Professor Ram Ramanathan, Director of BMRI, delivered keynote addresses in three international conferences in India during December 2016.

1. Keynote Address at the 49^th Annual convention of the Operational research society and the International Conference on Analytics in Operational Research

Professor facilitated a tutorial on Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) on 11^th December 2016 and delivered a keynote address at the inaugural session of the 49^th Annual convention of the Operational research society of India and the International Conference on Analytics in Operational Research on 12^th December 2016. Both the sessions were held at the campus of Birla Institute of Management Technology (BIMTECH), Greater Noida (National Capital Region – Delhi) in India. His keynote speech focussed on the use of Network DEA for understanding the role of innovation on the link between environmental performance and financial performance. His keynote was attended by nearly 100 delegates all over India and abroad – both from the academic community engaged operational research and from the practitioner community engaged in analytics.

2. Keynote Address at the 4th International Conference on Business Analytics and Intelligence (ICBAI)

Professor Ramanathan delivered a keynote address at the inaugural session of the Fourth International Conference on Business Analytics and Intelligence (ICBAI) in Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, on December 19, 2016, where he presented findings of the Big Data in Logistics project. His talk highlighted the need to use value-adding input-output framework for understanding how big data can be exploited to gain competitive advantage by logistics companies. This key note was also attended by more 100 delegates all over India and abroad – both from the academic community engaged operational research and from the practitioner community engaged in analytics.

3. Keynote Address at the 1^st International Conference on 'Reenvisioning Economies: Inclusive Growth & Sustainability'

Professor Ramanathan was a Chief Guest at the 1^st International Conference on 'Reenvisioning Economies: Inclusive Growth & Sustainability' held at St Xavier’s College, Jaipur, India, on 20^th December 2016. His speech as chief guest focussed on the need to use Triple Bottom Line in order to derive sustainable economic benefits in the economy. He also presented an invited lecture where he shared results on his research on environmental regulations and impacts on sustainability. He highlighted the need to enact flexible environmental regulations, and also the need for innovative mind-set in organisations to be able to take advantage of flexibility of regulations. The lecture was well attended by a number of students and teachers all over India and abroad engaged in research on sustainable economies.