Nicholas G. Hall served as the 24th President of INFORMS in 2018. Previously he served as President of MSOM Society (1999-2000), and on the INFORMS Board as: Director at Large (2001), Vice President for Membership and Professional Recognition (2002-03) and Treasurer (2011-14). He is Berry Professor at Fisher College of Business, and holds a joint appointment in Integrated Systems Engineering, at The Ohio State University. He holds B.A., M.A. degrees in economics (University of Cambridge, 1979) and a Ph.D. in Management Science (University of California, Berkeley, 1986).
In the first half of his research career, he studied generalizations of classical scheduling problems. The topics studied included problems with costs of both early and late delivery, scheduling systems supported by various material handling devices, manufacturing systems with limited buffer space or fixed delivery dates, and minimally disruptive rescheduling problems. In the second half of his career, he is studying project management problems, including robust optimization approaches to project scheduling and to project selection, optimization of work breakdown structures, optimal learning within projects, and the design of incentives within projects. He collaborated on a funding selection problem at the National Cancer Institute that was estimated to save over 40,000 lives. His interest in sports led him to propose a redesign of the playoff system used on the PGA TOUR, and more recently to study the redesign of single elimination tournaments.
He has published more than 90 articles in Operations Research, Management Science, Mathematics of Operations Research, Mathematical Programming, Games and Economic Behavior, and INFORMS Journal on Applied Analytics, among others. He has given over 400 academic presentations, including 190 invited presentations in 28 countries, 20 conference keynote presentations, and 10 INFORMS national conference tutorials. He has served on the editorial boards of Operations Research and Management Science for a total of more than 40 years. At Fisher College, he teaches MBA and Executive Education courses on project management.
As President of INFORMS, he introduced an Advocacy program to policymakers at the White House and on Capitol Hill, including to the Congressional leaders of both political parties. The centerpiece of this program is INFORMS’ annual Policy Summit on Capitol Hill, first held on May 21, 2018 with two former Cabinet Secretaries as keynote speakers. This program has also generated hundreds of small group policy briefings by INFORMS’ leaders for national level policymakers. He also initiated INFORMS’ first Call for Proposals for Executive Education courses, and working with the INFORMS Vice President for International Activities developed a strategic approach to enhance INFORMS’ international impact. Also as President, he gave keynote addresses about INFORMS’ mission and activities to the national operations research society conferences of Israel, Italy, China and India. His "tireless dedication to the field of operations research and analytics" was recognized by the flying of a flag in his honor over the U.S. Capitol on October 30, 2018.
He is serving as Editor of INFORMS Analytics Collections for 2021-2023.