AM I A PHOTOGRAPHER?

I have recently initiated a series of blogs, which pose this question: "Am I a [certain profession or activity] ?"

Within this context, I have discussed these topics:

Am I a maritime economist?

Am I an operations researcher?

Am I a painter? (title of blog changed)

And now let me pose this question: Am I a photographer?

So here is the picture:

I first practised photography since I was about 6, and when my father bought me a Kodak Brownie, an extremely simple camera that looked like this:

This camera used a film that had only space for 12 photos, each of dimensions 6X9 cm. I used this camera until I was about 14 years old. It took decent pictures if lighting was adequate. Most of them were black and white, but at the end I also used color film. 

The basic film used was Kodak 620, see below:

Other than Kodak, films by Agfa, Ilford, and others were available. 

Perhaps the most remarkable of the pictures I took with that camera was the following:

Pic was taken summer of 1963, when I was 12, onboard the S/S Limnos, on our way to Sifnos, and just outside Sounion. The man you can see in the picture was my father. It is not clear (and I do not remember) if my father was looking at me or away to the sea. The picture was recognized by magazine EIKONES. They published it when I submitted it for a photography contest. 

Incidentally, my father had a more sophisticated camera, THIS ONE (Ensign):

Film used had the 120 format, which was a variant of 620. The difference between 620 and 120 was the diameter of the spool. 

I never used my father's camera, but I wanted something better than the Brownie. The solution came in the form of a Zeiss Ikon 35 mm camera, which my father bought for me as a Christmas present when I was about14 and which looked like this:

This camera had the famous Tessar 50 mm f2.8 lens, had a photometer, could take a flash, and had a variable apperture and variable shutter speeds up to 1/500 sec. It also had a timer. The standard 35 mm film could take as many as 36 pictures (there were also versions with 20 pics).  Wow!

A typical 35 mm film looked as follows (here by Konica/Minolta):

Film was available for prints or for slides. 

Incidentally, my sister had a simpler camera, a Kodak Instamatic 100, which was very popular at the time. Here is how it looked:

The 100 took the Kodak 126 film, which came in cartridges like this:

Anyway, I took many nice pictures with the Zeiss, mostly prints, but also slides. Unfortunately, I lost it when my apartment in Cambridge MA was broken into in 1976. That was really a downer. 

A few months later I bought a Nikkormat FT2 camera, THIS ONE:

I bought it from the Ferranti-Dege photo shop in Cambridge MA, near Harvard Square. I spent a lot of money in that store, buying cameras, lenses and film, and giving film to develop. I always remember their motto, "once with Nikon, always with Nikon". 

The Nikkormat camera is a 35 mm SLR (single lens reflex), with vertical focal plane shutter and speeds that could go to 1/1000. In addition to the standard 50 mm f1.4 Nikkor lens, I also bought a 135 mm f3.5 Nikkor telephoto lens and a 28 mm f3.5 Nikkor wide-angle lens. Unfortunately, I lost the wide angle in one of my trips to California in 1978. I lost it in a rental car- it accidentally dropped there from a bag that I used, unbeknownst to me. 

I remember the "certificate of recognition" I received at a Nikon contest for a picture I took from a TWA airplane in 1976 (sunset over the Atlantic Ocean). I am trying to locate the picture and the certificate. 

Here is a Nikkormat pic that I like:

In addition to the Nikkormat, I also bought another 35 mm camera, a Rollei 35, this one:

I really loved the Rollei, which had a retractable 40 mm f3.5 Tessar lens. Sadly, I lost it when my apartment was broken into again in 1983. Long live the burglars!

Additional photo activities of mine include the following:

While in Greece, and during my university years, I constructed and maintained a darkroom, to develop and print black and white pictures! It was an exciting activity. Developing pics involved using the so called Paterson tank and the use of chemicals. Other chemicals and a projector were used for the printing. It was amazing to discover the latitude one has when printing (parameters include the kind of paper, the chemicals, the exposure, etc). 

