Zvi Drezner

Born:
February 23, 1943

Brief Biography

Drezner Fellow Portrait

Israeli-born Zvi Drezner is one of the global leaders in location theory and analysis. Drezner completed his undergraduate study at the Technion, the Israel Institute of Technology, in 1965 prior to joining the computer center of the Israeli Defense Forces as a systems analyst. After receiving his PhD in computer science ten years later, he accepted a postdoctoral fellowship at McMaster University in California. He joined the Department of Information Systems and Analysis at Central Michigan University in 1978, but remained affiliated with McMaster, spending seventeen summers there between 1989 and 2010.

Drezner left Central Michigan in 1979 to become Associate Professor of Business Administration and Computer Information Science at the University of Michigan-Dearborn. The following year, he published an influential article on competitive location strategies for two facilities that propelled his career as a location analyst. Drezner returned to California in 1986 to Chair the Department of Information Systems and Decision Sciences in the Steven G. Mihaylo College of Business and Economics at California State University-Fullerton.

In 1995, Drezner edited and published Facility Location: A Survey of Applications and Methods. The book provides impressive reviews and analysis of then-contemporary topics in location analysis, dealing with twenty different aspects of location modeling and implementation. That following year, he began his term as Vice President of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS) Society on Location Analysis (SOLA). In 2005, he was honored with SOLA’s Lifetime Achievement in Locational Analysis Award. In 2013, he was elected an INFORMS Fellow “for seminal contributions to Location Theory and Mathematical Analysis.”  

In addition to his positions with Cal State-Fullerton, Drezner has been teaching part time at the University of California, Irvine’s Paul Merage School of Business for twenty years and has held visiting positions with the University of Southern California and the University of Auckland.

Other Biographies

California State University Wand Family Excellence Award. 2008 Award Recipient: Dr. Zvi Drezner. Accessed June 4, 2015. (link

University of California Irvine Paul Merage School of Business. Faculty Directory: Zvi Drezner Brief Bio. Accessed June 4, 2015. (link)

Steven G. Mihaylo College of Business and Economics, California State University-Fullerton. Personal Website. Accessed August 9, 2018 (link)

Education

Technion - Israel Institute of Technology, BS 1965

Technion - Israel Institute of Technology, PhD 1975 (Mathematics Genealogy)

Affiliations

Academic Affiliations
  • California State University-Fullerton
  • Central Michigan University
  • McMaster University
  • Technion - Israel Institute of Technology
  • University of California, Irvine
  • Universitat Kaiserslautern 
  • University of Michigan-Dearborn
Non-Academic Affiliations
  • Government of Bolivia
  • Government of Ecauudor
  • Israeli Defense Forces

Key Interests in OR/MS

Methodologies

Oral Histories

Zvi Drezner (2018) Interview by Stefan Nickel, November 4, 2018, Phoenix, AZ.

NOTE:  The video chapter transcripts below are searchable, with search results displayed as marks on the time bar above the search box.  Click a mark to jump to the search word or phrase in the video and transcript, or click on any word in the transcript to jump to that point in the video.

Jump to Chapters

Chapter 1: Early Life
Chapter 2: Beginnings of Location Science
Chapter 3: Paper Productivity
Chapter 4: Academic Career
Chapter 5: Most Interesting Papers
Chapter 6: Obnoxious Facilities
Chapter 7: 75th Birthday Celebration

Memoirs and Autobiographies

Résumé

Zvi Drezner Resume

Awards and Honors

Lifetime Achievement in Location Analysis Award 2005

Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences Fellow 2013

Professional Service

INFORMS Section on Locational Analysis, Vice President 1996-1998

Selected Publications

Drezner Z. (1982) Comptetive location strategies for two facilities. Regional Science and Urban Economics, 12(4): 485-493.

Drezner Z. & Wesolowsky G. O. (1990) On the computation of the bivariate normal integral. Journal of Statistical Computation and Simulation, 35(1-2): 101-107.

Pasternack B. A. & Drezner Z. (1991) Optimal inventory policies for substitutable commodities with stochastic deman. Naval Research Logistics Quarterly, 38(2): 221-240.

Drezner Z., ed. (1995) Facility Location: A Survey of Applications and Methods. Springer: New York.

Chen F., Drezner Z., Ryan J. K., & Simchi-Levi D. (1999) The Bullwhip Effect: Managerial Insights on the Impact of Forecasting and Information on Variability in Supply Chain. Springer: New York.

Chen F., Drezner Z., Ryan J. K. & Simchi-Levi D. (2000) Quantifying the bullwhip effect in a simple supply chain: the impact of forecasting, lead times, and information. Management Science, 46(3): 436-443.

Drezner Z. & Hamacher H. W., eds. (2002) Facility Location: Applications and Theory. Springer: New York.

Alp O., Erkut E., Drezner Z. (2003) An efficient genetic algorithm for the p-median problem. Annals of Operations Research, 122(1-4): 21-42.

Drezner Z. (2003) A new genetic algorithm for the quadratic assignment problem. INFORMS Journal on Computing, 15(3): 320-330. 

Additional Resources

CSUF News Service. Academic Senate Honors Zvi Drezner. Published October 25, 2013. Accessed August 13, 2018.