Dr. Seth Bonder was an IOE faculty member at the University of Michigan as well as the founder and chairman/CEO of Vector Research, Inc. Much of his career was focused on improving the planning and operations of healthcare delivery enterprises. He was also an expert in national security and defense enterprises, with an international reputation for his work developing new procedures and directing analyses for planning and operations analysis of military forces. He was particularly passionate about supporting and mentoring students. Dr. Bonder generously endowed fellowships at the Ohio State University and the University of Michigan, and also established and funded two INFORMS scholarships to recognize and support Ph.D. students working on applied OR in military applications and in health services. Before his death he established The Seth Bonder Foundation which continues his legacy of supporting students and research. He said in the Military Operations Research Oral History Project, “I had ORSA, MORS, the Army Science Board, the National Academy of Engineering, Vector and the teaching part. They’ve all been pieces of an integrated career. I’m not sure how I did all of it, probably not well (Laughs). When I look back on my life and wonder if I’ve contributed something, I think: ‘Yes, I did.’”
Pascal Van Hentenryck is the A. Russell Chandler III Chair and Professor in the H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering at Georgia Tech. Prior to that, he was the Seth Bonder Collegiate Professor at the University of Michigan in Industrial and Systems Engineering, Professor of Computer Science and Engineering, and Core Faculty in the Michigan Institute for Data Science (MIDAS). He also led the optimization research group (about 70 people) at National ICT Australia (NICTA) and was a professor of Computer Science at Brown University for about 20 years.
Van Hentenryck’s research focuses in Artificial Intelligence, Data Science, and Operations Research. His current focus is to develop methodologies, algorithms, and systems for addressing challenging problems in mobility, energy systems, resilience, and privacy. In the past, his research focused on optimization and the design and implementation of innovative optimization systems, including the CHIP programming system (a Cosytec product), the foundation of all modern constraint programming systems and the optimization programming language OPL (now an IBM Product). Van Hentenryck has also worked on computational biology, numerical analysis, and programming languages, publishing in premier journals in these areas.