INFORMS Open Forum

  • 1.  2018 Summer Board Summary

    Posted 08-14-2018 09:45

    The Board of Directors met on August 8th and 9th. Following is a summary of the meeting.

    • Health of INFORMS: Our retention is strong, and we have finished the transition to anniversary dues (change from January to December dues). INFORMS' publications and meetings continue to provide stable and growing revenue streams that ensure our financial health. We are focusing use of our reserves toward investment in new initiatives – initiatives that will increase member benefits and value; increase awareness of the profession & the pipeline; and, provide stronger links between academics and Industry.
    • Visibility and Advocacy: INFORMS hosted its first Policy Summit on May 21, 2018. The event was an excellent success and has since generated over 40 additional visits by INFORMS staff with government decision makers and agencies.  The videos of the day may be viewed at: http://meetings2.informs.org/wordpress/dc-analytics/
    • Outreach: The Board approved funds to support a video project competition in which students will create content aimed towards attracting high school and college students to O.R. Winning ideas will be utilized in a professional INFORMS outreach video.
    • Journals: The Board approved several changes. The journal Interfaces will be renamed INFORMS Journal on Applied Analytics.  The new Editor-in-Chief for Marketing Science will be K. Sudhir for a term beginning on January 1, 2019 and continuing through December 31, 2021.  The new Editor-in-Chief for INFORMS Journal on Computing will be Alice E. Smith for a term beginning on January 1, 2019 and continuing through December 31, 2021.  The new Editor-in-Chief for Decision Analysis will be Vicki Bier for a term beginning on January 1, 2019 and continuing through December 31, 2021.  The new Editor-in-Chief for Service Science will be Saif Benjaafar for a term beginning on January 1, 2019 and continuing through December 31, 2021.
    • Meetings: The International Meeting in Taipei was very successful. There was a highly dynamic program with the most relevant speakers and over 1000 research papers from 25 countries. Additionally, it drew widespread media attention and interviews from both traditional and digital media. For the upcoming annual meeting in Phoenix, there will not be an increase in registration fees.  However, the Board approved an increase for the 2019 annual meeting in Seattle in order to provide additional benefits and value to attendees.
    • Diversity, Inclusion, and Equity (DIE): A dashboard has been created to provide available DIE-related data to subdivision officers. These data may be used by the subdivisions as they see fit.  In order for the data to be accurate, members will need to provide their complete information to INFORMS.  DIE committee members will be available to attend subdivision business meetings at the annual meeting to address questions.
    • International Activities: The Board continued discussions with a vision to expand international activities and programs as would best benefit INFORMS members.
    • Summer 2018 Election: Voting is currently open through September 30th. The following Board positions are up for election: President-Elect, Treasurer, VP-Publications, VP-Education, VP-Meetings, and VP-Information Technology.
    • The next Board meeting will be at the Annual meeting in Phoenix, November 4-7, 2018.

     



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    Victoria (Tory) C. P. Chen, Ph.D.
    Secretary of INFORMS
    secretary@mail.informs.org

    Professor
    Department of Industrial, Manufacturing, & Systems Engineering,
    Center on Stochastic Modeling, Optimization, & Statistics (COSMOS),
    The University of Texas at Arlington,
    Campus Box 19017,
    Arlington, TX 76019
    Email: vchen@uta.edu
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