Welcome to WINFORMS
WINFORMS is a professional organization dedicated to the advancement of the theory and practice of operations research and the management sciences in the greater Washington DC area. WINFORMS, with 120 individual members, is one of the largest geographic sections of INFORMS. WINFORMS holds joint meetings with many other organizations, such as the Institute for Industrial Engineering National Capital Chapter, the National Economists Club, and the Washington Statistical Society. In addition, WINFORMS is an active member of the Washington Academy of Sciences.
WINFORMS was formed as the Washington Operations Research Management Science Council (WORMSC) in 1979 through the merger of the Washington Operations Research Council (WORC) and the Washington DC chapter of The Institute of Management Sciences (TIMS-DC). WORC, which was organized in 1960, operated as an independent society until 1975, when it affiliated with the Operations Research Society of America (ORSA) as a Geographical Section. TIMS-DC, first organized in 1962, was a Geographic Section of its international parent TIMS from the beginning. The two organizations collaborated on many activities for many years prior to the merger. ORSA and TIMS themselves also merged in 1995 to form the Institute for Operations Research and Management Sciences (INFORMS).
Next WINFORMS Meeting
TBD
President's Message from Russell Wooten
Hello WINFORMS and welcome to our 2011-2012 program year:
Steven Wilcox said it admirably in his closing observations as our outgoing President and I would like to reiterate his remarks – “Without your efforts, WINFORMS would not be the great organization that it is.” Many thanks to the following:
- Doug Samuelson for his excellent efforts as our Program Chair over the last decade.
- Nick Nahas for enthusiastically arranging room reservations at Booz-Allen Hamilton.
- Russ Vane III and Zack Waltz for bringing sandwiches and water.
- Mike Cohen for chairing the track we shared with IIE at CapSci 2010 in Arlington as well as serving as Feedback editor.
- Steve Wilcox for serving as the previous President and attending to all those details that bind us into one organization.
- Chuck Burdick for attending to the tedious tasks of being the Treasurer (7/2008 – 6/2010).
- David Kretch for his miraculous transformation of our website and Mikhail Chrestkha for serving as Webmaster after him.
- Nastaran Coleman for her dedication over the last eight years as our Secretary.
- Russ Vane as an outgoing Trustee.
- Gary Smith as an outgoing Trustee.
Even though I have been quiet, your board has been busy working on your behalf. We held our third board meeting on September 13th.
Our activities to date include:
- reviewing and acknowledging our WINFORMS By-Laws
- updating and coordinating our membership roster with INFORMS
- establishing our strategic goals for this program year
- establishing a WINFORMS LinkedIn community
- communicating with Baltimore area INFORMS members to revitalize the Baltimore Chapter
- planning to revitalize our Institutional Membership Program
- planning to revitalize Feedback
- planning our WINFORMS Board of Director’s meeting for the 2nd Tuesday of each month
- planning WINFORMS Evening Programs for the 3nd Tuesday of each month
The goals of WINFORMS for this program year include:
- working more closely with individual members to keep our membership levels steady and to facilitate a more seamless process to renew membership at the beginning the calendar year.
- increasing our institutional membership to 35 for the calendar year of 2012
- three Feedback publications before June of 2012
- establishing a LinkedIn social network for WINFORMS
- ten WINFORMS Evening Programs
- Recording (video or audio) at least three programs for posting on our website or LinkedIn site.
- Having at least one joint Evening Program with another INFORMS Chapter.
- Having at least 50% of our Evening Programs jointly sponsored by another professional organization.
- Having one WINFORMS conference during the 2012-2013 program year.
Vice President/President Elect Nick Nahas has established a WINFORMS LinkedIn site. Please sign up as a member. We intend to use the new LinkedIn site and our revised website to communicate to our members and potential members. We will continue to distribute program announcements through our WINFORMS listserv
Help us accomplish all of our 2011-2012 program year goals. Help us by volunteering. Help us by participating. Encourage your work organization to become a WINFORMS Institutional Member. Encourage like-minded associates to attend our WINFORMS Evening Programs with you and to become a member of WINFORMS. If you know of a program, conference, presentation, or paper that is consistent with our WINFORMS character, let us know about it so that we can provide this valuable information to our members.
With your help, we can make this WINFORMS best year ever.
Russell WootenIIE Fellow and Edelman Laureate
IIE/SEMS Management Award, '11
INFORMS Moving Spirit Award, '09
DC Council of Engineers and Architects Engineer of the Year, '07
Franz Edelman Academy Member, '06
Presentations Now Available for Download
- Slides from the following presentations are now available under their respective entries on our meetings page.
- Soft Skills Workshop: Real-World Skills for Analysts by F. Freeman Marvin and Paul Wickernew
- Pathologies of System Dynamics and other Highly-Aggregated Models by Rob Axtell
- Manpower Planning Model developed for the Military Sealift Fleet Support Command by Dan Steeples
- Disjunctive Mapping by Warren Lieberman and Michael Raskin
- Inferring Leader Personality from Leader and Group Actions by Paul Sticha and Elise Weaver
- Portfolio Decision Analysis by Gregory Parnell