trade, Tariffs, and Rerouting," co-authored with my Isenberg School PhD student, Samirasadat "Samira" Samadi, was accepted in the very special volume: Convex and Variational Analysis with Applications: In Honor of Terry Rockafellar’s 90th Birthday. Panos M. Pardalos and Themistocles M. Rassias, Editors, Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

It was an honor to have been invited to contributed to this edited volume in honor of the amazing Professor Rockafellar, a giant in the optimization and variational inequalities.

A preprint of our paper can be downloaded from the Supernetwork Center website: https://supernet.isenberg.umass.edu/articles/MulticommodityTradeTariffsandRerouting.pdf

The case study in the paper focuses on tea, which is produced in both China and Vietnam, and, in our numerical examples, can be rerouted, with associated additional costs (although it is illegal) to demand markets. It is important to model and to quantify trade-offs associated with such illicit tariff evasion in order to provide policy- and decision-makers with insights for interdiction purposes. Our research continues.

Congratulations to Dana Hassani on Receipt of the 2025 Outstanding Doctoral Student Researcher Award at the Isenberg School!

On May 9, the Isenberg School of Management held its All School Meeting to wrap up the academic year. At the meeting, various awards were given out to faculty, staff, and doctoral students.

My Isenberg PhD student in Operations Management Dana Hassani, who was announced as the recipient of the 2025 Outstanding Doctoral Student Researcher Award, was, at that time, was en route to the POM Society Conference in Atlanta, so could not attend. I had blogged about this conference in previous posts.

So, this past Thursday, after the Isenberg PhD robing ceremony, the Director of our PhD Program, Dr. George Milne, presented Dana with the award plaque in our Business Innovation Hub.

Dana arrived at UMass Amherst in January 2022, after a delay in obtaining his visa. He has published 3 journal articles, and one book chapter, which is quite remarkable. And he has also been teaching this past academic year a required course, "Business Data Analysis," for our business undergraduates each semester. Dana is the lead author of the paper, "A Multiperiod, Multicommodity, Capacitated International Agricultural Trade Network Equilibrium Model with Applications to Ukraine in Wartime," co-authored with me, and Kyiv School of Economics (KSE) colleagues: Oleg Nivievskyi and Pavlo Martyshev, which appears in in the INFORMS journal Transportation Science,  vol. 59, no. 1, January-February 2025, pp. 143–164. He is also the co-author (second author) with the same co-authors as above of the paper, "Multicommodity International Agricultural Trade Network Equilibrium: Competition for Limited Production and Transportation Capacity Under Disaster Scenarios with Implications for Food Security," published in the European Journal of Operational Research, vol. 314, no. 1, 2024,  pp. 1127-1142. He is also a co-author, with the same authors as above of the paper, "Exchange Rates and Multicommodity International Trade: Insights from Spatial Price Equilibrium Modeling with Policy Instruments via Variational Inequalities," published in the Journal of Global Optimization, vol.  87, 2023, pp. 1-30.

Dana's book chapter, co-authored with the same team as his journal articles, "Quantification of International Trade Network Performance Under Disruptions to Supply, Transportation, and Demand Capacity, and Exchange Rates in Disasters," was published in Dynamics of Disasters- From Natural Phenomena to Human Activity, I.S. Kotsireas, A. Nagurney, P.M. Pardalos, S. Pickl, C. Vogiatzis, Editors, Springer Nature Switzerland AG, 2024, pp. 151-179.

It is important to emphasize that there are 9 tracks in the Isenberg PhD Program so receiving this award is quite the achievement. And, Dana also got this award last year. He successfully defended his dissertation proposal a few months ago. I look forward to his successful PhD defense in the coming academic year. He has done excellent research focusing on agricultural supply chains and international trade under disruptions, including in Ukraine during wartime. It has been an honor to work with him and with colleagues at the Kyiv School of Economics. 

We Celebrated the Outstanding Exchange Students from the Kyiv School of Economics (KSE)

This is the second full academic year that exchange students from the Kyiv School of Economics (KSE) in Ukraine have been studying at UMass Amherst. The exchange program, during wartime Ukraine, was made possible because of a partnership established between KSE and UMass Amherst, under the leadership of the Vice Chancellor for Global Affairs Dr. Kalpen Trivedi.