Also in Greece and while in high school I got a movie camera, a Canon 518 Super 8. This was an 8mm film, whose duration was only a few (probably 3) minutes. It looked like this:

Films were in Kodachrome cartridges and were sent to Kodak France for processing. There was no sound. 

Below is a pic of a Super 8 cartridge:

Sadly, this camera was stolen too, in one of the (3) burglaries that I suffered in the USA. I took many movies. I had also a movie projector by Silma. 

In the mid 80s and while in the US, I also bought a waterproof Nikon camera, with which I took a lot of underwater pictures. It used regular 35 mm film. It died at some point, but I still have it. Ηere is a pic:

POLAROID: I also bought a Polaroid camera in 1985! The ONLY reason: At that time there was a super deal between Polaroid and TWA (a big US airline), by which if you bought a $25 Polaroid camera you got a 25% discount on TWA tickets worldwide, plus a free car from Avis for a week. So I did, and rented a Citroen Visa in one of my trips to Greece. That was actually the last time I used TWA. 

With the advent of digital photography, my illustrious career as a photographer suffered a blow. I got several digital cameras, by Nikon, by Sony and by Canon. Many (I would say too many) died along the way. For instance, this one: 

My latest digital is a Canon, I still have it, and it works just fine. Here is a pic:

Naturally, I also take a lot of pics by my cell phone. I do not consider this as serious photography. But some of the pics are fun. 

Approaching 70 years since I started, I have LOTS of prints, slides and digital pics. Some others have been lost. Even though I have some old albums, I have yet to organize most of the pics. That would be a serious undertaking. Also I have some albums on Facebook. 

I still have the Nikkormat and theoretically it should still be working. This is the best camera that I ever  had. 

ALL IN ALL, and to answer the question: 

Yes, I am a photographer, and I very much like taking pictures. I was way more serious in the past, and I am trying not to over-fudge the issue now.

PS I also had (and still have) some video cameras, starting from 1989 on. All of them SONY. 

PS2. I forgot to mention the camera(s) of my wife. When I met her (early 80s), she had a Canon A1, which (at least on paper) was a more sophisticated camera than my Nikkormat. 

AM I AN OPERATIONS RESEARCHER?

Now that we settled (or not settled) the issue whether or not I am a maritime economist (see HERE), comes a similar question: am I an operations researcher? 

Below is some related material.

The trigger for this discussion has been the recent (circa 20.03.2025) podcast of Anand Subramaniam, a colleague in Brazil, in which he interviewed me on my professional career, from an operations research (OR) perspective. In the podcast I also talked about some aspects of my personal life, and references were also made to Pele, the Olympiacos football team, the Rolling Stones, the Boston Celtics, and Claude Monet. See HERE for that podcast. I am grateful to Anand for this interview and I want to commend him for his overall effort, to interview more than 100 OR people. 

So here is the story:

My first (undergraduate) studies were at NTUA, where I got a diploma in naval architecture and marine engineering (NA&ME). No OR here. 

I first became aware of OR when I went for graduate studies at MIT in 1974, and I did not go to MIT to study OR. I went to MIT (dept. of ocean engineering) to get a dual MSc degree in NA&ME (see above) and in shipping and shipbuilding management (S&SM). A common thesis was planned for these two degrees. 

It was during the course of the S&SM curriculum that I took some classes that had a strong OR content. These included probability, mathematical programming, and operations management. This is when I started developing an interest in OR, and it was then that I realized that MIT had the so-called OR Center, an interdepartmental OR program with faculty coming from many MIT departments. 

However, I could not just switch to OR, as I did not have financial support in that area (I was working as a research assistant in ocean engineering). The breakthrough came in late 1976, and before I finished my MSc program, when Amedeo Odoni, a professor in the aeronautics and astronautics department (and also in civil engineering) offered me a research assistantship to work for him on some vehicle routing problems, effective summer of 1977. This would be for my PhD. 

