With five decades of experience in the industry, Prof. Larson has certainly proven himself as an expert in his field. As a dynamic, results driven leader, Prof. Larson’s career has focused his operations research and systems expertise on a wide variety of problems, in both public and private sectors. He is author, co-author or editor of six books and author or co-author of over 175 scientific articles, primarily in the fields of urban service systems (esp. emergency response systems), disaster planning, pandemics, queueing, logistics, technology-enabled education, smart-energy houses and workforce planning. His first book, Urban Police Patrol Analysis (MIT Press, 1972) was awarded the Lanchester Prize of the Operations Research Society of America (ORSA). He is co-author, with Amedeo Odoni, of the widely used Urban Operations Research, Prentice Hall, 1981 (over 1,000 citations). Prof. Larson’s research on queues has not only resulted in new computational techniques (e.g., the Queue Inference Engine – an early example of data-driven research — and the Hypercube Queueing Model – 740 citations), but has also been covered extensively in national and international media.
Two recent papers, co-authored with his students, have won Best-Paper-of-the-Year awards: “Modeling the Effects of H1N1 Influenza Vaccine Distribution in the U.S.” (with Anna Teytelman), Value in Health, 2012; and “STEM crisis or STEM surplus? Yes and yes” (with Ms. Yi Xue), Monthly Labor Review, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Lawrence M. Klein Award, US Department of Labor, 2015 (and covered in the New York Times).
Prof. Larson served as president of ORSA, (Operations Research Society of America, 1993-4), and is past-president of INFORMS (2005), Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences. Prof. Larson served as co-director of the MIT Operations Research Center (over 15 years in that post).
Dr. Larson has served on many government boards. For example, with the Institute of Medicine, he served as an invited member of the Board on Health Sciences Policy (2008-2010) and on the Standing Committee on Emergency Management and Medical Response Integration (2009 – 2015).
He has been consultant to numerous companies and government agencies, having multiple major projects with the U.S. Postal Service and the City of New York.
He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and is an INFORMS Founding Fellow. He has been honored with the INFORMS President’s Award and the Kimball Medal. In 2017, he was given the first-ever Lifetime Achievement Daniel Berg Medal for “making significant contributions to technology innovation, service systems and strategic decision making,” New Delhi, India.
From 1995 to mid 2003, Prof. Larson served as director of MIT’s CAES, Center for Advanced Educational Services. His position at CAES focused on bringing technology-enabled learning to students living on the traditional campus and to those living and working far from the university, perhaps on different continents. He was founding director of LINC, Learning International Networks Consortium, an MIT-based international project that has held eight international symposia.
Currently Prof. Larson is principal investigator of the MIT BLOSSOMS Initiative. He continues to be actively engaged in research, especially on how Operations Research can provide insights in the monitoring and control of Covid-19 and on analyzing proposed major structural changes in the US education system.
Prior to his career, Prof. Larson earned his BS and PhD in Electrical Engineering from MIT in 1969.
Throughout his illustrious career, Prof. Larson has received many awards and accolades and has been recognized worldwide for his accomplishments. Last year he was honored as Top Professor of the Year and for the Lifetime Achievement Award by IAOTP. He was honored at their annual awards gala at the Bellagio Hotel and he also graced the front cover of TIP Magazine and was on the famous Nasdaq Billboard and Planet Hollywood Billboard. This year he will be honored at IAOTP’s annual awards gala at the Plaza Hotel for his induction into the Hall Of Fame.
The President of the International Association of Top Professionals (IAOTP), Stephanie Cirami, stated: “It is my great honor and privilege to induct Prof. Larson into our Hall of Fame. He is inspirational, influential, and a true visionary and thought leader. We cannot wait to honor him and to celebrate his accomplishments at this year’s gala.”
Looking back, Prof. Larson attributes his success to his persistence and mentors he had along the way. When not working, he enjoys spending time with his family and traveling. In the future, he hopes to inspire and influence those getting into the field.
For more information, please visit:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/richard-larson-15241563/
