January 2022 issue

Volume 67, Issue 1

The COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated supply chain issues, creating supply and demand shocks that stressed the system. Fallen prey to rising prices, backorders, and shortages of essential equipment, researchers are making changes to their workflow. Early career members and a supply chain expert, Gad Allon, offer insights for handling supply chain disruptions. See p. 8. Cover photo shows the Jacksonville Port Authority (courtesy of Flickr/JAXPORT) with an overlay of an illustration conveying the “butterfly effect” concept. With our currently supply chain situation, even a localized disruption (say, a drought in Taiwan) can cannonball into major ripples down the line (like making computer processing units, or CPUs, prohibitively expensive worldwide).