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CEES News Release
University of Colorado at Boulder Professor Fred Glover was named a Distinguished Professor by the CU Board of Regents at its December 8 meeting.
Professor Glover, who is the Comcast Chaired Professor in Systems Science at the University of Colorado, joins only 18 other CU-Boulder faculty members who currently hold the title of Distinguished Professor. He is also a founding member of the Graduate Faculty of Applied Mathematics at CU-Boulder, an Honorary Professor of Mathematics at CU-Denver and a member of the CEES Advisory Board.
The title of "Distinguished Professor" is the highest honor that the University of Colorado bestows on its own faculty members. The title is bestowed on members of the university faculty who have distinguished themselves as exemplary teachers, scholars and public servants and who are individuals having extraordinary international importance and recognition.
Additional information on the title of CU Distinguished Professor is available through the following link: CU Distinguished Professors.
Distinguished Professor Fred Glover
Biographical Note on Distinguished Professor Fred Glover
Professor Glover has authored or co-authored more than three hundred fifty published articles and eight books in the fields of mathematical optimization, computer science and artificial intelligence, with particular emphasis on practical applications in industry and government. In addition to holding editorial and advisory posts for journals in the U.S. and abroad, Dr. Glover has been featured as a National Visiting Lecturer by the Institute of Management Science and the Operations Research Society of America and has served as a host and lecturer in the U.S. National Academy of Sciences Program of Scientific Exchange. He is also a founder and inaugural Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Heuristics.
Professor Glover is an elected member of the National Academy of Engineering and has served as Head of Research for the NASA Center for Space Construction.
Professor Glover is the recipient of the distinguished von Neumann Theory Prize, as well as numerous other awards and honorary fellowships, including those from the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the NATO Division of Scientific Affairs, the Institute of Operations Research and Management Science , the Decision Sciences Institute, the U.S. Defense Communications Agency, the Energy Research Institute, the American Assembly of Collegiate Schools of Business, Alpha Iota Delta, and the Miller Institute for Basic Research in Science.
Dr. Glover has served on the Board of Directors of four corporations and a nonprofit research institute. He has also served as a consultant for over 70 government agencies and industrial firms. He is a co-founder of OptTek, Inc., Heuristec Corporation (now merged within Tomax Corporation), and Analysis, Research and Computation Corporation (now merged within Computer Science Corporation).
Select Introductory Remarks by Chancellor Phil DiStefano
Board of Regents Campus Host Report
December 8, 2005
Today I have the privilege of introducing three outstanding faculty members who are being recognized for their scholarship and contributions to the University of Colorado at Boulder: Barbara Engel, professor of history; Fred Glover, professor of business; and Richard Jessor, professor of psychology in CU-Boulder's Institute of Behavioral Science.
The distinguished professor title is bestowed on CU faculty members “who have distinguished themselves as exemplary teachers, scholars and public servants, and who are individuals having extraordinary international importance and recognition,” according to regents' law.
We believe that Professors Engel, Glover and Jessor are very deserving of this recognition.
Professor Glover has been a member of the Leeds School of Business faculty since 1970 and holds the Comcast Chaired Professor of Systems Science.
His research interests are in the applications of computer decision support systems. These include industrial planning, financial analysis, systems design, energy and natural resources planning, logistics, transportation and large-scale allocation models. His work is embodied in computer software systems currently serving more than 50,000 users in the United States and many others abroad. He is best known for his creation of the optimization search methodology known as “Tabu Search,” a topic on which more than 250,000 Web pages can be found with a simple Google search. He has authored more than 350 articles and eight books. He was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2002. He has received numerous prestigious awards, including the highest honor of the Institute of Operations Research and Management Science, the von Neumann Theory Prize. He also is a fellow of numerous professional associations including the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the INFORMS Society and the Decision Sciences Institute. Professor Glover's service to the University and his profession has been exemplary.
Congratulations to all of you.
