David Simchi-Levi awarded INFORMS Impact Prize

MIT professor of civil and environmental engineering David Simchi-Levi has been chosen by INFORMS to receive the organization’s prestigious Impact Prize. INFORMS is the leading international association of operations research and analytics professionals. The Impact Prize is presented every two years to an INFORMS member who has played an integral part in the widespread impact of their work in the practice of operations research.  

Simchi-Levi is a professor of engineering systems and the director of the MIT Data Science Lab. He is the current editor-in-chief of the INFORMS journal Management Science and the past editor-in-chief of the INFORMS journal Operations Research.

“This is an incredible honor. Past recipients were established leaders in their fields and received the award for the development and dissemination of aviation security methods; revenue management techniques; or operations research methods for solving large-scale linear and integer programs. Many of these researchers had a significant influence on my career. I am proud and humbled to be a fellow recipient of the Impact Prize,” said Simchi-Levi in response to being selected for the honor.

The recognition highlights Simchi-Levi’s leading role in developing and disseminating a new highly impactful paradigm for the identification and mitigation of risks in global supply chains. The new approach is meant to handle disruptions associated with unforeseen, low-probability, high-impact events. The new Risk Exposure Index approach analyzes supply chain resiliency, identifies hidden risks, and suggests mitigation strategies to address these risks. Simchi-Levi has worked to ensure that the concepts are accessible to a wide audience in academia, industry, and government. It’s already being utilized by the automotive and telecommunications industries, government agencies such as the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction, and logistics and consulting companies.

Stephen Graves, the Abraham J. Siegel Professor of Management at MIT and INFORMS president-elect, notes “David Simchi-Levi's Risk Exposure Model has pioneered a new approach to supply chain resiliency that is practically relevant and academically elegant. The new approach allows companies to quantify and estimate exposure to disruption anywhere in their supply chain and provide insights about mitigation strategies. It also opened up a new line of research that others have followed.”