The Memorial Tribute to the Great Hani Mahmassani at INFORMS

All those who had the pleasure of knowing Hani Mahmassani, who passed away on July 15, 2025 at the age of 69, will never forget him. He has left us with an incredible void, but lucky are we who were his friends, and/or his students,  and/or colleagues, or collaborators.

Many thanks to Yue Wang of the University of Arizona, who prepared this poster notice for the  Transportation Science and Logistics (TSL) Society memorial tribute event in honor of Hani Mahmassani that took place last week at the INFORMS Conference in Atlanta.

The session began with a Zoom presentation by Roberto Roberti of Italy, this year's recipient of the Stella Dafermos Mid-Career Award, and then it was time for our panel, which was chaired by Karen Smilowitz of Northwestern University, a colleague of Hani's.

At the beginning, we gathered for a photo with Pat Mokhtarian, of Georgia Tech, who joined us. Pat was elected to the National Academy of Engineering, as Hani had been earlier.

Srinivas Peeta of Georgia Tech had prepared the nice collage poster of photos that some of us had also contributed to.

The talks were incredibly touching with Srinivas Peeta speaking about Hani, as his PhD advisor, and colleague, with numerous photos over the years of many luminaries in transportation science. He emphasized what a great researcher Hani was and also an outstanding organizer, integrator, and mentor. 

In my presentation, which is available here:  https://supernet.isenberg.umass.edu/visuals/Hani-Tribute-INFORMS-Nagurney.pdf, I included photos taken over many years of activities, including service ones, I had engaged in with Hani. So many memories came flooding back and I can hear his voice. Hani always inspired us to reach higher and to do more. He stretched us professionally and personally with his many kindnesses and support.

Marco Nie, a colleague of Hani's at Northwestern, had used ChatGPT for his presentation slides, and it was fascinating to see what was picked up by AI in terms of the contributions of Hani's research to transportation science, such as his work on bounded rationality and traffic assignment, and dynamic traffic network equilibrium.

Mike Hyland of UC Irvine, and a former PhD student of Hani's, spoke from the heart about how it was to work with Hani, who only slept a few hours a night. Hani was always willing to listen and to push the frontiers of transportation research and practice. He supervised over 75 PhD theses. 

We then took the group photo below. Thanks to all who were able to join us for this touching memorial session in honor of Hani Mahmassani. 

Thank you, Hani, for your friendship, scholarship, leadership, and for being a visionary.

For the In Memoriam, co-authored by Karen Smilowitz and Marco Nie, and published in the journal Transportation Science, see here: https://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/10.1287/trsc.2025.memorial.v59.n6

The In Memoriam ends as follows: "In 1997, Hani wrote a tribute to Robert Herman in Transportation Science. He closed his tribute with the following words that ring so true to us as we remember Hani: “I will miss him, and so will many others, but will always know that I am a richer person for having known him.”"

Fantastic News for the Isenberg School and Reasons to Celebrate

Today we celebrated at the Isenberg School of Management at UMass Amherst. The day was filled with a special panel at the Mullins Center and a reception in our atrium to recognize the unprecedented gift of the McCormack family to our sports management department, which will now carry the McCormack name.

The vast archival collection of Mark H. McCormack, the creator of the sport management and marketing industry, and founder of the International Management Group, now IMG, will be housed at UMass Amherst, providing truly unique opportunities for research and education in the field.

This gift was made possible through the careful nurturing of the relationships with the family by the chair of the sports management department, my colleague, Professor Lisa Masteralexis, with support from our Dean, Dr. Mark Fuller.

As we were told, there are 48,000 boxes of correspondence and documents to study. Arnold Palmer was IMG's first client and others included such renowned sports figures as Chris Evert, Jean-Claude Killy, and, of course, Derek Jeter. McCormack wrote numerous books, including the bestselling What They Don't Teach You at Harvard Business School, which spent 21 consecutive weeks at #1 on the New York Times bestseller list, and The Terrible Truth About Lawyers.

UMass Amherst issued a press release on our acquisition of the historic collection in sports.

In addition to the remarkable value of the McCormack Collection itself, the McCormack family has made a $1.5 million gift to endow educational programs:

• The Mark H. McCormack Executive-in-Residence Program will bring sport industry executives to campus to mentor and share their knowledge and experience with students. While on campus, the executives will be interviewed by the library and department for an oral history project on the concept of innovation in the sport industry.

• The Mark H. McCormack International Partnership Program will support collaboration in sport management education across the globe and will support faculty and student travel..

The panel of McCormack family members spoke of the legacy of Mr. McCormack and responded to specific questions that the students had.

I was very impressed by the "pearls of wisdom" provided by the McCormack family panelists, who included his children and his wife. They noted that their father every day wrote dozens of letters and memos and carefully nurtured relationships and people. He never threw away a resume and was always seeking bright, new minds. His children helped to build up IMG as a major global brand and enjoyed their assignments in London, Sydney, and even years in Hong Kong. They emphasized the importance of trust, service, and taking care of their clients, some of whom (in particular, the tennis stars) came under their care when they were quite young. They also emphasized the importance of studying foreign languages, something I definitely concur with. McCormack's daughter spoke about how she majored in French and because of her knowledge of that language helped to get the Olympic skier, Jean-Claude Killy, as a client.

The panelists also noted that McCormack was perhaps the first promulgator of reality TV in that he brought together sports celebrities to compete in various challenging events from obstacle courses on. He was outstanding in identifying "events" and in organizing them, emphasizing also the spectator experience.

Today was a very special day with the dawn of a new era for the Isenberg School and the legacy of an outstanding individual and businessman. Even The Boston Globe is covering this major news story. For coverage on cnbc.com on Sports-Biz click here.