Raj Nigam, Sustaining Excellence in Practice

Raj Nigam passed away on Jan. 9, 2022, at the age of 77 after a lengthy battle with prostate cancer. Raj was a quintessential practitioner of operations research (O.R.) for 34 years, working in the RCA Operations Research Group and later leading the Merrill Lynch Management Science Group for 13 years until his retirement in 2004. His colleagues and mentors included Franz Edelman and Newt Garber. Raj is survived by his wife Elaine, two children and four grandchildren.

Raj was born and raised in Lucknow, India. In 1965, he graduated as the gold medalist (top student) in the Pioneer Batch at Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur. He then attended the University of California, Berkeley, where he earned a Ph.D. in operations research.

In 1970, Raj joined the RCA Operations Research Group, one of the earliest industrial O.R. groups in the United States, established by Franz Edelman. Raj was an analyst and manager within the group for 16 years, working with Edelman and Garber. He helped establish O.R. as a respected, company-wide function. Raj and the group worked on a wide range of projects including TV demand forecasting, financial decision support and frozen food packaging.

The situation abruptly changed when GE acquired RCA in 1986, which led to the removal of the corporate O.R. function there. Garber led a successful effort to convince Merrill Lynch to establish its first Management Science Group. Raj was one of seven members from the RCA group who helped establish the team, which became one of the first corporate OR/MS groups in a financial services company. The group was managed by Garber, reporting directly to the chief technology officer.

When Garber retired in 1991, Raj took over as head of the management science group until his retirement in 2004. Under Raj’s leadership, the group won three major practice-oriented prizes awarded by INFORMS. In 1997, Merrill Lynch won the INFORMS Prize for sustained use and business impact of OR/MS on the success of the firm. In 2001, the group was awarded the Franz Edelman Award for pricing analysis of a new product. The firm adopted the recommended price point and in the first year, client assets in the product reached $83B with incremental revenue of $80M. In 2004, the group won the Wagner Prize for modeling the liquidity risk of credit lines, enabling the bank to free up $4B.

During his career, Raj was active in TIMS, ORSA and INFORMS. He was the first editor-in-chief of Interfaces when it began publication in the 1970s (it is now the INFORMS Journal on Applied Analytics). Raj was also a member of the INFORMS Roundtable for many years. He served on a number of committees including the advisory group that developed the first practice-focused conference that has now become an annual fixture each spring as the INFORMS Conference on Business Analytics.

Raj was a mentor and coach to many OR/MS practitioners over the years. He was always willing to take time to discuss both technical and managerial issues with colleagues and nurture their professional development. He developed a framework to structure and sustain excellence in OR/MS groups, authoring a paper in Interfaces (Vol. 38, No. 3, May-June 2008) to document his approach. The heart of his strategy focused on business impact from project selection through impact measurement. Another core component was his belief to treat everyone with respect and dignity, a practice he held close to his heart in all aspects of life.

Raj loved tennis, science fiction, photography and gardening. In retirement, he served as a tutor for local teens in New Jersey as well as India via Zoom. Raj will be missed by all those who knew and were inspired by him.

Russ Labe was incredibly lucky to work with Raj for 25 years and enjoy his friendship for 42 years.