Nicholas G. Hall, distinguished professor of management sciences at Max M. Fisher College of Business, has been elected the 24th president of The Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS), the leading international association for professionals in analytics, operations research and operations management.

Dr. Hall will serve a three-year term that begins in January 2017 as president-elect. In January 2018, he will assume the role of president, before transitioning to past-president in 2019. He has seven years of experience on the INFORMS board, where he served as vice president for membership and professional recognition, and as treasurer.

“I am honored to have won the election because the other candidate is head of consumer product analytics at IBM, the recognized world leader in business analytics,” Dr. Hall said. “I was elated because of the opportunity to work with a group of extremely talented professionals in the science and engineering community who are solving the highest-value business planning problems.”

Dr. Hall plans to work with INFORMS staff members to develop focused policy conferences in Washington, D.C., with government and science policymakers to highlight the value the organization and its members deliver on key national issues, such as health care, energy policy and military logistics.

Dr. Hall is optimistic that his leadership role will benefit Fisher by elevating the college’s prominence among INFORMS’ members who are academic and industry leaders. Additionally, he hopes to increase the visibility of the organization’s conferences to Fisher students by encouraging participation in Ohio State’s INFORMS Student Chapter, whose members tend to be engineering majors.

Both Dr. Hall’s teaching and research currently focus on the business process of project management, which includes 20 percent of the world economy. He teaches a popular graduate course that is offered in three sections during spring semester and enrolls students from nine graduate programs across campus. A 2008 citation study ranked him 13th among 1,376 scholars in the operations management field. He won the Fisher College of Business Pace Setters Faculty Research Award in 1998 and in 2005. He has published more than 80 refereed journal articles and given more than 330 academic presentations, including 98 invited presentations in 23 countries, 11 conference keynote presentations and eight INFORMS national conference tutorials.

INFORMS was founded in 1995 by the merger of two predecessor societies, TIMS and ORSA, but the use of statistics and analytics to solve business problems began during World War II when the discipline was used by the Allied forces to solve logistical challenges. Following the war, the discipline began solving industry challenges. Today, 95 percent of Fortune 500 Companies use INFORMS’ methodologies to add value to their business practices. Dr. Hall’s predecessors as president include 1972 Nobel Prize winner Kenneth Arrow and numerous members of the U.S. National Academies.

Based in Catonsville, Maryland, INFORMS is composed of more than 12,000 members in 86 countries, and is the leading publisher of academic research, with six of the top 50 Financial Times journals being part of the organization’s portfolio and more than 1.5 million article downloads annually.