Isenberg School’s Operations Management Program Excels as Advocate for Productivity and Quality
Faculty Spotlight: Anna Nagurney
While her colleagues embrace the challenges of complexity, Anna Nagurney absolutely thrives on them. “My fellow professors typically focus on improvements in the workplace,” she observes. “I study larger-scale arenas, like transportation and communication systems, international financial and supply chain networks, and regional economies. (In January 2004, Nagurney was named an “intellectual leader” by the journal Papers in Regional Science for being the twelfth most cited scholar among her generation in the regional science literature.) I also study supernetworks—the interaction of different systems in overarching domains. During the blackout that affected much of the Northeast in August 2003, the failure of the power grid, for example, paralyzed a supernetwork that included transportation and telecommunications systems, postal service, and electronic commerce.”
Don’t mistake Professor Nagurney’s emphasis on large-scale systems for a lack of pragmatism. “Much of my work involves building computer models that explore specific real-world problems: What are the most efficient ways to relieve traffic congestion? How do we avoid crises in global supply chains as we recently experienced with flu vaccines? How do we buffer an electrical grid against seasonal spikes in demand?” Three years ago, Nagurney, a 2004 Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio fellow, created the Virtual Center for Supernetworks, which actively employs seven students in network research and model building. “With support from the National Science Foundation and the National Security Agency, we’re also creating algorithms that model the size and flows of social networks. With those models, we’ll be able to predict paths of influence and action among social groups.”
While many of her former PhD students in management science have gone on to exciting academic careers, Nagurney is equally enthusiastic about her undergraduate students. “For more than a decade, we’ve given hundreds of our undergraduates the skill sets to become successful operations managers. A growing number of them, moreover, have gone on to Ivy League MBA programs. In the classroom, I’m continuously impressed by the scope and creativity of student projects that apply operations models to real-world challenges. Student teams have developed models to optimize the flow of resources at Northampton’s Cooley Dickinson Hospital. They’ve created models that addressed cost overruns at the Big Dig and excessive paper flow right here at the Whitmore Administration Building. You’re acquiring some powerful tools, I tell the students. Use them to create a better world.”
Next: Professor Sara McComb
Featured in this article:
| Faculty: Soren Bisgaard Alan Robinson Iqbal Agha Anna Nagurney Sara McComb | Alumni: Profile - Michael Sawa '98 Class Notes |