James Scott, IROM assistant professor of statistics with a joint appointment in the Division of Statistics and Scientific Computation, has received a CAREER award from the National Science Foundation (NSF) for his project entitled: "Bringing richly structured Bayesian models into the discrete-data realm via new data-augmentation theory and algorithms."  The CAREER Award is the National Science Foundation's most prestigious award given to junior faculty.  According to the NSF, it supports the early career development of "those teacher-scholars who most effectively integrate research and education."  Scott will receive $400,000 over the next five years to develop statistical and computational methods for incorporating spatial patterns into probabilistic models. This work should provide new solutions for pressing data-analysis problems in science and industry.

IS PhD Graduate Dorothy Leidner has won an Association for Information Systems (AIS) Fellow Award. The AIS Fellow Award "recognizes individuals who have made outstanding research, teaching and/or service contributions to the field of information systems." Leidner cited risk analysis and decision making professor Tom Shively and the late management science and information systems professor Darwin Klingman as her influences. Leidner is currently the Ferguson Professor of Information Systems at Baylor University, and the Director of the PhD program in Information Systems.

MIS professor Anitesh Barua recently won a UT System Regents' Outstanding Teaching Award. This prestigious award is awarded annually to those who have "demonstrated extraordinary classroom performance and innovation in undergraduate instruction." OM assistant professor Guoming Lai was awarded the INFORMS Energy, Natural Resources & the Environment 2012 Best Publication Award for "An Approximate Dynamic Programming Approach to Benchmark Practice-Based Heuristics for Natural Gas Storage Valuation", published in Operations Research.

Supply chain management lecturer Mike Hasler's introductory operations management class has an up close and personal view of Target's supply chain, traveling to Hong Kong via the Center for International Business Education and Research. Read more at Know.

The IROM department is excited to announce the recent approval of a one-year Master of Science degree in Business Analytics. The first group of students will be admitted for Fall 2013. The market is very strong for Business Analytics that brings diverse skills in management information systems, computer science, statistics, operations research, and decision theory to solve business, economic, and social problems. If you would like to learn more about this program, visit Business Analytics.