Past Awards
Kathryn E. Stecke received her PhD and MS in Industrial Engineering, and MS in Applied Mathematics from Purdue University. She joined the faculty of the Michigan Business School in 1981 where she held the Jack D. Sparks/Whirlpool Corporation Research Professorship in Business Administration from 1995-1997. She then moved to the School of Management of the University of Texas at Dallas where she is the Ashbel Smith Professor of Operations Management. She also serves as an Adjunct Professor of the University of South Australia, Adelaide since 1999.
Kathy is internationally recognized for her research in flexible manufacturing. In February 2004, INFORMS selected 50 papers that “represented the most significant research published in Management Science in the last half century”. Her 1983 paper, “Formulation and Solution of Nonlinear Integer Production Planning Problems for Flexible Manufacturing Systems” is on that select list. She is the founding Editor-in-Chief of both the International Journal of Flexible Manufacturing Systems as well as Editor-in-Chief of Operations Management Education Review and serves on a number of editorial boards.
Kathy joined both ORSA and TIMS early in graduate school and began society service as a member of the ORSA Student Affairs Committee and served as Secretary/Treasurer of the ORSA Computer Science Technical Section from 1983 through1984. Kathy was Co-Chairperson of the first three ORSA/TIMS Conferences on Flexible Manufacturing Systems (1984-1986). She served as Program Chair of the 1995 INFORMS National meeting, and the 2007 INFORMS National meeting in Seattle, as Plenary Chair of the 2005 INFORMS New Orleans/San Francisco and as General Chair of the International 2001 INFORMS Summer Conference in Maui.
She has twice served on the Board of INFORMS. She was a Board member from 1999-2001 and then served as INFORMS' Vice President for Sections and Societies from 2003 – 2004. She has served on ORSA, MSOM, and INFORMS Nominating Committees. Last year, she was awarded the INFORMS 2007 Manufacturing and Services Operations Management Distinguished Service Award.
Kathy is also active in the Production and Operations Management Society. She was General Chair of POM-07 Dallas, and has served on several other POM Program Committees. She served on the POMS Board of Directors (April 2006 – April 2008) and is an Associate Editor of the Production and Operations Management journal. She is on the Advisory Board of Carnegie-Mellon’s Tepper School of Business.
For her many contributions to the field of operations research and management science, and for her distinguished service to INFORMS and its predecessor organizations, the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences expresses its sincere appreciation to Kathryn E. Stecke by awarding her the 2008 George E. Kimball Medal.