Brief Biography
Robert A. Abrams was the forty-third and last President of the Operations Research Society of America (ORSA). Abrams received his PhD from Northwestern University and has held numerous positions with ORSA, The Institute of Management Sciences (TIMS), and the International Federation of Operational Research Societies (IFORS). He is currently at the University of Illinois at Chicago where he has served as Acting Dean of the College of Business Administration, Associate Dean for Academic Affairs, and Department Head of Information and Decision Sciences.
Abrams has long been an involved member of the professional operations research community. In the 1970s, he served as Chairman of ORSA’s Students Affairs Committee and Program Chairman of the ORSA/TIMS Joint National Meeting held in Chicago. Eight years later, in 1983, he served as General Chairman of the ORSA/TIMS Joint National Meeting. His experience in organizing and leading such conferences led to his election to the TIMS Council for a three year term as Vice President of Meetings. This tenure overlapped with his chairmanship of the Combined Meetings Committee for TIMS and ORSA in 1986-1987.
Given his continued experience and dedication in helping the two organization cooperate, Abrams joined the ad hoc committee for the merger of ORSA and TIMS. As the last ORSA President, he oversaw the calm transition of the two organizations into the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS). Abrams was made responsible for Meetings once again, this time by IFORS, where he served as Vice President, representing INFORMS and the Canadian Operational Research Society.
Abrams received the George E. Kimball Medal for his dedicated service to the professional OR/MS community and was named an inaugural INFORMS Fellow in 2002. His research interests have including geometric programming, investment-consumption policies, and operations management. Abrams is currently working on the application of new quantitative approaches to production and service operations.
Other Biographies
INFORMS. Miser-Harris Presidential Gallery: Robert A. Abrams. Accessed May 15, 2015. (link)
University of Illinois at Chicago. Robert A. Abrams. Accessed May 15, 2015. (link)
Education
Northwestern University, PhD 1969 (Mathematics Genealogy)
Affiliations
Academic Affiliations
- Northwestern University
- University of Illinois at Chicago
Key Interests in OR/MS
Methodologies
Application Areas
Awards and Honors
Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences Fellow 2002
Professional Service
International Federation of Operational Research Societies, Vice President 1997-2000
Operations Research Society of America (ORSA), President 1994
The Institute of Management Sciences (TIMS), Vice President for Meetings 1984-1987
Selected Publications
Abrams R. A. & Ben-Israel A. (1969) A duality theorem for complex quadratic programming. Journal of Optimization Theory and Applications, 4(4): 244-252.
Abrams R. A. (1976) Consistency, superconsistency, and dual degeneracy in posynomial geometric programming. Operations Research, 24(2): 325-335.
Abrams R. A. & Karmarkar U. S. (1979) Infinite horizon investment-consumption policies. Management Science, 25(10): 1005-1013.
Abrams R. A. & Karmarkar U. S. (1980) Optimal multiperiod investment-consumption policies. Econometrica, 333-353.
Additional Resources
(2000) Answering the call to service. OR/MS Today, 27(6). (link)