I made the switch with a lot of excitement, but also stress. I still remember when I bought Hillier and Lieberman's "Introduction to Operations Research", how exhilarated I was that I was entering this field. But at the same time I was quite apprehensive on whether I would succeed. It was a big jump that I had decided to take, and how exactly I would land (and where) was not clear. 

Just as I was starting my PhD work (summer of 1977), I attended the EURO/TIMS International Conference that took place (of all places) in Athens, Greece. This was my first OR conference (I didn't give a paper). I remember a session on mathematical programming chaired by Marshall Fisher, an expert on vehicle routing whom I would get to know better several years later, when I was a faculty member at MIT. Speakers in the session included Nicos Christofides, Egon Balas and George Nemhauser. At that session in Athens, I was in awe of these and other OR heavyweights.

The fall term of 1977 was one of the most productive of my entire student life. I made most of the progress during my PhD during that term, and I really enjoyed it. I  produced a dynamic programming algorithm for the aircraft sequencing problem with maximum position shift constraints, a problem that was solved only heuristically so far. Then I produced a similar algorithm for the dial-a-ride problem, a problem in urban transportation. Mind you, I did this while I was still a student in the ocean engineering department. I defended my PhD in the fall of 1978 and I received my PhD degree in May 1979.  This PhD thesis won the so-called “dissertation prize”, an award sponsored by the Transportation Science Section of ORSA (the Operations Research Society of America). ORSA & TIMS were the precursors of INFORMS. 

I received the award at the ORSA meeting in Milwaukee, fall of 1979. The picture below is from the award ceremony. Also shown are John Little (left), then President of ORSA, and Richard Rothery, then Editor-in-Chief of Transportation Science. (I am not the only one with a beard in the pic). 

Another picture shows a box that has all my PhD thesis in it. Complete with handwritten text, supervisor's comments, computer runs, typewritten original, the works. The thesis was typed (not by me, but by a secretary) on an IBM Selectric typewriter. There was no word processing at the time. After many years, the box now resides in an attic near Athens. 

ALL of my research when I was a faculty member at MIT (1979-1989) was OR-related. I had an appointment at the ocean engineering department, and I was its (only) OR faculty, being also affiliated with the MIT OR Center. My predecessor at ocean engineering (Jack Devanney) was also an OR person. 

Research included a series of projects on oil spill response, a project on ocean acoustic detection, two projects on dial-a-ride systems (with Amedeo Odoni and Nigel Wilson) and a project on ship routing and scheduling (with Jim Orlin). 

I also taught courses on mathematical optimization (with David Marks) and on logistical and transportation planning (with Amedeo Odoni, Dick Larson and Arnie Barnett), both listed jointly with other MIT departments. 

My most exciting project at MIT was a project to develop graphics software for mathematical optimization courses at MIT. See HERE. 

During my MIT faculty years (1979-1989), I got to know many other MIT OR faculty, including Dick Larson, Tom Magnanti, Al Drake, Steve Graves, Rob Freund, Dimitri Bertsekas and Dimitri Bertsimas. 

During that period I attended practically all ORSA and TIMS meetings (held twice a year), and met many OR colleagues in other universities around the world. Among them, I can name Bruce Golden, Larry Bodin, Stella Dafermos, Gilbert Laporte, Marshall Fisher, Marius Solomon, Pitu Mirchandani, Alexander Rinnooy Kan, Jan Karel Lenstra, Paolo Toth, and many others (apologies for the many omissions). Add to these the 1978 Optimization Days conference in Montreal, the 1979 International Math Programming Symposium in Montreal, the 1980, 1982 and 1983 EURO conferences in Cambridge, Lausanne and Vienna (respectively), the 1981 IFORS conference in Hamburg and the 1984 TIMS International conference in Lyngby. List may not be complete. 

