Volume 32, Number 1, April 2013 Decision Analysis Today Decision Analysis Today Vol. 32, No. 1, April 2013 The newsle er of the INFORMS Decision Analysis Society Inside: President’s Letter-----------------------1 Call for Session Chairs---------------11 Research--------------------------------25 Letter from the Editors----------------2 Professional News---------------------11 Ask DAS---------------------------------29 Upcoming Conferences----------------3 Decision Analysis Journal-----------14 Editorial Team-------------------------32 Professional Postings-------------------4 DA Around the World---------------17 DAS Officers---------------------------33 Call for Submissions and DA Practice-----------------------------20 Nominations-----------------------------4 Call for Chapters-----------------------9 Society of Decision Professionals---23 _ President’s Letter Jeffrey Keisler A lot people are putting a lot of effort into building DAS. Here are some updates, in no particular order: Florian Federspiel, Chris Karvetski, Ahren Lacy and Jeff Stonebraker are exploring ways to help DAS better serve its student members, starting with some activities at the fall INFORMS conference. Speaking of the fall conference, cluster co-chairs Jag Chattwal, Victor Jose and Alec Morton are working hard and tell me another strong lineup is coming together. In addition to formal submissions, you should let them know if you have any other ideas or interest regarding DAS social interactions at the conference. Speaking of conferences, Jason Merrick has put together a working group (Robin Dillon-Merrill, Philippe Delquié, Yael Grushka-Cockayne, Victor Jose, and Casey Lichtendahl) and a steering committee (including current and former editors of the DA outlets within INFORMS: Robin Keller, Kevin McCardle, Rakesh Sarin, and Jim Smith) setting up the first standalone DAS research conference, which will tentatively be around June 2014 and will be of modest size. This is an exciting and large development for our field, and details will be coming. Nadia Papamichal and Johannes Siebert are undertaking an initiative to build bridges between DAS and other decision making organizations, including the MCDM and EURO, and we will be discussing ways to do that over the summer. Vicki Bier is leading an effort to build our capabilities for getting publicity for our work, our field, and our society. Page 1 Volume 32, Number 1, April 2013 Decision Analysis Today Our web and social media presence, led by Jay Simon, is seeing healthy activity in LinkedIn, Facebook and our website. We will have more work to do in the fairly near future, when INFORMS launches its Golightly system. Eric Bickel reports that this system will give us a great deal of options to do many cool things fairly easily – with the help of DAS members as yet to be named – but INFORMS is taking a little longer than originally planned. Rakesh Sarin has taken charge of the DA Journal and is looking beyond the usual suspects to reach new potential contributors. Our relationships with the Society for Decision Professionals and the DAAG conference are strengthening, in large part thanks to Eric Bickel who chaired the DAAG conference last week in Austin. SDP leadership (e.g., SDP President Frank Koch, SDP President-Elect Jim Felli and SDP past-President Carl Spetzler, as well as Larry Neal who has been serving both SDP and DAS) is likewise interested in strengthening our collaborative activities. Patrick Noonan has started exploring some ideas for developing DA educational materials, and along these lines, Chris Spetzler from the Decision Education Foundation has an interest in hearing from DAS members. DAS award committees are getting to work, and you will be seeing more from Robin Dillon-Merrill (publication award), Jim Dyer (Ramsey medal), Frank Koch (practice award), Lea Deleris & Jun Zhuang (student paper award) and Jason Merrick (DA Journal award). VP/President-Elect Eric Bickel will be forming a nominations committee for open DAS positions (election information will be in the summer issue). The DAS council just had a long strategy phone call, and I hope to keep you in the loop as things go ahead. One topic we may start to think about in the future is ways of bringing in revenue beyond our conference activities, as there are probably some worthwhile things we could do if we had funds to do them. As usual, Secretary/Treasurer Yael Grushka-Cockayne is there behind anything that is going smoothly in DAS. Also as usual, Heather Rosoff, Jun Zhuang and Elizabeth Newell are making DA Today better and better. This long list of people and the ways they are contributing to DAS fills my heart with joy and bodes well for the future. I hope I haven’t left anyone off, but I surely have. Thanks to all