Last Friday, Professor Noshir Contractor presented at the Busines Advisory Council Meeting of the Northwestern University Transportation Center. The title of his presentation is The NExt Normal for Teaming: Transitioning Out of COVID-19. 

Note that NUTC’s Business Advisory Council (BAC) is comprised of senior-level executives representing all modes of transportation including shipper and carrier firms, freight forwarders and third party logistics providers, financial institutions, consulting firms, and trade associations.

Contractor, N. (2021, June). The Next Normal for Teaming: Transitioning Out of COVID-19. Speaker at the Business Advisory Council Meeting of the Northwestern University Transportation Center, Evanston, IL. 

Graduation weekend finally arrived after one of the most challenging years so far (yes, we’re referring to the pandemic) — and we’d love to celebrate the exciting achievements of all our SONIC members!

CONGRATULATIONS to all of our seniors — Arshya Srinivas, Aryaman Gupta, Chiagozie Anyanwu, Lauren Tran, Louis Ingram, Othman Muhammad, Selena Rita Suarez, Victoria Kam! We are extremely thrilled with all of the work you’ve done during your time at SONIC and Northwestern University.

We also want to extend a special shoutout to our data science intern Arshya Srinivas for winning the IEMS Department Award! We are very lucky to have you as one of our interns, and we’re incredibly excited to announce that she’ll be joining SONIC for another year as a full-time staff member.

We also want to CONGRATULATE Diego Gómez Zará, our PhD Student who received his Master of Science in Technology and Social Behavior last weekend.

This week marks the last week of classes this Spring Quarter before finals week begin. Here’s some snapshot of our lovely Graduate Student and Lab Director teaching the class.

Describing how professionals can learn from NASA’s research on assembling a mission-critical team for space travel, Noshir Contractor recently presented a keynote titled “Designing and Keeping Great Teams. Lessons from Preparing for Mars. What Can PLM Professionals Learn from This?”

KEYNOTE: Designing and Keeping Great Teams. Lessons from Preparing for Mars. What Can PLM Professionals Learn from This?

Cooperation is critical in space, and NASA has identified important traits for successful teamwork in anticipation of an upcoming Mars expedition. To help assemble a team for the three-year mission, NASA is working with researchers to develop a predictive model of group performance, one which anticipates conflicts and communication breakdowns based on personality traits. PLM conference presentations often mention the dependency on technology, people, and processes for success, but mostly focus only on the technology. The introduction of disruptive technologies puts even more pressure on the people aspect. This presentation will share research findings on assembling a mission-critical team for space travel that might well apply to setting up your mission-critical team for a multi-year PLM implementation.

For more details, please refer to the agenda: https://www.cimdata.com/en/education/plm-conferences/plmrm-pdt-spring-2021/agenda

citation: 

Contractor, N. (May 20, 2021). Designing and Keeping Great Teams: Lessons from Preparing for Mars – What can PLM Professionals Learn from This? Keynote address at the PLM Road Map & PDT Spring 2021, Virtual.

On Wednesday (04/28), Professor Contractor presented a talk on “People Analytics: Using Digital Exhaust from the Web to Leverage Network Insights in the Workplace” during his virtual visit to the University of Minnesota’s Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering (ISyE).

Sharing insights from our current work, Noshir Contractor recently presented the keynote “Emerging Communication Architectures and the Changing Nature of Work” at The 9th International Conference ‘Сomparative Media Studies in Today’s World’ (CMSTW).

For more info about the conference: http://cmstw2021.org