Phil DiStefano, December 8, 2005
Professor Fred Glover: Distinguished Professorship Acceptance Remarks
It is a great honor for me to accept this Distinguished Professorship, and to stand in the company of our other distinguished professors being honored today.
You know, this comes at a special moment in the history of our university. Due to the farsightedness of some of our faculty and university leaders, we are launching upon a course to take a leadership role in Renewable Energy. The implications for our future of handling energy properly are momentous. We are in a position at CU to become a worldwide leader in doing the job right. Several of the responsible individuals are already well known to you. Our Regent Cindy Carlisle is in the forefront of those who are sounding the clarion call. A primary role is being taken by our Provost Susan Avery, and also by our Vice Chancellor for Research, Fred Pampel.
Among the key players that deserve to be credited for staking out CU’s claim as a concerned and high-profile participant in this domain is the Energy and Environmental Security Initiative (EESI), launched by law Professor Lakshman Guruswamy. I am privileged to be on the board of this group, along with Susan Avery, Cindy Carlisle and Distinguished Professor Frank Barnes, among other notables.
Another of the key players is the Demming Center for Entrepreneurship in the Leeds School of Business, whose involvement in the energy initiative is being spearheaded by its Director Paul Jerde and faculty member Tom Dean. As a faculty member in the Leeds School of myself, I should call attention to a major event in the energy area being sponsored by the Entrepreneurship Center – the Sustainable Opportunities Week coming up in the last week of February. A number of major corporations are taking part in this event, underscoring the fact that energy issues are not simply a topic of academic or political debate, but are of vital concern to all sectors of our economy and society.
As you well know, in the near future we are facing a watershed event – that some are predicting will come even as soon as 30 years away – when our oil reserves will effectively dry up and run out. Can you imagine the consequences of this? We have already been unsettled by the tremors of temporary oil shortages, but these are miniscule in the larger scheme of things. The upheavals caused by a full scale disruption of our reliance on petroleum-based products promise to be monumental.
The EESI group at CU counsels that we need to respond by coordinating the contributions from science and technology with consideration for both economic and environmental impacts. We are coming to realize that our future welfare has measurable value on multiple scales, and that commercial and social consequences are not divorced from each other. To achieve an effective coordination among the contributions of technology to achieve their greatest benefit for our future, in the face of the profound changes our world is undergoing, requires us to rely on the supporting technologies of computer-based and analytical decision making. Sometimes called the field of optimization, this realm of seeking the best decisions to coordinate complex interactions, as in tradeoffs affecting effective operations and sound policy, is a vital resource for charting the path we need to follow. We have the option of bumbling our way into the future, with catastrophic consequences, or of planning our course intelligently with the best decision making techology at our disposal.
I can attest first-hand to the importance of this, as a principal on many studies for diverse groups such as the Department of Energy, the Department of Transportation, the Bureau of Land Management, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and a variety of others, including groups concerned with local and national security. A telling example of the consequences of proper coodination of technology and commercial implementation comes from a study I led for a firm in the chemical industry, which realized over $30 million in savings from improved decision-making policies. This is just a single firm and the example can be multiplied many times. The problems of how to combine and distribute alternative energy sources on a national scale involve billions upon billions of dollars – not just as a one-shot affair, but on a continuing basis as we confront the challenges ahead.
The University of Colorado is fortunate enough to be the home of researchers who have pioneered decision making models and methods that are achieving the kinds of benefits I’ve mentioned, and who have taken part in implementing their work in real world industrial and business applications. When I speak of pioneers, I mean international pioneers, who are recognized worldwide for their contributions. Right now the National Renewable Energy Laboratories (NREL) is making use of some of these innovations, and we are capable of providing them more broadly and effectively not only within NREL but also outside, to organizations and companies covering the spectrum of applications in the energy field.
By these means, CU has an opportunity to make an unprecedented impact in Colorado, the U.S. and the world. In closing, let me say I am honored to be able to take part in pursuing this initiative as a Distinguished Professor.
Thank you.
Fred Glover, December 8, 2005.
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