INFORMS and CIST Conferences

The INFORMS (Institute for Operations Research and Management Science) Annual Meeting 2006 will be held in Pittsburgh on November 5 through 8. In conjunction with the INFORMS meeting, CIST (Conference on Information Systems and Technology) will be held in Pittsburgh on November 4 and 5.

Heinz School faculty members Jonathon Caulkins and Michael Johnson are on the INFORMS meeting organizing committee.Caulkins, Professor of Operations Research and Public Policy, is an Invited Session Co-Chair.Johnson, Associate Professor of Management Science and Urban Affairs, is a Tutorial Co-Chair.Rahul Telang, Assistant Professor of Information Systems, is the co-chair of the CIST conference.

According INFORMS meeting general chair Michael Trick, “Operations Research has always been at its most useful and most innovative when the profession’s visionaries have tackled new problem domains. The meeting will feature reports from the outposts of O.R. innovation in health, crime, counter-terror, IT, privacy and a host of other non-traditional domains. We will hear about new businesses built on operations research and on how advances in computation are opening up new directions in research.”  Trick is Professor of Operations Research at Carnegie Mellon’s Tepper School and will be inducted as an INFORMS fellow at the meeting.

Heinz School faculty helped found and continue to play prominent roles within INFORMS.  Heinz School founding dean William Cooper was the first founding president of TIMS (the Institute for Management Science) and recipient of the John Von Neumann Theory Prize by ORSA (Operations Research Society of America).  He was recently selected for the International Federation of Operational Research Societies (IFORS) Operational Research Hall of Fame. 

Al Blumstein, J. Erik Jonsson University Professor of Urban Systems and Operations Research and former Dean of the Heinz School, is an INFORMS past-president.  Ramayya Krishnan, William W. and Ruth F. Cooper Professor of Management Science and Information Systems, is president of the INFORMS Information Systems Society. 

The following faculty will present papers or chair sessions:

   Ashish Arora, Professor or Economics and Public Policy

   Al Blumstein, J. Erik Jonsson Professor of Urban Systems and Operations Research

   Jon Caulkins, Professor of Operations Research and Public Policy

   Artur Dubrawski, Systems Scientist (Robotics Institute), Adjunct Professor

   Ramayya Krishnan, William W. and Ruth F. Cooper Professor of Management Science and Information Systems

   Lester Lave, James Higgins Professor of Economics and Finance, Professor of Urban and Public Affairs, Professor of Engineering and Public Policy

   Rema Padman, Professor of Management Science and Healthcare Informatics

   Michael D. Smith, Assistant Professor of Information Technology

   Rahul Telang, Assistant Professor of Information Systems