Dick Conway, a founder of Cornell’s computer science department and chaired professor emeritus at the Johnson Graduate School of Management, has been honored by Management Science for his early, seminal research in computer simulation. The pre-eminent journal in its field, Management Science is published by the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS).

Conway’s 1967 book was co-authored with ORIE colleague William Maxwell and Louis Miller of the RAND Corporation and included computer simulation among a range of techniques for resolving scheduling problems. It was named among the 25 books most influential to the development of operations research.

The journal’s editor-in-chief, Wallace Hopp, the Breed University Professor at Northwestern University, described Conway’s findings as “visionary” and said that they “established the research agenda for the simulation field for decades.”

Computer simulation seeks to model such problems as inefficiency in a manufacturing facility’s supply chain, study what’s not working well, and come up with a systematic way to improve the operation, said Hopp. “In the ’60s, Dick identified what problems simulation had to solve. He laid them out neatly. People in the field followed his road map for decades.”

An article in the July 2004 issue of Management Science by Barry Nelson, a professor at Northwestern University, noted that a 1959 paper co-authored by Conway (with Cornell researchers William Maxwell and B.M. Johnson) and a second paper authored by Conway alone in 1963 “described a number of simulation problems that continue to occupy researchers to this day.” The article, which was written as part of a series marking the journal’s 50th anniversary this year, traced the impact of the two papers on the work of other researchers, notably the authors of eight award-winning papers published in Management Science.

Conway, B.M.E. ’54, Ph.D. ’58, began his academic career as a faculty member in operations research and industrial engineering at Cornell. He helped found the computer science department in 1965 and was acting chair in 1978–79 and 1983–84. In 1966–68, he was director of Cornell Computer Services, a precursor to Cornell Information Technologies (CIT). Conway left the College of Engineering to join the faculty of the Johnson School in 1984, becoming the first Emerson Electric Company Professor of Manufacturing Management, in 1989. He was instrumental in launching the Semester in Manufacturing, a course that was the model for other immersion courses at the Johnson School. He became emeritus in 1999 but continued to teach in the school’s executive MBA program.

Conway was elected to the National Academy of Engineering 1992 for his contributions.

—Linda Myers
Cornell News Service