OR/MS Today - December 1998

December 1998

Jarvis' Contributions Pay Off with Kimball Medal

The George E. Kimball Award for distinguished service to the Institute and the profession of operations research and the management sciences was awarded to John J. Jarvis at the Fall 1998 INFORMS Meeting in Seattle.

A faculty member in the Industrial and Systems Engineering Department at Georgia Insitute of Technology, Jarvis was recognized for his many contributions to ORSA, TIMS and now INFORMS, including his service as program chair of the 1977 Atlanta ORSA/TIMS meeting, chair of the Combined Meetings Committee, secretary of TIMS and president of ORSA.

Award Committee Chair Michael Thomas presented Jarvis with the award. "The committee considered a number of names that would work, but made two decisions. One was to award only one person the Kimball medal this year for service to the profession, and the second was to select the individual.

"And in the second decision, there was unanimity among all three members of the committee about the person to be selected. John Jarvis was at the top of all three lists."

Among his contributions, Jarvis was cited for his participation on the select committee which conceived of combining ORSA and TIMS into INFORMS.

He has also been active in other professional venues. He served on the Council of Industrial Engineering Academic Department Heads since 1992 in a variety of positions culminating in his service as chair of this group in 1995. He currently serves as president of the Institute of Industrial Engineers.

Furthermore, Jarvis has conducted research in modeling and optimization of problems in the general area of transportation and logistics and has published numerous papers and given many presentations as a result of these efforts.

In accepting the award, Jarvis thanked several people, including his wife, Alice, for "putting up with his absences." He also explained his philosophy behind service to the profession.

"I often reflect on why people do a lot of service, and when I think about that, I think that one service follows another service, and you just keep building on this. I wonder why they keep selecting me, and the only answer I can come up with is no good deed goes unpunished."

Michael Thomas, Peter Norden and Hugh Bradley completed the awards committee.

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