Mozart Menezes
PhD Program Director

"The Summer Academy has as its objective to present new areas of research to students, to state-of-art techniques, and to bring new research topics to PhD students’ attention. We would also like to go beyond the format where students are exposed to single-institution resources. We believe that, by taking the best resources from different institutions and, at the same time, allowing students from different institutions to attend our courses, we are making a major contribution to the Operations Research/Operations Management field.

I believe that we have accomplished all of these objectives and more. Last summer was extremely fruitful with professors of the calibre of Dr. Yehuda Bassok, Dr. Dorothee Honhon, Dr. Rogelio Oliva, Dr. Nils Rudi among the participants. Students from IESE, Instituto de Empresa, HEC-Paris, Hong Kong University of Science & Technology, University of Seville, all took part in the course.

The atmosphere was one of continuous work – discussions were not confined to the classroom and continued well into the night. A real forum for debate was created about different issues in our field. A excellent group of professors working in tandem with high-level group of PhD students. It couldn´t have been better.

It would be very difficult to make it better but, we are already working hard to  make the Summer Academy 2009 as good as our first one - if experience counts for anything it has every chance of being so. Like last year, we will try to keep our door open as many students that are interested in getting involved in an intensive, enlightening and enjoyable experience."