Two of the KSE exchange students have been with us for two academic years and are now returning back to Ukraine. Two are staying on for another year and we expect additional ones to arrive in the Fall.

I invited the students for a special dinner in order to celebrate their accomplishments. The dinner was at The Inn at Boltwood in downtown Amherst.  The warm conversations covered much territory - the students' classes and great professors, friends made from Massachusetts and from around the globe, the award-winning UMassAmherst food, college sports (notably, UMass hockey), life in beautiful Amherst, and the differences between learning in the US and in Ukraine. Traveling thousands of miles from their homes and their families, the students: Asta Motrenko, Marharyta Nechytailo, Oleksandra Horusieva, and Karyna Lutsenko have achieved so much and have left a big imprint on all those who have had the pleasure of interacting with them. Thanks to Lorraine Martinelle of Marcomm at the Isenberg School for the lovely, informative article on the students: https://www.isenberg.umass.edu/news/three-years-later-isenberg-reflects-umass-amherst-partnership-ukrainian-institution

They students have spoken on university panels (thanks to UMass Amherst Student Chapter of INFORMS), been on Talk the Talk radio show, made the Dean's List each semester, took part (Marharyta as an analyst) in the amazing and very impactful Isenberg Undergraduate Consulting Group (IUCG) and even placed second on a team in a national Capital One competition. Songs have been created, produced, and performed in Amherst (Asta). Since two students are returning to Kyiv, with Ukraine still enduring war, now in its 4th year,  this made the evening also bittersweet. 

I am sure that the KSE exchange students will play an important role, through their education, experiences and friendships made, in the recovery and rebuilding of Ukraine. A big thanks to their professors, including those at the Isenberg School of Management, UMass Amherst, who have provided such outstanding courses and have mentored them. And, thanks to the top administrators: Provost Fouad Abd-El-Khalick, Vice Provost for Global Affairs Kalpen Trivedi, and Isenberg Dean Anne P. Massey for the support in the global partnership between UMass Amherst and KSE. 

Presentations of Our POMS Talks in Atlanta Have Been Posted: From Agricultural Trade to War Risk Insurance

Last week,  I was busy with events and the last week of the academic year, but my Isenberg School PhD students traveled to Atlanta to present our joint work at the POM (Production and Operations Management) Society 35th Conference. They had an outstanding time and also, thanks to Isenberg PhD alumna, Dr. Deniz Besik of the University of Richmond, enjoyed a delicious lunch at a Turkish restaurant. My former PhD student, now at the University of Portland, as a tenured Associate Professor, Dr. Min Yu, also joined them. Below is a collage of photos of my PhD students: Dana Hassani, Ismael Pour, and Samira Samadi, presenting plus a lunch photo.

Dr. Deniz Besik also presented on our work on food banks. Below is a graphic of the first slide of our four presentations.

The slide decks of the full presentations, which, in the case of my PhD students, were all based on recently published papers, can be found on the Supernetwork Center website:  https://supernet.isenberg.umass.edu/visuals.html Dana's presentation was based on a paper published in the INFORMS journal Transportation Science. Ismael's paper appeared recently in International Transactions in Operational Research, and both his and Dana's paper was co-authored with colleagues in Ukraine. Samira's paper, which was co-authored also with Ismael, appeared in the Journal of Nonlinear and Variational Analysis.

I am very lucky to have excellent PhD students (present and former).

My 3 PhD Students Will Present Our Recently Published Papers at the POMS Conference in Atlanta

I am a very lucky and proud Academic Mom. My 3 Isenberg School of Management, UMass Amherst PhD students will present our recently published papers at the POMS Conference in Atlanta, which overlaps with Mother's Day https://pomsmeetings.org/conf-2025/

