By Nilay Argon, Secretary

Steve Chick, President of the Society, called the meeting to order at 6:18pm.

Attendees introduced themselves (name, affiliation, and number of times they attended WSC).

Steve Chick thanked officers, council and committee members, and WSC organizing committee for their work.

Steve Chick gave a report on the first INFORMS Simulation Society Workshop which was held in Fontainebleau, France July 5-7, 2007. He noted that the workshop was very successful with a good financial outcome (thanks to the sponsors, NSF and INSEAD). Extended abstracts are provided at http://www.insead.edu/issrw/ and an ACM TOMACS special issue is in progress. John Fowler, Mike Kuhl, and Stewart Robinson are working on an upcoming workshop.

Mike Kuhl gave the Vice President’s report and made announcements of the upcoming meetings. There will be one I-Sim sponsored session at the IFORS meeting, which will be held in Sandton, South Africa, July 13-18, 2008. Jesus Jimenez announced the INFORMS Southwest Regional Conference, which will be held at the Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, April 18-19, 2008. Early registration deadline is March 9, 2008. The conference is not limited to the southwest region.

John Fowler commented on the 2008 WSC meeting which will be held in Miami, FL, December 7-10, 2008. The general chair is Tom Jefferson and the program chair is John Fowler. He also added that the WSC Board Representatives for I-Sim are Doug Morrice and Christos Alexopoulos.

Nilay Argon gave the Secretary’s report. The society currently has 525 members, almost half from academia and half from industry/government/military. She mentioned that only 19 members are also WORMS (INFORMS Women in OR/MS Forum) members and 3 members are INFORMS Minority Issues Forum members.

Seong-Hee Kim gave the Treasurer's report. The society is doing well financially. She thanked Soumyadip Ghosh for his efforts that resulted in a donation from IBM in the amount of $3000.

Paul Glasserman announced the outstanding publication awards on behalf of the award committee (Paul Glasserman [chair], Peter Haas, and Seong-Hee Kim). He noted that there were strong nominations and the committee selected two publications:

Christos Alexopoulos and David Goldsman thanked the committee and made brief remarks about their paper. The authors of the other winning publication were not present at the meeting.

Victor Chan gave a report on the WSC’07 PhD colloquium. There were 25 participants and the colloquium took exactly three hours. He announced the I-Sim and ACM-SIG/SIM best student paper awards winners and presented certificates to all PhD colloquium participants. The best computer science-focused paper award is given to Gareth Evans from the University of Queensland, Australia, for his presentation on "Parallel Cross-Entropy Optimization," and the best OR/MS focused paper is awarded to Kuo-Hao Chang of Purdue University, for his presentation entitled "Stochastic Trust Region Gradient-Free Method - A New RSM-based Algorithm for Simulation Optimization."

Jesus Jimenez gave an update on the Committee of Underrepresented Minorities and Women (CUMW). He presented four awards to Guadalupe Villarreal of Universidad Autonoma de Nuevo Leon, Malak Al-Nory of George Mason University, Grisel Guerrero of University of Texas at El Paso, and Ahmed El Nashar of University of Central Florida.

Doug Morrice gave the WSC’07 report. The WSC Board returned $13,000 to each of the sponsoring societies from the surplus of WSC ’06. He noted that WSC Board decided to take steps to improve reporting to all sponsoring societies including INFORMS. A committee (chaired by Christos Alexopoulos) is set up to work on replacing the paper management system. The committee will make recommendations to the WSC Board by the end of March 2008. He also announced that WSC Board authorized a conference committee to search hotels in Berlin, Germany for WSC 2012.

Journal reports were then given by Michael Fu (Management Science), Shane Henderson (Operations Research), Marvin Nakayama (INFORMS Journal on Computing), Christos Alexopoulos (IIE Transactions) and Jim Wilson (ACM TOMACS). (See the Spring 2008 newsletter for statistics.) Jim Wilson announced that a special issue of ACM TOMACS was issued in memory of Perwez Shahabuddin.

Steve Chick gave the Nominating Committee’s report on behalf of Russell Barton. Elections for I-Sim officers are coming up this spring, for a changing of the guard in Summer 2008. The Nominating Committee identified nominees for all offices. Steve Chick urged all members to vote.