When I moved from MIT to NTUA in Athens in 1979, for a Professorship position on maritime economics and management in the NA&ME department, I was basically told that "you should do shipping, not OR". As a result, my OR activities scaled down significantly, even though I still kept some contact by publishing some papers and by maintaining my Associate Editorship in Transportation Science, which I actually held for 32 years (1987-2018). I served under 6 Editors-in-Chief (Amedeo Odoni, Mark Daskin, Gilbert Laporte, Hani Mahmassani, Michel Gendreau and Martin Savelsbergh). I also guest-edited two focused issues on maritime transportation and ports (in 1999 and 2015). 

To be sure, there were colleagues at NTUA who were into OR more centrally than me, but they were dispersed in other (engineering) departments. These initially included Dimitris Xerokostas, George Cosmetatos and Ioannis Pappas, and later Danae Diakoulaki and George Mavrotas. There was no OR or management department at NTUA. 

So at NTUA I was essentially doing OR whenever I could, and sometimes in my spare time. Other activities (and there were many) had priority. A sort of  breakthrough came in 2010, when I published a vehicle routing paper in EJOR, for which I actually programmed the code myself (in Fortran!), some 30 years or so since I had last coded at MIT. This paper was not funded by any project. It was exhilarating to revisit the area. 

I went to very few INFORMS meetings during my 24 years at NTUA (1989-2013). As far as I can recall, I only went to the 1994, 1995 and 2011 meetings, in Boston, New Orleans and Charlotte respectively. I also went to the 1991 and 1994 TRISTAN conferences, in Montreal-Quebec and Capri, respectively, to the 2010 Italian AIRO conference in Calabria, to the 2012 EURO conference in Vilnius, to the 2012 International Math Programming Symposium in Berlin, and to the 2012 Odysseus conference in Mykonos  (again, list may not be complete). There were surely other conferences too, but without a main OR content. 

Needless to say, I did very little or no OR when I was CEO of the port of Piraeus (1996-2002). As I have said to many, the most serious OR problem in Piraeus was determining the marginal cost of the container terminal! This was something that we had to do in order to decide on our pricing structure. I published ZERO papers during that period, but I managed to guest-edit a focused issue in Transportation Science (1999). 

At NTUA I also taught (among other courses) a course on maritime transport economics and one on applications of decision analysis in maritime transport, both of which had some OR content.

When I moved to DTU (2013-2023), I came a notch closer to OR, but I do not think it was at a level similar as MIT. Most of my research and teaching activities were in the sustainable transport and logistics area, with much emphasis on sustainable shipping. There was surely OR in both. I finished my official academic career as a Professor in the department of technology, management, and economics, division of management science, section of operations and supply chain management. People who are into OR at DTU include David Pisinger, Stefan Røpke, Jesper Larsen, Allan Larsen, Thomas Stidsen, Richard Lusby, and Dario Pacino.  I even chaired a search committee for an OR Professor position. 

One remarkable thing for DTU was that in my time there (10.5 years) I published more papers than in my 35 or so years at MIT and NTUA combined. Not sure how this happened, but it did. I did not do it intentionally. 

In my time at DTU, I went to one INFORMS conference (2014, San Fransisco), to four EURO conferences (2013 Rome, 2015 Glasgow, 2016 Poznan, 2018 Valencia), to an INFORMS/TSL workshop (2013Pacific Grove), to an IFORS conference (2014 Barcelona), to a Verolog conference (2014 Oslo), to an Odysseus conference (2015 Ajaccio), and to a LOGMS conference (2017 Bergen). Again, this list may not be complete and there were also other conferences without a main OR content. 

I also organized, on behalf of DTU, two ROUTE workshops, one in 2014 and one in 2018, both in Snekkersten, Denmark. ROUTE workshops were initiated and organized by DTU colleague Oli Madsen, who retired in 2013. They were by invitation only and brought together many vehicle routing experts around the world. 

Below is a pic from the 2018 workshop. One can see Irina Gribkovskaia, Maria Battarra, Gilbert Laporte, Janny Leung, Jan Ehmke, Jakob Puchinger, and many other vehicle routing luminaries. 

