Past Awards
After earning an MBA and a D.Sc. in Operations Research from George Washington University, Karla L. Hoffman worked from 1975 to 1984 as a Mathematician in the Applied Mathematics Division of the National Bureau of Standards. In 1984, she was the first mathematician to receive the Bureau of Standards’ Applied Research Award. That same year, she received the U.S. Department of Commerce Silver Medal for Meritorious Service, for her work in advancing the use of combinatorial optimization techniques by government agencies. In 1985, Dr. Hoffman joined the Operations Research and Operations Engineering Department at George Mason University, where she was Department Chair from 1996 to 2001. In 1989, she received the George Mason University Distinguished Professor Award.
Dr. Hoffman is internationally recognized for her work in the optimization field. She has published extensively in professional journals, edited two books on operations research-related subjects, and served on a variety of editorial boards. Dr. Hoffman has always advocated working on practical problems, and her consulting activities have included crew and fleet scheduling algorithms for the airline industry, real-time scheduling algorithms for truck and bus transportation systems, and capital budgeting tools for a major telecommunications company. Her interest in combinatorial auctions has led to consulting arrangements with the Federal Communications Commission on auction design for spectrum auctions, and with the Federal Aviation Administration, where she is studying the use of auctions for slot allocation at congested airports.
Dr. Hoffman has been actively involved in INFORMS activities for over 25 years. She served on the ORSA Board during the formation of INFORMS, and was actively involved in the ORSA-TIMS merger that created the organization. She served twice as Treasurer, first of ORSA in 1993-4 and then as Vice President of Finance for INFORMS in 1995-6. She chaired the ORSA/TIMS Joint Finance Committee, was co-program chair of the 1985 Washington, D.C. ORSA/TIMS meeting, chaired the ORSA Computing Technical Section in 1981 (now INFORMS Computing Society), and chaired the Technical Section Committee of ORSA for four years. She was President of INFORMS in 1998, and served on INFORMS’ Executive Committee from 1995-1999. She has also been active in the Mathematical Programming Society, where she served on its Board for three years, was chair of the Society’s Committee on Algorithms, edited its newsletter, and chaired the Beale/Orchard-Hays Prize Committee. She continues to be heavily involved with INFORMS, presently serving as Chair of the Puerto Rico (2007) meeting, and as a member of the Publications, Strategic Planning, and 2005 INFORMS Practice Meeting Organizing Committees. She is a Fellow of INFORMS.
For her many contributions to the field of operations research, and for her distinguished service to INFORMS and its predecessor organizations, the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences expresses its sincere appreciation by awarding the 2005 George E. Kimball Medal to Karla Hoffman.
Award presented by Vicki Sauter, Committee Member, and Richard C. Larson, President November 14, 2005.