INFORMS Board of Directors Takes Office with MIT Expert on Air Congestion as President

Prof. Barnhart is Co-Director of the Operations Research Center, Associate Dean for Academic Affairs, and Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Engineering Systems at the MIT School of Engineering.

Prof. Barnhart is an expert in airline scheduling and the delay effects of congestion in the national air transportation system. Interviews with her have appeared in The New York Times and on ABC’s Good Morning America, NBC Evening News, and CBS Evening News.

In 2003, Prof. Barnhart, Andy Armacost (a doctoral student at MIT) and the UPS Air Group, won second place in the Franz Edelman Award competition, the annual best cases competition hosted by INFORMS. The program, which Prof. Barnhart and the team designed, simultaneously determines aircraft routes, fleet assignments, and package routings to ensure overnight delivery at minimal cost. A press release by UPS executives credited the work with savings to UPS measuring in the hundreds of millions of dollars.

Prof. Barnhart holds a Ph.D. from MIT, which she received in 1988. Her research interests include mathematical programming models and large-scale optimization approaches for transportation and logistics systems; and service network design and operations planning for scheduled transportation systems.

Prof. Barnhart’s teaching interests focus on applying optimization models and algorithms to the design, management and operation of transportation systems. She has published extensively in academic and professional journals.

A hallmark of her presidency will be hosting a series of public policy presentations by prominent politicians, government officials, and academics at the INFORMS annual meeting in Washington, DC just weeks before the U.S. Presidential election this coming fall. Entitled “Doing Good with Good O.R.,” they will show how operations research analysts approach current challenges in airline congestion and transportation; health care; and energy and the environment.

An interview about reducing airport crowding, encouraging young women to become scientists, and Prof. Barnhart’s plans for her INFORMS presidency is online in the INFORMS Newsroom at www.informs.org.

The 2008 INFORMS Board of Directors includes the following:

Executive CommitteePresident: Cynthia Barnhart President Elect: Don N. Kleinmuntz, University of Southern California Counterterrorism Center; Strata Decision Technology, Champaign, IL

INFIRMS Pres-Elect

> Past President: Brenda Dietrich, IBM T.J. Watson Research Center, Yorktown Heights, NY

>Secretary: Anton Kleywegt, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA

INFORMS Secretary

>Treasurer: Stephen M. Robinson, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI

8/2006

>Vice PresidentsVice President, Chapters, Student Chapters, Fora: John W. Fowler, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ

VP Chap/Fora

>Vice President, Education: Donna C. Llewellyn, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA

>Vice President, Information Technology: Warren Lieberman, Veritic Solutions, Belmont, CA

>Vice President, International Activities: Michel Gendreau, Université de Montréal, Montreal, Quebec, Canada

>Vice President, Meetings: Rina R. Schneur, Verizon Laboratories, Waltham, MA

> Vice President, Membership/Professional Recognition: Pinar Keskinocak, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA

VP Membership/Prof Recog

>Vice President, Practice Activities: R. John Milne, IBM Systems and Technology Group, Essex Junction, VT

VP Practice

>Vice President, Publications: Terry P. Harrison, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA

>Vice President, Sections & Societies: Les Servi, Lincoln Laboratory, Lincoln, MA

Leslie D. Servi

>Vice President, Marketing and Outreach: Anne Robinson, Cisco, San Jose, CA

>Executive Director: Mark G. Doherty, INFORMS, Hanover, MD

>

To obtain high resolution versions of any of these photos, contact INFORMS Communications Director Barry List at 443-757-3560 or mailto:[email protected]. 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. The INFORMS website is www.informs.org. More information about operations research is at www.scienceofbetter.org.

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