Karla Hoffman is a Professor in the Systems Engineering and Operations Research Department of the School of Information Technology and Engineering of George Mason University where she served as Chair for five years ending in 2001. Previously, she worked as a mathematician in the Operations Research Department of the Center for Applied Mathematics of the National Institute of Standards and Technology where she served as a senior consultant to a variety of government agencies. She received her BS in mathematics from Rutgers University in1969, and an M.B.A. and a D.Sc. in Operations Research from the George Washington University in 1971 and 1975, respectively.
Awards:
National Institute of Standards and technology (NIST) Applied Research Award, Commerce Department Silver Medal, George Mason University's Distinguished Faculty Award, The Volgenau School of Engineering Distinguished Research Award, and the Institute of Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS) Kimball Medal and Harvey Greenberg Service Award. She is an honorary member of Omega Rho, and is a Fellow of the Institute of Operations Research and the Management Sciences.
Professional Activities:
Dr. Hoffman served as President of INFORMS in 1999 and served for three years on the Administrative Council of the International Federation of Operations Research Societies (IFORS) as the Vice President of the North American Operations Research Societies. She has served on the Boards of INFORMS, The Operations Research Society of America (ORSA), and The Mathematical Programming Society. She has served as Treasurer and Secretary of the Parkinson Foundation of the National Capital Area.
Research Areas:
Dr. Hoffman's primary areas of research are combinatorial optimization and auction research. She consults to the Federal Communication Commission on auction design and testing. She has consulted to a variety of corporations on the routing and scheduling of ships, trucks and buses. She has consulted to U.S. Airways, Delta Airlines, Northwest Airlines, and American Airlines on fleet assignment and crew-scheduling problems. She has worked with the Disney Corporation and Florida Rock Industries on real-time scheduling. She has served as a consultant on combinatorial optimization problems for telecommunications, transportation, postal services and military organizations and has consulted on auction design related to telecommunications. She has served on the editorial boards of: Annals of Operations Research, Computational Optimization and its Applications, Information Systems Frontiers, INFORMS Journal on Computing, Mathematical Programming, and the SIAM Journal on Optimization.