of you listed above, and thanks to everyone who is making contributions of all kinds. If you are interested in getting involved with any of these initiatives, please contact any of the people mentioned above. If you want to get involved in other ways, please get in touch with me. Letter from the Editors Heather Rosoff, Jun Zhuang, and Elizabeth Newell Hello loyal followers! As Jeff mentioned, many exciting things are happening within the DA community! In this issue, we highlight some of the amazing contributions being made by your peers. In DA Around the World, Alec Morton and Matthias Seifert provide us with a nice overview of the DAS Community’s reach around the globe. In DA Practice, Bill Klimack brings us an interesting contribution from Phil Beccue who writes about the benefits and insights gained from employing decision analytic techniques in the pharmaceutical sector. In SDP, Frank Koch writes about the state of the society and its tremendous growth and Page 2 Volume 32, Number 1, April 2013 Decision Analysis Today development. In Research, Debarun Bhattacharjya brings us an article by Lav Varshney about the use of DA techniques to enhance computational creativity. Finally in Ask DAS, John Coles and Florian Federspiel bring us ―a quick guide to effective and successful poster presentations.‖ It is also that time of year to start thinking about whether you would like to be a Session Chair at next year’s INFORMS conference and if you have nominees for the Ramsey Medal, DAS Publication, Practice and/or Student Awards. More details on the sessions and awards for the next INFORMS conference can be found starting on page 4. We wish everyone a very productive and progressive spring/summer!! Until next time, Heather, Jun, and Elizabeth Upcoming Conferences June 6, 2013 – June 7, 2013 July 22, 2013 – July 25, 2013 INFORMS Revenue Management and Pricing MIP2013, University of Wisconsin-Madison Conference, Atlanta, GA Madison, WI http://www.informs.org/Community/revenue-mgt August 14, 2013 – August 16, 2013 June 16, 2013 – June 19, 2013 MOPTA 2013 INFORMS Transportation Science and Logistics Lehigh University Society Annual Workshop, Asilomar Conference Bethlehem, PA Grounds, California http://coral.ie.lehigh.edu/~mopta/ www.informs.org/Community/TSL/TSL-Workshop August 22, 2013 – August 25, 2013 June 23, 2013 – June 26, 2013 Operations Research for Surgical Services INFORMS Health Care 2013 Hampton Inn Chicago, IL Iowa City, IA http://meetings.informs.org/healthcare2013/ http://www.franklindexter.net/PDF%20Files/Surgical ServicesCourse.pdf June 23, 2013 – June 26, 2013 First conference on Validating Models of Adversary October 6, 2013 – October 9, 2013 Behavior, Buffalo/Niagara Falls, NY INFORMS Annual Meeting 2013 Minneapolis http://www.eng.buffalo.edu/~jzhuang/Conference13/ Minneapolis Convention Center and Hilton Minneapolis, Minneapolis, MN July1, 2013 – July 4, 2013 http://meetings2.informs.org/minneapolis2013/ EURO – INFORMS Joint International Conference June 16, 2014 – June 18, 2014 Rome, Italy Advances in Decision Analysis Conference http://euro2013.org/ Georgetown University Washington, D.C. For additional information: Jason Merrick ([email protected]) or Yael Grushka-Cockayne ([email protected]) Page 3 Volume 32, Number 1, April 2013 Decision Analysis Today Professional Postings JOB PLACEMENT SERVICES: Visit http://jps.informs.org/ for the INFORMS Job Placement Service (JPS). For many years INFORMS (and its founding societies) has offered a Job Placement Service to connect employers searching for O.R. professionals and qualified O.R. professionals looking for employment. The Job Placement Service database offers: • Online access to job listings and applicant files • Expanded information about jobs and applicants • Updates of the database • Improved database search capabilities • Online data entry for applicants and employers • Extended availability of the database INFORMS MEMBERSHIP: We are writing to relay some important and exciting news regarding INFORMS membership. During 2013, INFORMS is offering a FREE membership in any society for new regular members! Anyone that joins INFORMS during 2013 can choose to join the Decision Analysis Society (DAS) for free. This membership would accrue all DAS benefits, including a free subscription to the Decision Analysis Journal. Note that this offer does not apply to new student members, who already receive a free society membership (without the DA Journal). Here is a link you can forward to colleagues that you believe would benefit from this offer: http://www.informs.org/Membership/Join-INFORMS-and-or-INFORMS-Communities Regards, Eric Bickel (President-Elect), Vicki Bier (Past-President) and Jeff Keisler (President) Call for Submissions and Nominations 2013