I was elected International Liaison Officer of the Transportation Science and Logistics (TSL) Section of INFORMS (2013-2017). Also I was a member of the TSL Best Paper Award Committee, 2018- 2020; and its Chairman in 2020. 

Among my last papers at DTU was an encyclopedic paper written by a total of 82 authors. It was a paper published by the Journal of the OR Society in 2024. I wrote the section on maritime transportation. See HERE.  Plus, I co-authored a paper in Transportation Science, some 41 years since my previous paper there. See HERE.

So in what "heavy OR-content"  journals have I published? Which journals qualify for that label is subjective, but still I can list the following (list may not be complete): 

MIT (1979-1989): Operations Research, Management Science, Transportation Science, Transportation Research Part B, Networks, European Journal of Operational Research (EJOR). 

NTUA (1989-2013): Operations Research, Annals of Operations Research, EJOR.

DTU- (2013-2023):  Transportation Research Parts B and E, EJOR, Networks, Transportation Science, Journal of the OR Society.

To be sure, there were also papers in other journals, such as in Transportation Research Parts C and D, Flexible Services and Manufacturing, and others, that had an OR content. 

So all in all, and revisiting the original question, I am not sure I can answer it precisely. Perhaps an answer is, "I used to be an operations researcher. Then I hung around for a while. Then I came back but maybe not fully". 

Whatever it is, I am happy to be included in Anand's OR experts list. You may form your own opinion on this question if you see that podcast (also available on Spotify). 

PS

Link to ORCID

Link to career blog

AM I A MARITIME ECONOMIST?

(HNP photo: the Piraeus container terminal)

This has been a question that I have struggled to answer recently. This blog is intended for those who consider themselves as maritime economists. If you do not, you may disregard it. 

The answer to this question is (depending on one's perspective):

a. YES

b. NO

c. MAYBE

A bit of rationale:

First of all, how is the field of "maritime economics" defined? The Stanford/Elsevier 2% global scientists database, which is based on the Science-Metrix journal classification system, has some 174 scientific "subfields", and "maritime economics" is not one of them (incidentally, "economics" and "agricultural economics" are).  So a scientist can not identify himself/herself as a maritime economist based on what is in the Stanford/Elsevier database. People who consider themselves as maritime economists (and there can be many) will have to settle for another subfield of the Stanford/Elsevier database as their primary subfield (for instance, logistics and transportation, economics, business and management, operations research, or other). Incidentally, this is not a matter of a direct, personal choice, as the database makes this determination for you automatically, based on the journals in which you publish. My own primary subfield is logistics and transportation. Obviously, there is an indirect, but very clear choice here, for it would be very unlikely for Stanford/Elsevier to assign me in the L&T category if the bulk of my papers were in (say) astronomy, neuroscience, or psychology.

To h@ll with this database, one may say. Who needs it? Is there another way to say if I am a maritime economist? 

Well, as far as education goes, I have a diploma in naval architecture and marine engineering (NTUA), a MSc in the same area (MIT), a MSc in shipping and shipbuilding management (MIT), and a PhD in ocean systems operations research (MIT). Do these degrees prove that I am a maritime economist? Not sure. 

Also I am a member (and also Council Member) of the International Association of Maritime Economists (IAME).  According to IAME, “maritime economics” shall include the study of economic, managerial and governance- related issues and effects appearing in a maritime context, including related to shipping markets, ports and the associated supply chains. Note however that  there may be scientists who may consider themselves as maritime economists but who are not IAME members (or may not have paid their dues). So IAME membership may be a clue on whether someone is a maritime economist, but not a perfect one.

How about teaching? Well, I have taught courses on maritime transport economics at MIT (together with the late Zenon Zannetos) and at NTUA (in fact 3 courses). Plus I have taught a variety of other maritime transport related courses at DTU and other places. Does this make me a maritime economist? Maybe yes, maybe no.

