Dear INFORMS Members,
I am pleased to provide you with an update from the Winter meeting of the INFORMS Board of Directors. INFORMS welcomes your comments. The Board met on January 26
th. The following is a brief summary of the key discussion items at the meeting.
- Financial: INFORMS continues to be very strong financially, ending 2017 with a higher than budgeted surplus. The Board approved authorization of $1 million to be set aside from reserves for the funding of new initiatives.
- Awareness: Our focus on increasing awareness is beginning to have an impact with the number of press releases in 2017 nearly double those in 2016 and our mentions in the media increasing 40%.
- Franz Edelman Award for Achievement in Operations Research and Management Science: A name adjustment for this prestigious award was approved. The new name is Franz Edelman Award for Achievement in Advanced Analytics, Operations Research, and Management Science.
- Meetings: The Annual Meeting in Houston was our largest meeting, very slightly beating San Francisco. Our Annual Meeting attendance has remained over 5,600 since 2014.
- Diversity: The Board agreed to make diversity data available to subdivisions. In order for the data to be accurate, members would need to provide their complete information to INFORMS.
- Code of Conduct: The Board approved a preliminary Code of Conduct Policy for INFORMS Meetings that will be reviewed by INFORMS legal staff.
- International activities: The Board began discussions to develop a vision and strategy for International Activities and programs.
- The next Board meeting will be at the Analytics meeting in Baltimore, April 14-15, 2018.
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Ramayya Krishnan, Ph.D.
President-Elect of INFORMS
Victoria (Tory) C. P. Chen, Ph.D.
Secretary of INFORMS
secretary@mail.informs.org------------------------------