Dr. Raimo P. Hämäläinen has been selected to receive the 2019 Frank P. Ramsey Medal.
Raimo Hämäläinen is a Professor Emeritus (since 2016) at Aalto University in Finland and is an Honorary Visiting Professor at Loughborough University in England. He was a Professor of Applied Mathematics (operations research) at Helsinki University of Technology since 1981, which became part of Aalto University, in 2010. He also was a professor at the University of Vaasa and at Kuipio University in the 1970's. Dr. Hämäläinen studied engineering mathematics and systems theory and holds an MS in Engineering and Doctor of Technology degree from the Department of Technical Physics, Helsinki University of Technology. His dissertation was on "Optimal controller design by nonlinear and game theoretic methods".
Dr. Hämäläinen has an outstanding record as a scholar, focusing on multicriteria decision analysis and related behavioral issues, and as an academic leader of several groups in Finland and Europe. In Finland he established the Systems Analysis Laboratory at Helsinki University of Technology, now part of Aalto University in 1984. He was also the founding director of the Doctoral Education Network on Systems Analysis, Decision Making and Risk Management across Finnish universities and he was a Board Member of the Finnish Operations Research Society. He was Chairman of the Committee for Scientific Cooperation between the Academy of Finland and the International Research Institute for Management Science (IRIMS), in Moscow. He served on the Finnish Committee for the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (1998-2008). In recent years, he co-founded (with Alberto Franco) the Behavioral Operations Research Working Group of the European Society of Operational Research (EURO), serving as its first chairman. He has advised over 40 doctoral graduates.
He has a large number of citations for his over 200 publications and conference papers on multi-criteria decision making, behavioral operations research, path dependence in modeling, control and dynamic games, energy modelling, and environmental decision making and participatory decision processes. He also created many widely used decision support systems. His work has been funded by the Finnish Air Force, the European Commission, and the Academy of Finland. He has helped to solve problems, particularly in environmental policy and risk analysis. Moving from earlier work on parliamentary policy debates, he and Prof. Esa Saarinen have developed the new concept of Systems Intelligence.
Dr. Hämäläinen is a longtime contributor to the Decision Analysis Society (of INFORMS and its predecessors), including as an editorial board member for Decision Analysis, conference speaker, and Chairman of the European Assembly of the Decision Analysis Society of INFORMS (1996 – 1998), and a full member of ORSA.
Dr. Hämäläinen has won honors in Finland and abroad. He is a member of the Finnish Academy of Technology (1985) and was named Honorary President of the Finnish Operations Research Society (2008) for his contributions to developing OR in Finland. He also won the MCDM Edgeworth-Pareto Award, the highest award for career contributions from the International Society on Multiple Criteria Decision Making.
About the Award
The Frank P. Ramsey Medal is the highest award of the Decision Analysis Society (DAS). It 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. His 1926 essay "Truth and Probability" (published posthumously in 1931) anticipated many of the developments in mathematical decision theory later made by John von Neumann and Oskar Morgenstern, Leonard J. Savage, and others.
The Ramsey Medal Award Committee for 2019 was Jason Merrick (Chair, Ex Officio as Past President of DAS), Manel Baucells, Jim Dyer, Robin Keller, and Detlof von Winterfeldt.
------------------------------
Jason Merrick
Professor
Supply Chain Management & Analytics
Virginia Commonwealth University
Richmond VA
------------------------------