Ronald A. Howard Professor Management Science and Engineering and by courtesy, Professor, Graduate School of Business Director, Decisions and Ethics Center Office: Terman 420 | Phone: 650-723-4176 | Fax: 650-723-1614 Email: rhoward @ stanford.edu

Biographical Sketch

Ronald A. Howard has been Professor in the Department of Engineering-Economic Systems (now the Department of Management Science and Engineering) in the School of Engineering of Stanford University since 1965. Professor Howard directs teaching and research in the Decision Analysis Program of the Department, and is the Director of the Decisions and Ethics Center, which examines the efficacy and ethics of social arrangements. He defined the profession of decision analysis in 1964 and has since supervised several doctoral theses in decision analysis every year. His experience includes dozens of decision analysis projects that range over virtually all fields of application, from investment planning to research strategy, and from hurricane seeding to nuclear waste isolation. He has been a consultant to several companies, and was a founding Director and Chairman of Strategic Decisions Group. Professor Howard is also Professor by Courtesy in the Graduate School of Business at Stanford.

He has written three books, dozens of technical papers, and provided editorial service to seven technical journals. He was founding Editor of the Journal of the Society for Scientific Exploration. He has lectured in decision analysis at universities in several foreign countries, including the former Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China. His national society affiliations have included the Operations Research Society of America; the Operational Research Society (U. K.); the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (Fellow); and the Institute of Management Science, of which he has been president. Current research interests are improving the quality of decisions, life-and-death decision making, and the creation of a coercion free society.

In 1986 he received the Operations Research Society of America's Frank P. Ramsey Medal "for Distinguished Contributions in Decision Analysis". In 1998 he received from the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS) the first award for the Teaching of Operations Research/Management Science Practice. In 1999 this organization invited him to give the Omega Rho Distinguished Plenary Lecture at the Cincinnati National Meeting. In the same year he was elected to the National Academy of Engineering, and received the Dean's Award for Academic Excellence.

Professor Howard earned his Sc.D. in Electrical Engineering from MIT in 1958. He was Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering, Associate Professor of Industrial Management, and Associate Director of the Operations Research Center at MIT when he joined the Stanford faculty as Professor in 1965.