WEIN’S WORK ON HOMELAND SECURITY WINS PRESIDENT’S AWARD

INFORMS President Brenda Dietrich presented the 2007 INFORMS President’s Award to Lawrence M. Wein, the Paul E. Holden Professor of Management Science at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business, for his pioneering research that characterizes and improves homeland security operations, and for communicating his results to government officials and the public at large.

The award, presented at the 2007 INFORMS Annual Meeting in Seattle, recognizes, and thereby encourages, contributions to the welfare of society by members of the O.R. profession at the local, national or global level.

“It’s a great honor to join the past winners of this award, in particular my former MIT colleagues Dick Larson and Arnie Barnett, and my good friend and co-author Ed Kaplan,” Wein said. Wein credited Kaplan for encouraging him to get involved in public health and homeland security research issues. Wein also thanked the grad students who worked with him, as well as the MIT Sloan School of Management and the Stanford Graduate School of Business for “supporting me in doing research [that] didn’t have much to do with business.”

The citation read in part:

The terror attacks of 9/11 followed by the deliberate mailborne dissemination of anthrax forced the United States to focus upon homeland security as never before, yet how to best protect our population and our infrastructure from terrorist threats presents a family of difficult decisions for which there are no easy answers. Thanks to the tireless efforts of Stanford’s Larry Wein, however, we can all rest just a bit easier.

For the past six years, Wein has completed a remarkable series of research projects that have quantified various homeland security threats such as smallpox, anthrax and botulinum toxin attacks; (lack of) container security and the potential import of nuclear devices; and the likelihood of terrorist infiltration across our nation’s borders. These papers have been published in leading scientific journals, notably a series of articles in the Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences of the United States of America.

Wein and his colleagues have examined the operations of extant or proposed operations for dealing with each of these threats (e.g. vaccination or antibiotic distribution policies for smallpox or anthrax attacks; fingerprint identification protocols governing the US VISIT program as implemented at airports across the country; radiation screening procedures as implemented at major shipping ports) using newly developed and highly original operations research models. Via these model-based analyses,Wein has been able to identify the key problems with current or proposed policies, but even more importantly he has shown how to fix them.

To ensure that those with decisionmaking authority understand the homeland security issues addressed, Wein has provided both federal and state testimony regarding his most important findings in addition to briefing responsible decisionmakers in numerous government agencies. Finally, to educate the public, Wein has crafted a series of Op Ed articles with titles like “Unready for Anthrax,” “Got Toxic Milk?” and “Think Inside The Box” in leading national papers such as the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal to accompany his scientific publications. This is in addition to his numerous TV and radio appearances discussing various aspects of his homeland security research.

The President’s Award is made for contributions to the welfare of society. Larry Wein’s work on homeland security is perhaps the ultimate contribution to the welfare of society, as his work is helping to ensure the safety of us all.