The Frank P. Ramsey Medal is the most prestigious honor bestowed by the INFORMS Decision Analysis Society.
The citation reads, in part, “The Frank P. Ramsey Medal is awarded by the Decision Analysis Society of INFORMS for distinguished contributions in decision analysis. The individual we honor today, Craig W. Kirkwood of Arizona State University, has made and continues to make many significant contributions. Specifically, Professor Kirkwood has made contributions in several categories: contributions to the methodology of decision analysis, applications, promoting the field through education and speaking, and service to our society.
“Professor Kirkwood’s methodological contributions have included models of preferences involving multiple objectives, decision analysis for groups, and computer programs to facilitate learning and applying decision analysis. Just last year, his coauthored paper with Robert Bordley titled “Multiattribute preference analysis with performance targets” was selected for the Decision Analysis Society publication award for the best paper published in 2004.
“Professor Kirkwood has a long history of applying decision analysis to important, and sometimes novel, decision problems. For five years, he took a sabbatical from academics and worked full time in a consulting firm applying decision analysis. All of this experience provided a foundation for his book Strategic Decision Making: Multiobjective Decision Analysis with Spreadsheets published in 1997. His joint work with M.P. Slaven and A. Maltz described in the paper titled “Improving Supply-Chain-Reconfiguration Decisions at IBM” was awarded the 2004 Decision Analysis Society Practice Award.”
Prof. Kirkwood has been honored numerous times by INFORMS. In 2002, he received INFORMS’ covetedGeorge E. Kimball Medal for distinguished service to the society and the profession.
The Frank P. Ramsey Medal was created to recognize distinguished contributions to the field of decision analysis. The medal is named in honor of Frank Plumpton Ramsey, a Cambridge University mathematician who was one of the pioneers of decision theory in the 20th century. Ramsey Medalists are recognized for having made substantial further contributions to that theory and its application to important classes of real decision problems. The Medal is accompanied by a $1,000 honorarium.
Operations research is the application of advanced analytical methods to help make better decisions. It is nicknamed the Science of Better www.scienceofbetter.org.
The award was presented at the INFORMS annual meeting, which took place last month in Seattle.
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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