Past Awards
Professor Michael F. Gorman is the Niehaus Endowed Chair in Operations and Analytics in the School of Business at the University of Dayton. Through numerous publications, Professor Gorman has strongly contributed to the practice of operations research and analytics, and has several times been a finalist or semi-finalist for the Edelman Prize and the Wagner Prize. He has also been awarded the INFORMS Volunteer Service Award and the INFORMS Prize for the Teaching of OR/MS Practice.
For nearly 30 years, Professor Gorman has provided consistent high-impact service to INFORMS and the operations research profession. He was instrumental in launching the INFORMS Analytics Section, which is now the largest society in INFORMS. He was its inaugural chair and led the recruitment of its first 500 members. In the section's first year, he conceived, implemented and chaired the Innovative Applications in Analytics Award (IAAA) which is still the central award of the Society today. As a result of his leadership and distinguished service, in 2020 the society named its distinguished service award the Michael F. Gorman Award for Distinguished Contributions to the INFORMS Analytics Society. He has also been very active in the INFORMS Rail Applications Section, and was its chair in 1997-1998 and 2009-2010.
As Editor-in-Chief for the last four years, Professor Gorman led a journal name change from Interfaces to the INFORMS Journal on Applied Analytics, and also spearheaded its 50th anniversary special issue. He was also the first contributing editor of Management Science charged with Management Insights, to summarize and translate articles into a form managers can understand and appreciate. He wrote approximately 1000 practitioner-centric abstracts covering every paper published in Management Science from 2010-2016.
For his many contributions to the practice of operations research and analytics, and for his distinguished service to INFORMS, the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences expresses its sincere appreciation to Michael F. Gorman by awarding him the 2021 George E. Kimball Medal.
The 2010 INFORMS Prize for the Teaching of OR/MS Practice is awarded to Michael Gorman. Throughout his career Michael Gorman has emphasized practical applications of OR/MS. At the undergraduate and graduate levels, Mike’s hallmark is his focus on real-world problem solving and the practice of OR/MS; he endeavors not only to teach theory, but to provide insights into how theory is successfully applied to real problems.
One of Mike’s strengths is his ability to draw on his corporate and small business experience to bring analytics to life through real applications. He utilizes his extensive contacts to find projects for students in his capstone course; these students regularly consult with clients to apply OR/MS and provide tangible value. In a typical comment, one client acknowledges that Mike’s students, “…produced better results for our hospital than some paid consultants.”
Mike’s classes are consistently rated among the highest in student satisfaction, intellectual rigor, and quantity of material learned. His students routinely express gratitude for the hands-on experiences Mike provides. One student commented, “Doctor Gorman’s teaching method fostered my interest to continue my education in the operations management field at Ph.D. level.”
From his first day as an instructor, Mike has been an effective teacher. He was given the “Rookie of the Year” Award for outstanding first year teaching as a doctoral student at Indiana University in 1989, and then won IU’s Alice French Award for outstanding Graduate Instruction in 1992. The University of Dayton recognized Mike with its Alpha Nu Omega Award for Educational Excellence in 2009. We are pleased to also recognize his efforts through the 2010 INFORMS Prize for the Teaching of the Practice of OR/MS.