Logo: University of Southern California

Elite Operations Research Organization Elects CREATE Faculty Member as President

"Deeply skilled and highly accomplished in multiple areas" says ISE Chair
Eric Mankin
October 15, 2007 —

Don N. Kleinmuntz will officially become a fellow of the Institute for Operations Research and Management Science November 5 at the group's annual meeting in Seattle - and will become the influential organizatin's President in 2009.

James Moore, chair of the Viterbi School's Epstein Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, where Kleinmuntz has a joint appointment with the School of Policy, Planning and Devleopment, hailed the news.

Kleinmuntz: "a world-class researcher, but his work includes a unique dimension of entrepreneurship that amplifies the importance of his contributions by speeding them into practice."

"Don is deeply skilled and highly accomplished in multiple areas that are very important for the next steps in the Epstein ISE Department's continued ascent," said Moore.

"He is nationally recognized for his contributions to decision analysis for enterprise-wide capital budgeting for hospitals, and to risk-based resource allocation for counterterrorism. 

"It is particularly noteworthy that Don was elevated to the rank of INFORMS Fellow in recognition of his contributions to practice — and then further recognized by being elected INFORMS president. He is a world-class researcher, but his work includes a unique dimension of entrepreneurship that amplifies the importance of his contributions by speeding them into practice."

INFORM members found out about Kleinmuntz's election in an October 10 newsletter. During next year, he will be President-elect, assuming the office in 2009.

The INFORMS fellowship Kleinmuntz will receive Nov. 5 at the INFORMS annual meeting in Seattle "recognizes members who have made significant contributions to the advancement of operations research and the management sciences, such contributions including service to the professional field and to INFORMS," according to the group's website, which also notes that INFORMS "is the largest professional society in the world for professionals in the field of operations research (O.R.).  It was established in 1995 with the merger of the Operations Research Society of America (ORSA) and The Institute of Management Sciences (TIMS).

In addition to Kleinmuntz's work at the DHS Center for Risk and Economic Analysis of Terrorism Events, he is also is cofounder and Executive Vice President at Strata Decision Technology LLC, an eleven-year old company that develops software for financial decision making, resource allocation, and business planning, with a particular focus on U.S. not-for-profit healthcare providers. With offices in Champaign and Chicago, Illinois, Strata Decision Technology's systems are used at more than1,200 healthcare provider organizations in 46 states, including leading academic medical centers and multi-hospital health systems.

Previously, Kleinmuntz held faculty positions at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the University of Texas at Austin. He holds a BA in statistics, MBA, and Ph.D. in business administration with specializations in decision theory and statistics, all from the University of Chicago.

He has more 25 years of experience on the use of quantitative models to improve decision making. Kleinmuntz has consulted on decision processes and decision analysis financial applications with a wide variety of corporations, public accounting firms, not-for-profit organizations, and numerous not-for-profit hospitals and healthcare systems.

Kleinmuntz (his first name is not Donald but Don) has received awards for both research and teaching. In 1997, he was named a Fellow of the Association for Psychological Science. His research concerns mathematical and computational models of decision processes, resource allocation models, and applications to healthcare and homeland security.

His publications have appeared in such journals as The Journal of Accounting Research, Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, Management Science, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Psychological Review, Psychological Science, and System Dynamics Review. He has been an investigator on projects sponsored by the Department of Homeland Security, the National Science Foundation, the Office of Naval Research, and PricewaterhouseCoopers.