Barry Render, who holds the Charles Harwood Professorship in Operations Management at Rollins College's Crummer Graduate School of Business, has been named as Prentice-Hall Publishing's first Series Editor. He will be responsible for textbooks in POM, Statistics and Management Science. Render also recently received the Welsh Award as his school's outstanding professor of the year. While on sabbatical this year, he is being replaced by Professor Martin Starr of Columbia University.
Dr. Jun-Sheng Li has been appointed president of J.B. Hunt Logistics, Inc. - a third party logistics provider. Previously, Dr. Li was the senior vice president of Logistics Engineering. He earned his masters degree and Ph.D. in Industrial and Systems Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology, and was inducted by the school as an Outstanding Young Engineer in March 1995. Earlier in his career, Dr. Li was vice president of Logistics Engineering for Schneider Logistics and director of Operations Research at CAPS Logistics.
Shiv K. Gupta, researcher, consultant, author, teacher and friend, died June 8 in Delhi, India.
One of our earliest post-World War II analysts, Shiv attended the first IFORS meeting in Oxford (1957). He will be most remembered as the chairman of the University of Pennsylvania Wharton School's world-renowned Operations Research Program from 1971 to 1984.
Shiv was born April 15, 1927. He received his bachelor's (with honors) and master's degrees in mathematics in 1947 and 1949 from Delhi University where he remained as a lecturer. From 1952 to 1957 he was a scientific officer with India's Defense Science Organization.
In 1957 he joined Case Institute of Technology in Cleveland where he was a graduate assistant, research associate and, after earning a Ph.D. in operations research (in a record 28 months), was appointed assistant professor. He returned to India where he served as a professor at the India Institute of Management from 1963-1966.
In 1966 he joined the Wharton School faculty where he remained until medical disabilities necessitated early retirement in 1992. At the University of Pennsylvania he began as associate professor in the Operations Research Department, became professor in 1970 and joined the Marketing Department in 1984. During the 1969-70 academic year he was a visiting professor at the University of Sussex, England.
Shiv consulted for a large number of companies, including Anheuser-Busch, the World Bank, Air India, Atlantic-Richfield and AT&T. He was a member of operations research societies in the United States, United Kingdom and India, TIMS and the American Marketing Association. He was a founding member of TIMS's Public Relations Outreach Committee.
He published more than three dozen professional articles covering a wide range of topics, including ballistics, estimation theory, marketing, logistics, system theory and casino operations. He co-authored three books, "Scientific Method" (1962), "Mathematics of Modern Management" (1963) and "Fundamentals of Operations Research for Management" (1974). Colleagues and former students fondly remember Shiv for his intellect and breadth of knowledge, his rapid speech and infectious laugh.
During his long academic career he directly influenced the development of literally hundreds of operations research students, now teachers or practitioners themselves. Some of his former students are now leaders of INFORMS.
Shiv suffered from a debilitating neurological disease that progressively worsened until his merciful death. He was an enthusiastic, loving father to his son Rana who survives him in Cambridge, Mass. He also leaves two brothers: Ishwar in Montreal and Ved in Hopewell Junction, N.Y.; and three sisters: Meera, Kamla and Vidya, all in Delhi.
For friends who would like to remember Shiv and his unselfish support, concern and caring for all students, a loan fund to help deserving Indian students attend Wharton is being established in his memory.
- Sid Hess