Fall 2006 Seminar Series

Saul I. Gass received his B. S. in Education and M. A. in Mathematics from Boston University, and his Ph. D. in Engineering Science/Operations Research from the University of California, Berkeley. He is currently Professor Emeritus at the Robert H. Smith School of Business, University of Maryland, College Park. Dr. Gass first served as a mathematician for the Aberdeen Bombing Mission, U. S. Air Force, and then transferred to Air Force Headquarters where he began his career in operations research with the Directorate of Management Analysis, the organization in which linear programming was first developed. For IBM he was an Applied Science Representative, Manager of the Project Mercury Man in Space Program, and Manager of IBM's Federal Civil Programs. He was a member of the Science and Technology Task Force of the President’s Commission on Law Enforcement. He was Director of Operations Research for CEIR, Senior Vice President of World Systems Laboratories and Vice President of Mathematica. He has served as a consultant to the U. S. General Accountability Office (GAO), Congressional Budget Office (CBO), the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), and other operations research and systems analysis organizations. Included in his many publications are the texts Linear Programming (fifth edition) and Decision Making, Models and Algorithms, and the books An Illustrated Guide to Linear Programming and the recently published An Annotated Timeline of Operations Research: An Informal History (co-authored with A. Assad). He is co-editor with Carl Harris of the Encyclopedia of Operations Research and Management Sciences (second edition) and the book A Guide to Models in Governmental Planning and Operations (with Roger Sisson). He is a past president of the Operations Research Society of America (ORSA) and Omega Rho, the international operations research honor society. He has served as vice-president for international activities of the Institute of Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS). He was a 1995-1996 Fulbright Research Scholar and is currently a Fulbright Senior Specialist. He is a recipient of ORSA’s Kimball Medal for service to the society and the profession, INFORMS’s Expository Writing Award, and the Military Operations Research Society’s Jacinto Steinhardt Memorial Award for outstanding contributions to military operations research. He is a University of Maryland 1998 Distinguished Scholar-Teacher. In January 2000, he was appointed Dean’s Lifetime Achievement Professor at the Robert H. Smith School of Business. He is a Fellow of INFORMS. His research interests include: linear programming, large-scale systems, model validation and evaluation, game theory, multi-objective decision analysis, the application of operations research methodologies, and the history of operations research.