James J. Cochran is professor of statistics & operations research and the Mike & Kathy Mouron Research Chair with the University of Alabama’s Culverhouse College. He received his PhD from the University of Cincinnati in 1997. He has served on 18 journal boards and as editor of INFORMS Transactions on Education. He has published 18 book chapters, 60+ research articles, and 8 textbooks in statistics, operations research, analytics, and data visualization.
Cochran’s research focuses on problems at the interface of statistics and operations research. He expanded the optimization paradigm from deterministic vs. stochastic to deterministic vs. stochastic vs. sample-based optimization; developed Bayesian and predictive approaches to optimization problems; crafted an approach to optimizing political platforms (establishing political engineering as a subfield of political science); and created the finitization methodology for restricting the support of a probability distribution while preserving the values of its moments.
Cochran is the founding Editor of the Wiley Encyclopedia of Operations Research and the Management Sciences, Wiley Series in Operations Research and Management Science, Springer Synthesis Lectures on Operations Research and Applications, and INFORMS Analytics Body of Knowledge. He established a teaching effectiveness colloquium series and organized events in 20+ nations. He was founding co-chair of Statistics without Borders and founding committee member for the INFORMS Pro Bono Analytics initiative. He has delivered keynotes to conferences in 30+ nations.
Cochran has received the INFORMS Prize for the Teaching of OR/MS Practice, Mu Sigma Rho Statistical Education Award, Waller Distinguished Teaching Career Award, ASQ’s William G. Hunter Award, and Karl E. Peace Award for outstanding statistical contributions for the betterment of society. He is Fellow of the African Academy of Sciences, American Statistical Association, and INFORMS. He has received the American Statistical Association Founders Award, INFORMS President’s Award, and Scripps Howard Award for Excellence in Journalism.
