2002 Franz Edelman Award for Achievement in Operations Research and the Management Sciences

摘要

It was a privilege and an honor to serve as chairman of the 31st annual international competition for the Franz Edelman Award for Achievement in Operations Research and the Management Sciences. As I also stated last year, I have so many satisfying memories: receiving the initial set of entries and seeing the depth, diversity, quality, and impact of operations research and management science that they represented; working with dedicated professionals to evaluate, verify, and select the six finalists; observing how the entrants worked with their coaches to develop extremely polished clear presentations; and working with the judges to determine the eventual winner. Our decisions were often difficult to make, but they were made professionally with sound judgment and consensus. The knowledge that we were working with an abundance of quality somewhat compensated for the difficulties of the decisions. Although there is one winner to the competition, there are no losers. All of the finalists whose papers are presented in this issue can justifiably be proud of their work. Also, there were many quality entries that regretfully could not become finalists.