Mark Lewis among inaugural INFORMS MIF Fellows

Mark Lewis, the Maxwell M. Upson Professor of Engineering and Director of the School of Operations Research and Information Engineering at Cornell University, is among the inaugural class of INFORMS Minority Issues Forum (MIF) Fellows.

Celebrating its 20th anniversary, the MIF board chose to celebrate its forum by awarding an MIF Fellow recognition to five members who have significantly helped the forum grow within INFORMS, and for the service they have rendered towards MIF's mission.

“My role at the beginning of the forum was really in setting up all of the infrastructure,” Lewis said. John Birge (University of Chicago Booth School of Business) had the idea that we should have a forum and approached me on getting one started. The main thing up front was in showing INFORMS that there was support for a forum focused on minority issues.”

Lewis wrote the first draft of MIF’s bylaws from a draft provided by the Women in OR/MS leadership but noted it wasn’t just a one-person job.

“There were several people that had a hand in editing and agreeing to the bylaws so that they fit the topic. That collaboration was crucial,” said Lewis, who has twice served as MIF president.

Lewis, who was also named an INFORMS Fellow earlier this year, joins William Christian, Jr. (U.S. Department of Defense/ Paygevity, Inc.), Illya Hicks (Rice University), Julie Ivy (North Carolina State University) and Maria Mayorga (North Carolina State University).

The purposes of the INFORMS Minority Issues Forum are to foster minority representation in operations research/management science, to develop ties between those interested in increasing the number of minority participants in OR/MS and to disseminate information about the issues facing minority researchers and practitioners.

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