Jim Wilson mentioned that for the Lifetime Professional Achievement Award (LPAA), normally people who are retired or close to retirement are considered. According to the current guidelines, the distinction between this award and the distinguished service award is not clear. He made the following motion:

Motion passed with one opposing vote.

Bob Sargent and Jim Wilson gave updates on the simulation archives at the NC State University Library. Dick Nance, Alan Pritsker, and Julian Reitman established an endowment. Bob Sargent donated $5,000 to this endowment and encouraged I-Sim to provide support. $15,000 is needed to keep the archives at NCSU. Contact Jim Wilson for support. An I-Sim committee will be nominated to support this endowment.

Bob Sargent asked WSC Board not to schedule any program activities on Tuesday evenings at the same time with the business meetings.

Barry Nelson presented the 2007 I-Sim Distinguished Service Award to Russell Cheng on behalf of the award committee (Dave Goldsman [chair], Deb Sadowski, and Barry Nelson). He noted that Russell Cheng is a true gentleman and he provides a role model for reviewing. His referee reports are very rigorous, invariably encouraging, positive, and constructive. After Barry Nelson’s comments, Russell Cheng accepted the award and gave a brief acceptance speech. He noted that the conference is exceptional and he is very proud to be associated with I-Sim.

Jack Kleijnen presented the 2007 I-Sim Lifetime Professional Achievement Award (LPAA) to Dick Nance on behalf of the award committee (Jack Kleijnen [chair], George Fishman, and Keebom Kang). He noted that the decision was unanimous and was based on Dick’s resume and supporting letters that clearly demonstrated that Dick satisfied all requirements to receive LPAA. He also mentioned that Dick is an excellent researcher, educator, and leader. Before presenting the award, Jack Kleijnen noted that Keebom Kang will chair the LPAA committee next year and encouraged the community to nominate deserving colleagues. Bob Sargent also gave a short speech about Dick Nance. He listed several of Dick’s services and honors: He was the founding editor of ACM TOMACS; he served as area editor or associate editor at five journals including IIE Transactions, Operations Research, and INFORMS Journal of Computing; he served as ACM SIG/SIM chair and served on the WSC Board of Directors; he was the program chair of WSC 1990; he became an ACM fellow in 1996. Dick received the award and gave an acceptance speech. He thanked I-Sim (which he believed moved the simulation forward), the committee, and colleagues. He gave a brief presentation on his simulation philosophy and thanked many people he considered as educators.

Steve Chick introduced the two of the three founders of WSC, Harold Hixson and Julian Reitman, who chaired the first conference in 1967. Unfortunately, the third founder, Arnold Ockene, could not attend the business meeting due to health problems. Harold Hixson and Julian Reitman made remarks about the first meeting.

The meeting adjourned at 8:15pm.

Attendees: In the interest of preventing email address harvesting, email addresses have been disguised. To get the true email address, replace <of> with @.

