ORSA President, 1982
William Pierskalla was the 31st President of ORSA. He came to the Anderson Graduate School of Business in 1993 and was its Dean until 1997. He was Distinguished Professor of Decisions, Operations and Technology Management at Anderson until his retirement. Before coming to UCLA, he was the Deputy Dean for Academic Affairs, the Director of the Huntsman Center for Global Competition and Leadership and the Chairman of the Health Care Systems Department at the Wharton School and the executive director of the Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics at the University of Pennsylvania.
He specializes in health care management and delivery. Other areas of research include operations, mathematical programming, transportation, maintainability, and inventory and issues of global competition. Professor Pierskalla is the author or co-author of more than fifty scientific papers and of numerous working papers and technical reports. He provided consulting and advising services for corporate and non-profit organizations including MDAX Corp., Sun HealthCare Group, the National Institutes of Health, the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute and the Mayo Clinic. As a consultant to the American Red Cross, he has analyzed blood supply management, including delivery, testing and inventory. He was/is a Board Member of the Bush Foundation, health2health, Northern Trust Bank of California, Mount St. Mary's College, iRise Inc. and Phoenix Health Systems.
He was the Editor-in-Chief of Operations Research (1979 through 1982) and was previously Associate Editor of Management Science and Naval Research Logistics Quarterly. He also serves on several editorial boards including Health Care Management Science Journal, Production and Operations Management, International Transactions In Operational Research, Journal of the Operational Research Society. He was vice president for publications for INFORMS (2000 through 2003). Some other highlights of his work for ORSA, TIMS and INFORMS were: Keynote Speaker INFORMS Annual Meeting in Denver, CO, 2004, National Lecturer for ORSA (now INFORMS) in Program for Visiting Lecturers, 1972‑present, Von Neumann Theory Prize Committee, 1994‑96 (Chairman 1996), Council member, Computer Science Technical Section, 1987‑1991; Health Care Technical Section, 1988‑1991, Chairman of ad hoc Committee to Review Operations Research, 1985, 1994‑95, Chairman Search Committee for Editor of Operations Research, 1985‑1986, 1994‑95, Secretary of ORSA, 1977‑1980, Program Chairman for 39th National ORSA Meeting Dallas, 1971, General Chairman for 47th National ORSA Meeting Chicago, 1975.
Among his awards are the Kimball Medal (1989), the Lardner Prize of the Canadian Operational Research Society (1993), Member of the National Acadedmy of Engineering, and Honorary Member of Omega Rho Honorary Society, He was President of IFORS (1989-91) and the IFORS Distinguished Lecturer, INFORMS Cincinnati national meeting, 1999. The INFORMS Health Application Section created the William Pierskalla Best Paper Prize in his honor in 1999. He received the INFORMS President’s Award for Contribution to Humanity in 2005.
AB, 1956, Harvard; MBA, 1958, Harvard; MA, 1962, Pittsburgh; PhD (Operations Research), 1965, Stanford.