Past Awards
John J. Jarvis has a passion for the practice, research and professional aspects of operations research and management science. John joined the faculty of Industrial and Systems Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology immediately after receiving his PhD from Johns Hopkins University in 1968. He advanced through the ranks to his current position, since 1992, as Chair of what has become the largest such program in the country, and is generally recognized as one of the premier academic programs in the discipline.
Dr. Jarvis has held many leadership positions in the Society, including Program Chair of the 1977 Atlanta ORSA/TIMS meeting, Chair of the Combined Meetings Committee, Secretary of TIMS, and President of ORSA. John also served on the select committee which conceived of combining ORSA and TIMS into INFORMS, and led the way to implementation by designing the operating principles and budgeting mechanism for the new entity, preparing a constitution, and generating the votes required to ensure creation of the new society.
John has also been active in other professional venues. He served 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.
Dr. Jarvis has had an outstanding career as an educator. He 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 addition, John has applied his tremendous insights to practical problems that led to the formation of a company, CAPS, which has had significant success in solving difficult, large scale transportation and logistics problems.
Dr. Jarvis’ passion for all facets of the profession has served INFORMS and its predecessors very well. The members and officers of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences are proud to present the George E. Kimball Medal to John J. Jarvis.
Award presented by Michael Thomas, Committee Chair, and Karla L. Hoffman, President October 26, 1998.