UMass INFORMS Chapter to Receive National Honors

September 16, 2009

On October 13, the UMass Amherst student chapter of  INFORMS (Institute of Operations Research and the Management Sciences) will be honored by its parent society with a Summa Cum Laude Award.  The world's largest society for professionals in operations management, INFORMS  has dozens of  student chapters, including those at UMass,  Stanford, UCal Berkeley, Michigan, MIT, Princeton, and Virginia Tech. In earning its distinction, the UMass INFORMS chapter ranked first in the nation among its peers in overall performance, which encompassed professional and social activities,  including its cutting-edge speaker series. The chapter will receive its award at the INFORMS national meetings in San Diego.

At the same awards ceremony, INFORMS will present the annual Judith Liebman Award to recently graduated Isenberg Ph.D. student Qiang Patrick Qiang. The national award is for extraordinary service to an INFORMS chapter. A 2009 Isenberg Ph.D. graduate in Management science, Qiang is an assistant professor of operations management at Penn State University Great Valley and is coauthor with Professor Nagurney of  the recently published book, Fragile Networks (Wiley).

The UMass chapter comprises members from the Isenberg School, the College of Engineering, the departments of economics and computer sciences, and other programs on campus. Last year's chapter officers were Amir Masoumi, President; Min Yu, Vice-President and webmaster; Milad Ebtehaj, Treasurer; Deanna Kennedy and Ronrapee Leelawong, Secretaries; and Trisha Woolley and Amir Masoumi, Speaker Series Coordinators. The chapter's faculty coordinator is John F. Smith Memorial Professor of Operations Management Anna Nagurney.