INFORMS Announces Three Finalist Universities for UPS George D. Smith Prize Uniting Industry, Academia

Lehigh, MIT, Naval Postgraduate School

HANOVER, MD, March 11, 2013 – The Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS^®) today announced three finalist schools in the competition for the UPS George D. Smith Prize, an award created to strengthen ties between academia and industry. The award recognizes excellence in preparing students to become practitioners of analytics and operations research.

The finalists are:

• The Lehigh University Enterprise System Center (ESC) and Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering (ISE)
• Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Leaders for Global Operations Program
• Naval Postgraduate School Department of Operations Research

The prize winner will be announced at a banquet taking place on Monday, April 8 in San Antonio, Texas at the 2013 INFORMS Conference on Business Analytics and Operations Research.

The UPS George D. Smith Prize is awarded to an academic department or program for effective and innovative preparation of students to be good practitioners of operations research, management science, or analytics.  It is accompanied by a $10,000 cash award.

The establishment of the prize was announced by Randy Stashick, UPS’s global vice president of engineering, at the 2011 INFORMS Conference on Business Analytics and Operations Research.

The UPS George D. Smith Prize is named in honor of the late UPS Chief Executive Officer who was a patron of operations researchers at the leading Fortune 500 corporation. George D. Smith was the second CEO of UPS, holding the position form 1962-1972. He joined UPS as an accountant in 1925and at some point in his long and illustrious career held almost every functional title within the company.

More information about the prize is at here.

About INFORMS

The Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS^®) is the leading professional association for professionals in advanced analytics. 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. INFORMS serves the scientific and professional needs of operations research analysts, experts in analytics, consultants, scientists, students, educators, and managers, as well as their institutions, by publishing a variety of journals that describe the latest research in operations research. Further information about INFORMS, analytics, and operations research is at www.informs.org.

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