Ronald Howard

August 27, 1934

He is a professor in the Department of Engineering-Economic Systems (now the Department of Management Science and Engineering) in the School of Engineering at Stanford. Professor Howard directs teaching and research in decision analysis at Stanford, and is the Director of the Decisions and Ethics Center, which examines the efficacy and ethics of decision making under uncertainties. He was a founding Director and Chairman of Strategic Decisions Group. Current research interests are improving the quality of decisions, life-and-death decision making, and the creation of a coercion-free society.Professor Howard also taught a graduate level course called "Voluntary Social Systems," which investigated the means of constructing and operating a coercion-free (Libertarian) society. In 1999 Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences invited him to give the Omega Rho Distinguished Plenary Lecture at the Cincinnati National Meeting. Howard earned his Doctor of Science. in Electrical Engineering from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1958 and was an associate professor there until he joined Stanford. He pioneered the policy iteration method for solving Markov decision problems, and this method is sometimes called the "Howard policy-improvement algorithm" in his honor (Sargent, 1987, p 47). He was also instrumental in the development of the Influence diagram for the graphical analysis of decision situations.

Ronald Howard

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Education

Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Career

He is a professor in the Department of Engineering-Economic Systems (now the Department of Management Science and Engineering) in the School of Engineering at Stanford. Professor Howard directs teaching and research in decision analysis at Stanford, and is the Director of the Decisions and Ethics Center, which examines the efficacy and ethics of decision making under uncertainties. He was a founding Director and Chairman of Strategic Decisions Group.

Current research interests are improving the quality of decisions, life-and-death decision making, and the creation of a coercion-free society.Professor Howard also taught a graduate level course called "Voluntary Social Systems," which investigated the means of constructing and operating a coercion-free (Libertarian) society.

In 1999 Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences invited him to give the Omega Rho Distinguished Plenary Lecture at the Cincinnati National Meeting. Howard earned his Doctor of Science. in Electrical Engineering from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1958 and was an associate professor there until he joined Stanford.

He pioneered the policy iteration method for solving Markov decision problems, and this method is sometimes called the "Howard policy-improvement algorithm" in his honor (Sargent, 1987, p 47). He was also instrumental in the development of the Influence diagram for the graphical analysis of decision situations.

Achievements

In 1986 he received the Operations Research Society of America"s Frank P. Ramsey Medal "for distinguished contributions in decision analysis". In 1998 he received from the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences ( Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences) the first award for the teaching of operations research/management science practice. In the same year he was elected to the National Academy of Engineering, and received the Dean"s Award for Academic Excellence.

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Ronald Howard

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Ramsey Medal; the Dean's Award