Christos Alexopoulos christos<of>isye.gatech.edu
Claudia Antonini cfmantonini<of>usb.ve
Nilay Argon nilay<of>unc.edu
Neal Bengston bengston<of>barton.edu
Deepak Bhatia Deepak_bhatia<of>amat.com
Ron Billings ron.billings<of>gatech.edu
Tarik Borogoval tarikb<of>bu.edu
Eric Buist buisteric<of>iro.u.montreal.ca
Laura Cardona lauraccm<of>gmail.com
Joseph Carnahan carrahan<of>virginia.edu
Wai Kin (Victor) Chan chanw<of>rpi.edu
Kuo-Hao Chang changk<of>purdue.edu
Russell Cheng rchc<of>maths.soton.ac.uk
Steve Chick stephen.chick<of>insead.edu
Roy Creasey creaseyrr<of>longwood.edu
Thorsten Daum tsd-wsc07<of>himass.com
Ruth Davies ruth.davies<of>wbs.ac.uk
Tom Donnelly Thomas.a.donnelly<of>us.army.mil
Debra Elkins delka<of>allstate.com
Ahmed El-Nashar aelnashar<of>mail.ucf.edu
Gareth Evans gevans<of>maths.ug.edu.au
Tom Fletcher Thomas.w.fletcher<of>lonco.com
John Fowler john.fowler<of>asu.edu
Soumyadip Ghosh ghoshs<of>us.ibm.com
Paul Glasserman pg20<of>columbia.edu
Dave Goldsman sman<of>gatech.edu
Gricel Guerrero gcguerrero<of>miners.utep.edu
Murat Gunal m.gunal<of>lancaster.ac.uk
Mark Harmon mark.harmon<of>usss.dhs.gov
Shane Henderson sgh9<of>cornell.edu
Ray Hill ray.hill<of>wright.edu
Katy Hoad kathryn.hoad<of>wbs.ac.uk
Henyi Jen henyi<of>Saturn.yzu.edu.tw
Jeff Joines jeffjoines<of>ncsu.edu
Itir Karaesmen itir<of>umd.edu
Vishnu Kesaraju Kesaraju.z<of>wright.edu
Seong-Hee Kim skim<of>isye.gatech.edu
Sujin Kim sujin<of>purdue.edu
Yun Bae Kim kimyb<of>skku.edu
Jack Kleijnen kleijnen<of>uvt.nl
Michael Kuhl mekeie<of>rit.edu
Loo Hay Lee iseleelh<of>nus.edu.sg
Lanting Lu L.Lu<of>soton.ac.uk
Charles Macal macal<of>anl.gov
George Mejtsky george.mejtsky@yahoo.com
Georgie Mellor g.r.mellor<of>soton.ac.uk
Ugo Merlone merlone<of>econ.unito.it
J. O. Miller john.miller<of>afit.edu
Aria Monteforte aria.monteforte<of>reliasoft.com
Jairo Montoya jrmontoy<of>yahoo.com
Doug Morrice morrice<of>mail.utexas.edu
Dick Nance nance<of>vt.edu
Barry L. Nelson nelsonb<of>northwestern.edu
Michael North north<of>anl.gov
Kara Olson kara<of>cs.odu.edu
Ernie Page epage<of>mitre.org
Raghu Pasupathy pasupath<of>vt.edu
Ray Paul ray.paul<of>brunel.ac.uk
Mike Pidd<of>lancaster.ac.uk
Steve Roberts roberts<of>ncsu.edu
Stewart Robinson stewart.robinson<of>warwick.ac.uk
Theresa Roeder tmroeder<of>sfsu.edu
Jose Rojas jroja003<of>fiu.edu
Manuel Rosetti rossetti<of>uark.edu
Kim Bang Salling kbs<of>ctt.dtu.dk
Doug Samuelson samuelsondoug<of>yahoo.com
Paul Sanchez paulsanchez<of>nps.edu
Susan Sanchez ssanchez<of>nps.edu
Luis Santa-Eulalia luisase<of>gmail.com
Robert Sargent rsargent<of>syr.edu
Bruce Schmeiser bruce<of>purdue.edu
Tom Schriber schriber<of>umich.edu
Andy Seila aseila<of>gmail.com
Nitin Shah nitin.a.shah<of>intel.com
Yong-Jun Son son<of>sie.arizona.edu
Jeremy Staum jstaum<of>northwestern.edu
Ali Tafazolli atafazz<of>ncsu.edu
Jayne Talbot jtalbot<of>raytheonvte.com
Jeff Tew jeffrey.tew<of>gm.com
Durk-Jouke van der Zee d.j.van.der.zee@rug.nl
Guadalupe Villarreal lupita.villarreal<of>gmail.com
Hong Wan hwan<of>purdue.edu
Pres White kpwhite<of>virginia.edu
Jamie Wieland jwieland<of>purdue.edu
Steven Wilcox spwilcox<of>acm.org
Jim Wilson jwilson<of>ncsu.edu
Dave Withers davidwithers<of>msn.com
Russell Wooten russell.wooten<of>dhs.gov
Terry Young terryyoung<of>brunel.ac.uk
Lei Yu lei.yu<of>shef.ac.uk
Enver Yucesan enver.yucesan<of>insead.edu