Zvi Drezner

Brief Biography

Israeli-born Zvi Drezner is one of the global leaders in location theory and analysis. Drezner completed his undergraduate study at the Technion, the Israel Institute of Technology, in 1965 prior to joining the computer center of the Israeli Defense Forces as a systems analyst. After receiving his PhD in computer science ten years later, he accepted a postdoctoral fellowship at McMaster University in California. He joined the Department of Information Systems and Analysis at Central Michigan University in 1978, but remained affiliated with McMaster, spending seventeen summers there between 1989 and 2010.

Drezner left Central Michigan in 1979 to become Associate Professor of Business Administration and Computer Information Science at the University of Michigan-Dearborn. The following year, he published an influential article on competitive location strategies for two facilities that propelled his career as a location analyst. Drezner returned to California in 1986 to Chair the Department of Information Systems and Decision Sciences in the Steven G. Mihaylo College of Business and Economics at California State University-Fullerton.

In 1995, Drezner edited and published Facility Location: A Survey of Applications and Methods. The book provides impressive reviews and analysis of then-contemporary topics in location analysis, dealing with twenty different aspects of location modeling and implementation. That following year, he began his term as Vice President of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS) Society on Location Analysis (SOLA). In 2005, he was honored with SOLA’s Lifetime Achievement in Locational Analysis Award. In 2013, he was elected an INFORMS Fellow “for seminal contributions to Location Theory and Mathematical Analysis.”  

In addition to his positions with Cal State-Fullerton, Drezner has been teaching part time at the University of California, Irvine’s Paul Merage School of Business for twenty years and has held visiting positions with the University of Southern California and the University of Auckland.

Other Biographies

California State University Wand Family Excellence Award. 2008 Award Recipient: Dr. Zvi Drezner. Accessed June 4, 2015. (link) 

University of California Irvine Paul Merage School of Business. Faculty Directory: Zvi Drezner Brief Bio. Accessed June 4, 2015. (link)

Steven G. Mihaylo College of Business and Economics, California State University-Fullerton. Personal Website. Accessed August 9, 2018 (link)

Zvi Drezner (2018) Interview by Stefan Nickel, November 4, 2018, Phoenix, AZ.

Zvi Drezner Final Transcript

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