Past Awards
For almost three decades, William W. Hogan has been at the forefront of applying operations research, and particularly optimization, to policy issues of importance to the overall economy. Drawing upon his dissertation research in structured non-linear programs, he was able to contribute to the energy policy debate during the energy crisis of the mid 1970's. As Director, of the Office of Quantitative Methods and then as Deputy Assistant Administrator for Data and Analysis of the Federal Energy Administration, he led a team that developed sophisticated equilibrium models, known as the Project Independence Evaluation System (PIES). These models provided invaluable tools and analysis for evaluating government policies to encourage exploration of natural gas and oil by the US petroleum industry.
In the late 1970's, while a faculty member of Stanford University, he founded the Energy Modeling Forum. He then joined the John F. Kennedy School of Government where he now serves as the Lucius N. Littauer Professor of Public Policy and Administration and as Research Director of the Harvard Electricity Policy Group.
During the rapid restructuring of the electricity market, he has played an important role in shifting government policy towards valuing market efficiencies. His research has focused in particular on network access and pricing issues, markets and market institutions, and reliability of the electricity market grid. The connection between prices and operating decisions often receives cursory treatment in the electricity restructuring process. Dr. Hogan's has promoted the creation of pricing policies that allocate the use of scare transmission capacity in a near optimal fashion.
He is past president of the International Association for Energy Economics. Among his awards, he has received the Distinguished Service Award for Service to the Electric Utility Industry, a Distinguished Service Award by the Federal Energy Administration, A Best Paper Award from the Energy Journal, and a Distinguished Service Award from the Center for Business and Government, the Kennedy School. He has testified close to a hundred times before the Federal Energy Commission, various State Public Utility Commissions, the United States Congress, the Department of Energy, and foreign governments. He has consulted to a variety of petroleum companies on oil and gas pricing, power transmission policy, electricity restructuring and environmental issues.
For these numerous contributions in applying operations research/management science to important energy policy issues in the US and abroad, we present William W. Hogan the 2000 INFORMS President's Award for important contributions to the welfare of society.
— John Birge, INFORMS President 2000 (presenting the award in November 2000)