How about research? Here things get more complicated. Below is a list of the various research areas that I have dealt with in my official active academic career (1979-2023), as I compiled them about a year ago (in parentheses are number of journal papers, plus books, book chapters and refereed conference papers in each area- NUMBERS MAY NOT BE UP TO DATE):  

Vehicle routing etc (18)

Ocean acoustic detection (7)

Oil spills (32)

Ship automation, autonomous shipping (8)

Maritime safety and security (15)

Shortsea and coastal shipping (13)

Ports (14)

Green freight transportation and logistics (17)

Ship speed models and optimization (16)

Maritime emissions (73)

Other research (24) - these are diverse topics that do not fall under any of the above.

TOTAL: 237 (for more details see HERE) 

I have NOT put maritime economics in the list as a distinct research area, even though various papers in some of these areas might be considered to be under the maritime economics umbrella. 

Last but not least, I have been CEO of the port of Piraeus for some 5.5 years. Does this make me a maritime economist? I do not think so. 

So based on all of the above, in all honesty I can say that I really do not know if I am a maritime economist. Maybe I will wear that hat under some circumstances, maybe I will choose to wear other hats too, under other circumstances. Last year I and other NTUA fellow naval architects and marine engineers celebrated the 50 years jubilee from our NTUA graduation in 1974. 

Why the question? (if I am a maritime economist). Because I recently saw myself in a table of top-50 maritime economists (see HERE) and, even though I am happy to be in that table,  I honestly wonder if I belong there. 

Does it really matter much? I am not sure it does. 

PS And now, the punchline: stay tuned for a podcast of my professional career mainly from an operations research perspective. 

See HERE, released on 20 March 2025. 

ΟΝ ΤΗΕ FWCI INDEX

 As if a zillion citation indices were not enough, I recently became aware of the so-called FWCI (from Field-Weighted Citation Impact) index, devised and maintained by Elsevier. See HERE for some information on this index. 

How did I learn about FCWI? (I admit I did not know anything about it). A colleague posted the following table on Facebook, which was reproduced from another colleague's post on LinkedIn (note that I have hibernated my LinkedIn account since about a year ago): 

(big apologies for the inconsistency in formatting)

The table lists the top 50, according to their FWCI index, academics in the field of "shipping and port management" (SPM). 

First of all, big congrats are due to all these people for making that list. I note that I am also included in it, in the No. 9 position, which is probably a surprise as I have only published very few port management papers. I have also published some papers that could, conceivably, fall under the general rubric of shipping management-  if one finds a way to explicitly define the field (more on this later). I also note that most of my own citations are in the vehicle routing area, with little or no connection to shipping and port management. 

Needless to say, there has been a big publicity splash on social media about this table, especially by people who are near the very top of the table. All of these people feel happy about their position in that table. 

As for me, I have some questions and comments about the table:

1. How was this table produced? I entered the FWCI site and I found no way to enter  "shipping and port management" as a filter or criterion or discipline, to see who is included in the area. A colleague who tried doing this by hand, produced another table. His question on how the table was produced went unanswered. 

2. A more basic question is, how is the SPM field defined? The Stanford/Elsevier global scientists database lists more than 160 scientific subfields (as they are known), and SPM is not one of them. Is a paper on ship weather routing an SPM paper? Probably. How about a paper on reducing maritime emissions, or a paper on finding the best risk control options to mitigate oil pollution? Or a paper on port regulatory policy? Or a paper in intermodal logistics? Here it is not so clear. So there is an identity problem to start with, and two different people may have different opinions on this subject. 

3. There is no direct mapping between SPM and any of the 160+ Stanford/Elsevier designated subfields. We can not say, for instance, that SPM is a subset of the "Logistics and Transportation" (LT) subfield, even though many researchers of the above SPM table have LT as their primary Stanford/Elsevier subfield. There may be other researchers who have other primary subfields in the Stanford/Elsevier database (for instance Operations Research, Economics, Business and Management, or other) and who may claim to be into SPM as well. 

