INFORMS News: INFORMS names UPS George D. Smith Prize finalists

INFORMS announced three finalist schools in the competition for the first UPS George D. Smith Prize, an award created to strengthen ties between academia and industry. The award recognizes excellence in preparing students to become practitioners of analytics and operations research.

The finalists are:

• Cornell University, School of Operations Research and Information Engineering Master of Engineering Program. The leads for the Cornell team are Mark J. Eisner and Kathryn Caggiano.
• Lehigh University, Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering. The lead for the Lehigh team is Aurélie Thiele.
• University of Michigan, Tauber Institute for Global Operations. The lead for the Tauber team is Lawrence M. Seiford.

The prizewinner will be announced at a banquet on April 16 in Huntington Beach, Calif., during the INFORMS Conference on Business Analytics and Operations Research.

The UPS George D. Smith Prize is awarded to an academic department or program for effective and innovative preparation of students to be good practitioners of operations research, management science or analytics. A $10,000 cash award accompanies the prize.

The establishment of the prize was announced by Randy Stashick, UPS’ global vice president of engineering, at the 2011 INFORMS Conference on Business Analytics and Operations Research.

The UPS George D. Smith Prize is named in honor of the late UPS Chief Executive Officer who was a patron of operations researchers at the Fortune 500 corporation. Smith was the second CEO of UPS, holding the position form 1962-1972. He joined UPS as an accountant in 1925and at some point in his long and illustrious career held almost every functional title within the company. UPS has generously underwritten the award in his memory.

INFORMS, with the help of CPMS, will award the prize to an academic department or program for effective and innovative preparation of students to be good practitioners of operations research, management science, or analytics.

The prize application process began with a summary of the role of operations research in the academic program and why competence in operations research practice is one of the goals of the program, written verification of application success and a commitment, if selected as a finalist, to give a 30-minute oral presentation at the spring 2012 Analytics Conference in Huntington Beach, and, if selected as a winner, to reprise the presentation at the INFORMS 2012 Annual Meeting in Phoenix, Ariz., this fall. The finalist papers will be published in a special issue of Interfaces.