Congratulations to the 2012 SIAM Fellows!

Having received a PhD in Applied Mathematics from Brown University, with a specialization in Operations Research, I have been a member of quite a few professional societies from INFORMS and POMS  to the Econometric Society, the Regional Science Association International, the Society for Computational Economics, and, of course, the American Mathematical Society (AMS), and SIAM (the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics).

I also belong to various special interest groups within certain societies in both INFORMS and POMS that focus on transportation and logistics, computing, and humanitarian operations.

Being a member of a professional society is very important since one gains a community of interest and expands one's disciplinary connections as well as personal ones.

I was delighted to see the new list of SIAM Fellows, which included several well-known operations researchers, including Don Goldfarb of Columbia and Bob Vanderbei of Princeton and, if I may say, a fellow PhD in Applied Math from Brown, Thaleia Zariphopoulou. Thaleia and I shared a room a while back at the INFORMS Conference in Orlando, and we had a fabulous time. She is now a chaired professor at Oxford University, having been previously at Wisconsin and Texas Austin. She has done outstanding work in financial mathematics.

I was also thrilled to see at the top of the list Tamer Basar from Illinois. I last saw Tamer at the NetGCoop Conference in Glorious Paris back in October, when I gave a keynote talk. He was the General Chair of this fabulous conference.

You may see the entire list here (and, last but not least, given her surname, you will find Thaleia).

Congrats to all the SIAM Fellows on an honor richly deserved. It is especially nice to see familiar faces!