TIMS President, 1993-1994
Gary Lilien was the 40th President of TIMS. His enthusiasm, remarkable productivity, and enduring concentration on OR/MS produced great benefits for our field and its professional societies. He began a five year stint in O.R. at Mobil Corporation in 1968, during which time he completed his doctorate. He joined the management science faculty of MIT in 1973 and moved to Penn State in 1981 where he is Distinguished Research Professor of Management Science and also co-founder and Research Director of the university’s Institute for the Study of Business Markets.
Dr. Lilien has focused his career on bridging the gap between research and practice, or “rigor and relevance,” within OR/MS in general, and within marketing science in particular. He originated, pilot tested, and helped to make permanent the videotaping of Edelman-competition presentations, and he co-edited the first collection of Edelman-competition papers. As editor-in-chief of Interfaces, he converted it into a refereed journal, increasing its academic stature while still maintaining its value to practitioners. He also pioneered the now routine rewriting of Interfaces articles to make them accessible to a wider audience. He was named by INFORMS to be the 2001-2002 Philip M. Morse Lecturer.
Dr. Lilien has done much to spread the influence of OR/MS in marketing. He was author or co-author of twelve books, including the well-known Marketing Models and Marketing Engineering. He was the marketing departmental editor for Management Science, editor of a special Interfaces issue on Marketing Engineering (2001), an area editor for Marketing Science, and has occupied various other positions with journals. His influence has been global, as illustrated by serving on the editorial board of the International Journal for Research in Marketing and being U.S coordinator and Vice President for the European Marketing Academy (EMAC). At present he serves as Vice President, External Relations for the INFORMS Society for Marketing Science. He holds three honorary degrees and was an inaugural INFORMS Fellow as well as an inaugural ISMS and an inaugural EMAC Fellow.
He replicated his success with the Edelman Prize, initiating the Informs Society for Marketing Science (ISMS) Practice Prize (with associated videos), an award now known as the Gary L. Lilien Practice Prize
His contribution to INFORMS management was historic as he was the last TIMS president to serve a full term (1993-94). During his presidency, he facilitated by his strong support, the merger of ORSA and TIMS into INFORMS.
BS, 1967, MS, 1968, and DES, 1973, Columbia. PhD (hon.), 1997 ,Université de Liège, Belgium; PhD (hon.), 1998, University of Ghent, Belgium; and PhD (hon.), 1999, Aston University, UK.