Fu Wins Saul Gass Expository Writing Award

Maryland Smith’s Michael Fu has won the 2021 INFORMS Saul Gass Expository Writing award, becoming only the second Maryland Smith professor to earn the distinction.

The award, which recognizes a scholar whose publications in operations research and management science “set an exemplary standard of exposition,” was presented during the INFORMS conference in Anaheim, Calif., on Oct. 24, 2021.

Fu has a joint appointment with the University of Maryland’s Institute for Systems Research and an affiliate appointment with Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, both in UMD’s A. James Clark School of Engineering. His research interests include simulation modeling and analysis, operations management, applied probability and queueing theory, with application to manufacturing and finance.

He is co-author/editor of six books: Conditional Monte Carlo: Gradient Estimation and Optimization Applications, which was awarded the INFORMS Simulation Society's Outstanding Publication Award in 1998, Simulation-based Algorithms for Markov Decision Processes, Perspectives in Operations Research, Advances in Mathematical Finance, Encyclopedia of Operations Research and Management Science (3rd edition), and Handbook of Simulation Optimization. Other awards include the Business School's Allen J. Krowe Award for Teaching Excellence (1995), the Institute for Systems Research Outstanding Faculty Award (2002), the IIE Operations Research Division Award (1999), an Operations Research Meritorious Service Award (1999), and an IIE Transactions Best Paper Award (1998).

Fu follows Saul Gass, the award’s namesake, as the second professor from the University of Maryland’s business school to earn the writing award.

Gass was a full-time member of the Science and Technology Task Force of President Lyndon Johnson’s Commission on Law Enforcement and held a variety of consulting and teaching roles before coming to the University of Maryland in 1975. While at Maryland, he became a prolific writer about operations research and served as the president of the Operations Research Society of America. Gass, who wrote and edited several books and an encyclopedia on the history and development of operations research, would later become known as “the Chronicler of Operations Research.” In 1997, he was presented with the INFORMS Expository Writing Award, which was later renamed in his honor.