Huntington Beach, CA, April 18, 2012 – The Tauber Institute for Global Operations at the University of Michigan is the first winner of the UPS George D. Smith Prize, which was presented at a banquet sponsored by the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS) in Huntington Beach on Monday night.
The finals competition for the prize took place at the INFORMS 2012 Conference on Business Analytics and Operations Research. INFORMS is the premier organization for advanced analytics professionals.
“We are extraordinarily honored to win the George D. Smith Prize,” said Lawrence Seiford, Goff Smith Co-Director of the Tauber Institute.
The UPS George D. Smith Prize is a new award created in the spirit of strengthening ties between industry and the schools of higher education that graduate young practitioners of operations research. It is awarded to an academic department or program for effective and innovative preparation of students to be good practitioners of operations research, management science, or analytics. It is accompanied by a $10,000 cash award.
When the award was announced by UPS in 2011, Randy Stashick, UPS’s Global Vice President of Engineering, explained, “UPS has a rich history of engineering and operations research, the principles of which were first introduced by our second CEO, George D. Smith. With George’s direction, operations research became ingrained in UPS culture. This award recognizes those academic leaders who embody George’s dedication to the practice and work to ensure students’ exposure to the value of operations research and its benefits to society.”
A panel of judges met with each of three finalist teams and deliberated during the 2012 INFORMS conference, announcing on Monday that the Tauber Institute was the winner.
The Tauber Institute for Global Operations provides interdisciplinary education, successfully uniting the fields of engineering and business. The Institute strives to meet corporations’ needs for a new kind of graduate – leaders with exceptional academic background and relevant professional experience who can successfully integrate business and engineering perspectives to lead international corporations into the future.
Approximately 100 students per year graduate from the Tauber Institute prepared for the practice of operations research and management science at the highest levels. Students at the Institute receive training in both engineering and business.
The three finalists in the competition for the 2012 UPS George D. Smith Prize included teams from the Cornell University School of Operations Research and Information Engineering Master of Engineering Program and the Lehigh University Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering.
About INFORMS
The Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS®) is an international scientific society with 10,000 members, including Nobel Prize laureates, dedicated to applying scientific methods to help improve decision-making, management, and operations. Members of INFORMS work in business, government, and academia. They are represented in fields as diverse as airlines, health care, law enforcement, the military, financial engineering, and telecommunications. INFORMS serves the scientific and professional needs of operations research analysts, experts in analytics, consultants, scientists, students, educators, and managers, as well as their institutions, by publishing a variety of journals that describe the latest research in operations research. INFORMS Online (IOL) is at www.informs.org. Further information about operations research can be found at www.scienceofbetter.org.
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