Dana Hassani will present the paper, "A Multiperiod, Multicommodity, Capacitated International Agricultural Trade Network Equilibrium Model with Applications to Ukraine in Wartime," which was co-authored with colleagues at the Kyiv School of Economics: Oleg Nivievskyi and Pavel Martyshev, and published in the INFORMS journal Transportation Science: https://lnkd.in/eUC3PA3J.  Ismael will present the paper, "Integrated Crop and Cargo War Risk Insurance: Application to Ukraine," which was co-authored with Borys Kormych of the National University "Odessa Law Academy" and published just this morning in the IFORS journal International Transactions in Operational Research: https://lnkd.in/e-3MxaDY. Samira will present the paper, "A Variational Inequality Trade Network Model in Prices and Quantities Under Commodity Losses," that we co-authored with Ismael, and that was published open access in the Journal of Nonlinear and Variational Analysis: https://lnkd.in/eSuiqC_C. Support for co-authors in Ukraine was made possible through the outstanding partnership between the University of Massachusetts Amherst and the Kyiv School of Economics, thanks to the leadership of Vice Chancellor of Global Affairs Kalpen Trivedi and Isenberg School of Management, UMass Amherst Dean Anne P. Massey. 

Our presentations are ready!

Happy Mother's Day and Happy Conferencing! 

The UMass Amherst INFORMS Student Chapter Celebrated the End of the Semester with a Great Party and Congratulations Cake

Yesterday, during the next to the final week of classes in the 2024-2025 academic year at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, we had our UMass Amherst INFORMS Student Chapter party. This is a tradition of this wonderful student chapter that brings both students and faculty together who work in the areas of Operations Research and the Management Sciences.

It has been a very busy week, with many additional events, that I even blogged about, including the 2025 OIM Awards Celebration just the evening before. And, yesterday morning, for the first time ever, the OIM Department Chair Professor Senay Solak organized a retreat for the department.

I left the retreat early, since, as is also the tradition, my husband and I always bring warm varenyky/pierogies, kielbasa, and desserts.

Some faculty mistakenly thought the party was at 4PM, although the poster circulated stated that the start time was 4:30PM. We appreciate the enthusiasm.

There was a kerfuffle - with all the events happening now at UMass Amherst, because of the end of the academic year, the order for food that the Chapter President Ismael Pour (one of my PhD students) put in got cancelled in the last minute. He scrambled then to get food orders from Atkins and from the famous Antonio's Pizza in downtown Amherst.

The food spread was fantastic and took up two large tables in Room N135 in the Business Innovation Hub at the Isenberg School of Management. Besides the Ukrainian food and the pizza, there were veggie and fruit trays, cold cuts and cheeses, and different types of sandwiches.

Josh Gladstone did a great job slicing the Congratulations cake. 

We brought both potato cheese varenyky and cabbage varenyky and the cake with Congratulations on it we bought at Whole Foods, along with a wide assortment of cookies. There were also various desserts from Atkins and even a spread of baklava pastries from Stop and Shop. It was appropriate to celebrate with a Congratulations cake since this chapter, in October, received the Magna Cum Laude Award from INFORMS at the Seattle Annual Meeting. Also, several of our PhD student members: Semih Boz, Dana Hassani (last year's Chapter President), Ismael Pour, and Samira Samadi have had journal articles published this past year and others are in press!

We have hosted a variety of events and speakers this past academic year. We were delighted that Lorraine Martinelle, of the Isenberg Marcomm Department, wrote an excellent article on our events associated with a panel with the Kyiv School of Economics (KSE) exchange students and the visit and talk of the KSE President Tymofiy Mylovanov from Ukraine:  https://www.isenberg.umass.edu/news/three-years-later-isenberg-reflects-umass-amherst-partnership-ukrainian-institution Two of the exchange students, Marharyta Nechytailo and Karyna Lutsenko, joined our party. Also, it was wonderful to see Dr. Natalia Bychkova from Ukraine, who has been teaching at Amherst College.

The student chapter aims to enhance networking, share scientific knowledge through seminars, and also to build community. The students also present their research in a tune-up before the INFORMS Annual Meeting each year. Lasting friendships are made (and even a few marriages) through the chapter. Its members come not only from the Isenberg School but also from the College of Engineering at UMass Amherst and from the Manning College of  Information and Computer Sciences.

I have been the Faculty Advisor of the UMass Amherst INFORMS Student Chapter since 2004.

To learn more about the Chapter, its Officers, and its activities, please, visit its website: https://websites.umass.edu/umassinf/