The internationalization of decision analysis is one of the major goals of the Decision Analysis Society. The MARA project is an exciting international effort to learn and apply decision analysis techniques to improve resource allocation decisions in public and private organizations.

I was honored to participate in the final presentations for MARA 2005 in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Young professionals from Germany, United Kingdom, and Argentina participated. The conference, held in elegant surroundings of the municipal offices, was professionally organized and executed. The five project presentations were comparable in quality to the best presentations at international conferences in our field. Corporate executives and government leaders praised the MARA team projects for providing significant value for the project sponsors. The participants and sponsors learned from variety of decision analysis applications.

The MARA 2006 program has expanded to include participation by young professionals from additional countries, including France and the United States. The participants will be provided decision analysis training by leaders of the decision analysis field. I look forward to attending the MARA 2006 Conference in September 2006, meeting the project members, and learning about this year's projects.

Gregory S. Parnell, Ph.D.

President, Decision Analysis Society

Institute for Operations Research and Management Science

Dr. Gregory S. Parnell is a Professor of Systems Engineering at the United States Military Academy at West Point. He is also a Senior Principal of Innovative Decisions Inc. (IDI), a leading decision analysis consulting firm. He teaches decision analysis, systems engineering, engineering management, and operations research. His research involves resource allocation, strategic planning, and R&D portfolio analysis. He has published papers in fourteen refereed journals and chapters in two books. He serves on three advisory boards, including the Technology Panel of the National Security Agency Advisory Board. He is a member of the Institute for Operations Research and Management Science (INFORMS), the Society for Risk Analysis, and the Military Operations Research Society (MORS). He currently serves as President of the Decision Analysis Society of INFORMS. Dr. Parnell received his Ph.D. from Stanford University.

Dr. Lawrence Phillips is a Visiting Professor of Operational Research at the London School of Economics and a Director of Catalyze Limited (www.catalyze.co.uk). After completing an undergraduate degree in Electrical Engineering at Cornell University, he served for three years in the US Navy where he became interested in the interaction between people and machines. To pursue this, he took up post-graduate study in engineering psychology, human learning and decision making at the University of Michigan. Post-doctoral research on how people in other countries take risks brought him to England, and led to an appointment at Brunel University in the newly created School of Social Sciences. There he taught Bayesian statistics, observation and interviewing, introductory psychology, social and personality psychology, decision theory and behaviour in organisations. He trained in observation and group processes at the Tavistock Clinic and Institute of Human Relations. He created the Decision Analysis Unit (DAU) in 1974 as a self-funding research unit, which moved to the LSE in 1982. At the DAU he developed decision conferencing, a methodology for helping groups of key players to find solutions to complex issues of concern to their organisation. This approach blends MCDA modelling, impartial facilitation of group work, and information technology for instant playback of results from the group's work, which in combination mobilise the expertise and varying perspectives of the members. This enables them to formulate and agree creative, practical recommendations to decision makers. Larry Phillips taught participants of MARA 2005 in decision conferencing techniques and multiple-criteria decision analysis approaches. In 2006, Larry Phillips is again part of MARA. The socio-technical focus of MARA can be attributed mainly to his work.

More information:

www.catalyze.co.uk

Dr. Detlof von Winterfeldt is director of the USC Center for Risk and Economic Analysis of Terrorist Events (CREATE), which is funded by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. CREATE is working to build predictive models that gauge how and where terrorist events occur, estimate the economic consequences of such attacks and identify where the country's vulnerabilities reside. Dr. von Winterfeldt's research background is in decision and risk analysis applied to environmental, technology, and security problems. He has conducted a major studies of the risks of dirty bomb attacks on the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach and of the risks and economic consequences of surface-to-air missile attacks in the US. He has served on several committees and panels of the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Academies, including his current appointment to the NAS Board on Mathematical Sciences and Their Applications. He is a fellow of the Society of Risk Analysis and of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS). In 2000 he received the Ramsey medal from INFORMS for distinguished contributions to the field of decision analysis. During the MARA training week, Dr. von Winterfeldt will train the MARA participants in risk analysis techniques.

More information:

www.usc.edu/ur/federal_relations/experts/von_winterfeldt.html

Dr. Robert Clemen is Associate Professor of Decision Sciences at the Fuqua School of Business, Duke University. Dr. Clemen's research background is in decision analysis, with a special focus on risk assessment for business and environmental policy. He holds a PhD from Indiana University, an MBA from the University of Colorado and a BA from Stanford University. Dr. Clemen is founding co-Editor-in-Chief of the journal Decision Analysis and author of the book "Making Hard Decisions." His textbook, now in its second edition, has become the leading text for decision analysis courses taught around the world. Although unable to be present in Germany in 2006, Dr. Clemen is very supportive of the work MARA is doing to help organizations use decision analysis tools to address their most important problems.

More information:

faculty.fuqua.duke.edu/%7Eclemen/bio/index.html

Professor Keeney's interests are the areas of decision-making and risk analysis, with a focus on problems involving multiple objectives. He has applied such work as a consultant for several private and public organizations addressing corporate management problems, environmental and risk studies, energy policy, and decisions about siting large facilities (e.g., power plants, waste facilities). Prior to joining the Duke faculty, Professor Keeney was a faculty member in Management and Engineering at MIT and at the University of Southern California, a Research Scholar at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis in Austria, and the founder of the decision and risk analysis group of a large geotechnical and environmental consulting firm. Professor Keeney is the author of many books and articles and has served on the editorial boards of several journals. He is co-author of Decisions with Multiple Objectives (reprinted by Cambridge University Press, 1993) with Howard Raiffa, which won the ORSA Lanchester Prize, a co-author of Acceptable Risk (Cambridge University Press, 1981), and the author of Value-Focused Thinking: A Path to Creative Decisionmaking, (Harvard University Press, 1992), which received the Decision Analysis Society Best Publication Award. His latest book Smart Choices: A Practical Guide to Making Better Decisions (Harvard Business School Press, 1999) with John S. Hammond and Howard Raiffa also received the Decision Analysis Society Best Publication Award. It has been translated into thirteen languages. Dr. Keeney was awarded the Ramsey Medal for Distinguished Contributions in Decision Analysis by the Decision Analysis Society and is a Member of the National Academy of Engineering. During the MARA training week, Dr. Keeney will train the MARA participants in value-focused thinking techniques.

Michael Mirow teaches and has been awarded a honorary professorship for Strategic Management at the Technical University of Berlin and teaches as a visiting professor at the University of Innsbruck/Austria. He is a frequent guest speaker at many of the most important universities of Germany, Austria and Switzerland and a well regarded keynote speaker at international conferences all over the world. His many publications cover topics like Strategic Management, Innovation, Globalisation, Shareholder Value and Corporate Governance. Michael also serves as senior advisor and consultant to and has board seats in young high tec and private equity companies. Prior to his retirement early 2002 Michael was a Senior Vicepresident for Corporate Strategies at Siemens AG, Germany where he spent most of is professional career in many different businesses and functions. In his last position he shaped the corporate strategy and was instrumental in designing and executing the important moves to improve and focus the portfolio of Siemens over the past 10 years. Michael holds a degree in industrial engineering of the Technical University of Darmstadt and earned his PHD on Systems Theory at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University of Frankfurt.