Nicholas G. Hall
Professor & Hazel Chair in Infrastructure Engineering
IFORS President
Dept. of Management Science, Ohio State University
https://fisher.osu.edu/people/hall.33
Research and Teaching Opportunities in Project Management
Almost one-quarter of the world's economic activity, with an annual value of $15 trillion, is organized using the business process of project management. This process has exhibited dramatic growth in business interest in recent years, with a greater than 1000% increase in Project Management Institute membership since
1996. Contributing to this growth are many new applications of project management. These include IT implementations, research and development, software development, corporate change management, and new product and service development. However, the very different characteristics of these modern projects present new challenges. The partial resolution of these challenges within project management practice over the last 20 years defines numerous interesting opportunities for academic researchers. These research opportunities make use of a remarkably broad range of methodologies, including robust optimization, cooperative and noncooperative game theory, nonlinear optimization, predictive analytics, empirical studies, and behavioral modeling. Furthermore, the $4.5 trillion that is annually at risk from a shortage of skilled project managers, and the 15.7 million new jobs in project management expected by 2020, provide great opportunities for contributions to project management education. These educational opportunities include the integration of case studies, analytics challenges, online simulations, in-class games, self-assessment exercises, videos, and guest speaker presentations, which together form an appealing course for both business and engineering schools.
About the speaker
ProfessorNicholas G. Hall
Nicholas G. Hall is a Fisher College of Business Distinguished Professor, and has a courtesy appointment in the Department of Integrated Systems Engineering, at The Ohio State University. He holds a Ph.D. in Management Science (1986) from the University of California, Berkeley, as well as B.A., M.A. degrees from the University of Cambridge, and a professional qualification in accounting. His research interests are in project management, incentives, scheduling, and pricing, and applications of operations research. He has published over 80 articles in the journals Operations Research, Management Science, Mathematics of Operations Research, Mathematical Programming, Games and Economic Behavior, Interfaces, and several other journals. His main teaching interest is in project management. He has served for a total of over 40 years on the editorial boards of Operations Research and Management Science. He has given over 360 academic presentations, including 112 invited presentations in 24 countries, 11 conference keynote presentations, and nine INFORMS national conference tutorials. A 2008 citation study ranked him 13th among 1,376 scholars in the operations management field. He won the Fisher College Pacesetters' Faculty Research Award in 1998 and 2005. He has served as President of Manufacturing and Service Operations Management society (1999-2000), and as Treasurer of INFORMS (2011-2014). He has served on the State of Ohio Steel Industry Advisory Council (1997–2002). He has been a visiting professor at the Wharton School (University of Pennsylvania) and Kellogg School (Northwestern University). He is the owner of a consulting business, CDOR, which provides business solutions to the Ohio business and government communities, and advice on intellectual property issues to New York City law firms. In 2018, he is serving as the 24th President of INFORMS.
