Richard C. Larson named one of two 2023 ISSIP Fellows

The International Society of Service Innovation Professionals (ISSIP) has announced two new ISSIP Fellows for 2023, one of which is INFORMS member Richard C. Larson. ISSIP Fellows are viewed as role models of lifetime career achievements for advancing the understanding and practice of service innovation in significant ways, while also growing the community.

Larson has made significant contributions to understanding urban systems as service systems, including urban emergency services. In the popular press, bringing a deeper understanding of service waiting times to the general public, resulted in Larson becoming known as “Dr. Queue.” As the 42nd president of INFORMS predecessor ORSA (Operations Research Society of America) and the 11th president of INFORMS, Larson has provided visible leadership to one of the pillar academic disciplines underlying a wide range of service innovations.

Larson is professor (post tenure) in the Institute for Data, Systems, and Society at MIT. His career has focused on operations research and systems expertise on a wide variety of problems, in both public and private sectors. He is author, co-author or editor of six books and author or co-author of more than 175 scientific articles. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and is an inaugural INFORMS Fellow. INFORMS has awarded Larson with the following honors: Lanchester Prize (1972), Philip McCord Morse Lectureship Award (1997), Kimball Medal (2002), INFORMS President’s Award (2003) and the Harold Larnder Prize (2004).

In 2017, Larson was given the first-ever Lifetime Achievement Daniel Berg Medal for “making significant contributions to technology innovation, service systems and strategic decision making.” Currently, he is principal investigator of the MIT BLOSSOMS Initiative. His new book, Model Thinking for Everyday Life, is currently in production at INFORMS.

For more about Larson and INFORMS, visit: https://www.informs.org/Explore/History-of-O.R.-Excellence/Biographical-Profiles/Larson-Richard-C.