Past Awards
Paul Gray’s long and distinguished career and his consistent dedication to furthering the O.R. profession have produced great benefits for the field and its professional societies. He earned degrees from four different universities, completing his doctorate in OR at Stanford in 1967. Prior to his academic career, he spent 18 years in industrial R&D organizations, including nine years at SRI International. He is Professor Emeritus and Founding Chair of the School of Information Science at Claremont Graduate University. Before coming to Claremont in 1983, he was a faculty member at Stanford, at Georgia Tech, at The University of Southern California and at Southern Methodist University.
Professor Gray helped nurture the field of Information Systems, now a cornerstone of the OR profession. Most of the over 100 journal articles and the 12 academic books he either authored or edited are dedicated to that topic. He is the author of three “first papers” in group decision support systems in telecommuting and in analysis of crime in transportation. His leadership role in developing and nurturing the IS area is reflected in numerous editorial positions, including Founding Editor of the Communications of the Association for Information Systems, and of International Information Systems and editorial positions for the International Transactions in Operations Research, Operations Research, Management Science, Interfaces, and Group Decision Support Systems. His contributions in this area have been recognized by his receipt of the NATO Systems Science Prize in 1978, by the LEO Award from the Association for Information Systems (AIS) for lifetime achievement (2002), by his installation as an inaugural Fellow by AIS (1999) and by his being named as Educator of the Year (2000) by EDSIG.
Dr. Gray provided extensive service to INFORMS, TIMS and ORSA. He joined both ORSA and TIMS in 1962, served on numerous committees since the early 1970’s and was Lecturer in the ORSA/TIMS Visiting Lecturer Program (1971-86). For ORSA, he served as editor of the ORSA Bulletin (1969-71), when it contained sections that eventually developed into Interfaces, chaired the publications committee (1971-73), chaired the membership committee (1973-75) and served on ORSA Council (1988-91). For TIMS, he served as the representative to the National Research Council (1975-79), representative to AACSB (1975-81; 1983-86), Secretary (1975-79), VP at Large (1983-1986) and President (1992-93). While President he was responsible for the “Lone Ranger” initiative. He served as President of Omega Rho (1988-1990) and was co-chair of the INFORMS merger transition committee (1993-94). He was installed as a founding INFORMS Fellow in 2002.
Paul Gray’s achievements and contributions have been truly exceptional. For his distinguished service to the profession and its societies, the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences awards him the 2003 George E. Kimball Medal.
Awards presented by: Robert Abrams, Committee Chair, and Thomas M. Cook, President, October 20, 2003.