Nelson Wins 2024 Saul Gass Expository Writing Award
The award honors a researcher whose publications demonstrate a consistently high standard
Northwestern Engineering’s Barry Nelson has won the 2024 Saul Gass Expository Writing Award, given by the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS).
Nelson, Walter P. Murphy Professor Emeritus of Industrial Engineering and Management Sciences, is a prolific author of books and academic articles exploring operations research, with an emphasis on stochastic simulation. According to the award citation, Nelson’s “expository skills pervade his research and pedagogical contributions to simulation methodology, modeling, and applications” and his three textbooks are “models of expository writing.”
The first editions of Nelson’s three books are:
- Discrete-Event System Simulation (Prentice Hall, 1984)
- Stochastic Modeling: Analysis and Simulation (Dover Books on Mathematics, 1995)
- Foundations and Methods of Stochastic Simulation: A First Course (Springer, 2013)
“Nelson’s expository influence has shaped stochastic simulation and has been further enhanced by his editorial work and his software, tutorials, and videos,” the citation reads.
The Saul Gass Expository Writing Award honors an operations researcher or management scientist whose publications demonstrate a consistently high standard of expository writing. The awardee’s written work, published over a period of at least 10 years, indicates (in terms of breadth of readership) an influence and accessibility enhanced by expository excellence.