Prof. Edward H. Kaplan Wins INFORMS’ 2019 George E. Kimball Medal
The award recognizes distinguished service to INFORMS and to the profession of operations research and the management sciences
Professor Edward H. Kaplan, the William N. and Marie A. Beach Professor of Operations Research, professor of public health, and professor of engineering, has been awarded the 2019 George E. Kimball Medal from INFORMS, the leading international association for operations research and analyitcs professionals. The award recognizes distinguished service to INFORMS and to the profession of operations research and the management sciences.
Kaplan’s current research focuses on the application of operations research to problems in counterterrorism and homeland security. The author of more than 125 research articles, Kaplan has received both the Lanchester Prize and the Edelman Award, among many other awards. He is an elected member of both the National Academy of Engineering and the Institute of Medicine of the US National Academies, and he has also twice received the Lady Davis Visiting Professorship at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, at which he has investigated AIDS policy issues facing the State of Israel.
In 2014, Kaplan was elected president of INFORMS. He served as president-elect in 2015, president in 2016, and past-president in 2017.
Accepting the Kimball Medal, Kaplan said, “In 1977, I started graduate school at MIT. I thought I was going to be a city planner, but Dick Larson had other ideas and introduced me to operations research. For 42 years OR has kept me going. I love operations research, and am very proud of the collective accomplishments of our field. But beyond the models and the projects, operations research has given me a wonderful community: colleagues, students, dear friends, and an endless stream of places to go, and especially people to see. Representing OR-at-large has been an adventure and a privilege. I am grateful to INFORMS for having provided so many opportunities to serve, and to you, the members, for giving me the chance to be your Member-in-Chief. Thank you so very, very much.”