4. But even if we find a way to explicitly define SPM, the next question is, who qualifies as an SPM researcher? One who has all of his/her papers into SPM? Some of his/her papers? Or at least one of his/her papers? And who will make that determination? The researcher himself/herself, or someone else? (and who?) The Stanford/Elsevier global scientists database makes this determination automatically, using an algorithm that looks at the overall publication picture and assigns to each scientist in the database exactly one primary field and exactly one primary subfield.  But there is nothing equivalent for SPM.

5. How would these results differ if instead of SPM we had "shipping and port economics", "shipping and port logistics",  "maritime and port economics and logistics", or something related? 

6. There is more. I can identify several other people who have published some SPM papers, and thus could be in the above table, but were, for some reason, omitted. These include (order is random) Shuaian Wang (FWCI= 2.1), Qiang Meng (FWCI= 1.94), Michael Bell (FWCI= 1.58), Jan Hoffmann (FWCI= 4.40), Christos Kontovas (FWCI= 3.63), and Thalis Zis (FWCI= 2.26). And this is a non-exhaustive list. If these people were included in the table, some other people would have to be removed. The omission of these people brings back question No. 1. 

6. I see that my own FWCI (and I suspect everybody else's) refers to the time interval 2013-2024. Is that reasonable? For me, in that time interval I had 84 out of a total of 180 Scopus-listed publications. Why are the rest of these publications not relevant? 

7. What does Elsevier itself say about FWCI? It clearly states that this is a paper-level index and NOT a researcher-level index.  For more on this see HERE. It also has this caveat: "Highly cited publications for entities with a small scholarly output may skew the FWCI. This metric should be used with care when assessing performance." This means that it should not be used to compare individual researchers with one another. 

8. See also HERE for an article by the University of Liverpool on the pitfalls of FWCI. According to it, and among other things, a list of recent Nobel prize laureates has a subpar FWCI ("We ran all Nobel Prize Winners between 2018 and 2020 (a total of 25). We found that 10 (or 40%) had 2015-2020 SciVal scores < 2). 

Based on the above, and even though I am happy to be included in this table, I would be a bit cautious on using FWCI, either for SPM, or for other scientific disciplines, as a criterion for individual researcher performance. 

See HERE for several prior citations blogs. 

PS (ADDED ONE DAY LATER, 18.02.2025)

My blog above found its way into LinkedIn (via a colleague). I could not see the discussion since I am not on LinkedIn, but I received an email by another colleague, who is at the very top of the table,  in which he partially answered my question No. 1: He clarified that, among other things, those who compiled the table- whom he did not name- intended to list academics who are members of IAME (the International Association of Maritime Economists) and have FWCI>1. He also mentioned that the compilers of the table did not intend to use it to make comparisons among researchers. 

I am not sure if this clarification and caveat were also shared in public or were only just for me.  

I note however that some people under No. 6 are IAME members but were omitted from the table nonetheless (reason: unknown). I do not think this may be fair to them, in spite of FWCI being a dubious index. Conversely, it is not clear if all people in the table are IAME members. But surely some are, including the President of IAME and some IAME Council members (I am one of them). With all the deficiencies of FWCI, I am not sure their being listed in this table is fair to them either. 

Has IAME been consulted in compiling this table? I doubt it.

All in all, and in addition to all the deficiencies of FWCI as per above, I think it is fair to say that the information in the above table is not accurate and can be misleading, particularly so long as it continues being circulated in social media for the purpose of highlighting, comparing and benchmarking individual academic performance and impact.

THE SIMITIS BLOG

Costas Simitis, PM of Greece 1996-2004: 

The man who left a significant political legacy and put Greece in the Eurozone. He also played a critical role for the accession of Cyprus to the EU. 

For me personally, he was the man responsible for my 5 ½ year tenure as CEO of the port of Piraeus (1996-2002). This has been the non-academic part -but surely an important part- of my overall professional career*. 

He was not afraid to pick someone who had zero connections to the political establishment (including himself) and zero prior experience in running a port. 

I am grateful for the opportunity and for his support. May he rest in peace.

* More on Piraeus when I was there can be found HERE.