ORSA President, 1984
Michael (Mike) Thomas was the 33rd President of ORSA. He returned to being interim chair of the H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering (ISyE) at Georgia Tech in 2010 after having been Chair previously from 1978 to 1989. Thomas left the chair's position in 1989 to join the President's office as executive vice president, responsible for overseeing Tech's academic restructuring, which resulted in the formation of three new colleges and numerous new degree programs. In addition, he helped to oversee the implementation of many of these degree programs; created new promotion, tenure and reappointment standards; and managed the Institute's budgeting process. In 1996 his title was changed to Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs, overseeing all academic and most administrative areas.
Thomas stepped down from his position as provost to become executive director of the Center for Internet Research, Policy and Application, which focused on integration of Internet-related research. He retired in 2002, but came out of retirement soon thereafter to serve as interim chair of the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering while a search was underway for a new chair.
His research interests are in mathematical programming.
He is an inaugural Fellow of INFORMS (2002) and of the Institute of Industrial Engineers. He received the Kimball Medal in 1995. He was a Gilman Fellow at Johns Hopkins University (1962-65).
BSChE and MSChE, 1965, University of Texas-Austin; PhD (Operations Research), 1965, Johns Hopkins.