INFORMS President's Award
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2018 Awardee(s)
- James J. Cochran, The University of Alabama
James J. Cochran, Professor and Associate Dean for Research at the Culverhouse College of Business, University of Alabama, has led a distinguished career as an educator and researcher for more than 20 years. During this period, he has developed several valuable initiatives for improving the quality of education in operations research, analytics, and statistics, and encouraging practitioners and students to use these disciplines to address societal issues. He has developed and leads a Teaching Effectiveness Colloquium series, which introduced teachers in 14 developing nations to state-of-the-art educational methods, including distance learning, collaborative learning, active learning, and project based learning. Prof. Cochran is also the founding editor-in-chief of the Wiley Encyclopedia of Operations Research and Management Science, which is a 6000+ page reference containing over 600 articles written by eminent scholars, and is available for free online access in developing nations. The articles published in the Encyclopedia are frequently used in classrooms, to address applications, and as reference sources for research articles and literature surveys. Prof. Cochran also served two terms as editor-in-chief of INFORMS Transactions on Education, which publishes open access teaching materials, including cases. During his tenure as editor-in-chief, teaching materials were provided to instructors from over 100 countries. Prof. Cochran has coordinated these three initiatives so that they provide instructors in developing nations with free course content, classroom support material, and access to discussions about teaching methods. As a result, many more students have entered these fields, programs in developing nations have grown, and more societal problems have been effectively addressed.
INFORMS is proud to recognize Prof. Cochran with its 2018 President’s Award, for his high impact initiatives that have improved the global education of operations research, analytics, and statistics.
Purpose of the Award
The purpose of this award is to recognize, and thereby encourage, important contributions to the welfare of society by members of our profession at the local, national, or global level. Achievements suitable for this recognition may be in technical or scientific education or in paid or voluntary consulting or management (commercial, academic, governmental, or nonprofit). The accomplishments honored need not have been documented by personal execution of formal or informal OR/MS studies but could have been reflected in support or promotion of OR/MS efforts. The award is given each year at the National meeting if there is a suitable recipient. The award is a framed certificate with a brief citation.
Award Information
The purpose of this award is to recognize, and thereby encourage, important contributions to the welfare of society by members of our profession at the local, national, or global level.
Committee
2018 Committee Chair:
Nicholas Hall
2018 INFORMS President
Ohio State University
email: president@mail.informs.org
Past Awardees
The Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences
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