Past Awards
The 2022 INFORMS President’s Award is awarded to Dr. Candace Arai Yano for her many research contributions, her impact on educating future O.R. professionals, and for her extensive INFORMS service.
Dr. Yano is a professor in the Haas School of Business at University of California, Berkeley. Dr. Yano’s research focuses on supply chain management and interdisciplinary problems involving operations management and marketing. She also gives back to the community via her work with nonprofit organizations.
As the first female department chair in the College of Engineering and first Asian-American female associate dean for academic affairs at Haas, Dr. Yano is a role model for women, especially those straddling different cultures. She co-founded the INFORMS Forum for Women in OR/MS (WORMS) and is a recipient of the WORMS Award. Dr. Yano spearheaded the establishment of the INFORMS Manufacturing and Service Operations Management (MSOM) Society and was recognized with the MSOM Distinguished Service Award for her efforts in MSOM’s formative years. Dr. Yano is a fellow of INFORMS and was awarded the George E. Kimball Medal in recognition of her distinguished service to INFORMS and the profession.
Dr. Yano has served in many volunteer roles within INFORMS for more than three decades.
Candace Arai Yano received her A.B. in Economics (Honors), M.S. degrees in both Operations Research and Industrial Engineering, and a Ph.D. in Industrial Engineering, all from Stanford University. She was a Member of the Technical Staff at Bell Telephone Laboratories from 1981 to 1982, and was on the faculty of the Department of Industrial and Operations Engineering at the University of Michigan before joining the University of California, Berkeley in 1993. She has a joint appointment between the Department of Industrial Engineering and Operations Research and the Haas School of Business, and holds the Gary and Sherron Kalbach Chair of Business Administration.
Professor Yano’s early research focused on analytical models for optimizing operational decisions in response to uncertainty in demand, lead times, and yields in multi-stage manufacturing systems. She continues to work on related problems, but more recently, has been interested in interdisciplinary problems at the interface between operations management and marketing. Motivated to work on challenging new problems arising in practice, with both doctoral students and other colleagues, she has worked on a wide variety of topics over the years, including sequencing vehicles on assembly lines, scheduling container shipments on railroads, product line selection and pricing, and print preservation decisions for research journals.
Professor Yano was the co-chair for the first conference of the ORSA Technical Section on Manufacturing Management (TECMAN) in 1994 and President of TECMAN in 1994-95. In the latter capacity, she played a key role in the founding of the Manufacturing and Service Operations Management (MSOM) Society. She was also a co-founder of the Women in OR/MS Forum (WORMS) and served as its President in 1998-99
Within the broader INFORMS community, Professor Yano served as Chair of the Job Placement Committee (1995-2004) and in that role, initiated the now-popular Job (later Career) Fair at the annual meetings. She also served on Subdivisions Committees and the Student Affairs Committee. In 2006-2007, she served as Vice President of Marketing and Outreach. She served as Program Chair for the INFORMS National Meeting in San Jose in 2002 and General Chair for the meeting in San Francisco in 2014. She has also been a frequent presenter at Doctoral Student and New Faculty Colloquia.
Professor Yano has served as Department Editor for Management Science (2003-08), Deputy Editor (2002) and Senior Editor (1996-2005) for Manufacturing and Service Operations Management, Department Editor for Interfaces (1998-2004), Associate Editor for Operations Research (1995-2000), and editorial board member for Service Science (2015 to present), and has served on nominating and review committees for several INFORMS journals.
Professor Yano is a Fellow of INFORMS and of the Institute of Industrial and Systems Engineering. From INFORMS subdivisions, she has received the Manufacturing and Service Operations Management Distinguished Service Award (1997), and the WORMS Award for the Advancement of Women in OR/MS (2008).