The Military Operations Research Society (MORS) has honored former AFIT faculty member, Dr. Jim Moore, by renaming the Air Force Institute of Technology (AFIT) Graduate Research Prize the “Dr. James T. Moore Graduate Research Prize.” This award recognizes the AFIT master’s degree student from each graduating class whose thesis or graduate research project is judged to demonstrate the best application of operations research methodology or theory development to a military problem. The renaming of this prestigious award in honor of Dr. Moore was announced by MORS President, Mr. Michael W. Garrambone, during an August 2, 2012 presentation made to Dr. Moore’s wife, Nancy, who accepted on behalf of her late husband.
In announcing the renaming of the MORS award, Mr. Garrambone noted, “Dr. Moore’s 24 years of service to the Nation while in uniform and more than two decades teaching at AFIT teaching Operations Research are remarkable in themselves. However he is also known amongst his peers as an outstanding Operations Research educator. This is illustrated by the fact AFIT students repeatedly voted him instructor of the quarter.”
Throughout his academic career, Dr. Moore graduated 114 MS and PhD students during his time at AFIT, and as a presenter at the national MORS Annual Symposia, was the inspiration for many graduate student presentations over the past two decades. Dr. Moore’s published research in multiple professional journals was extensive and high quality, resulting in a number of best student paper awards. Most recently his article, “Solving the Theater Distribution Problem Using Tabu Search”, was selected in 2011 for the 2010 MORS Journal Best Paper Award.
Professor Moore was a faculty member in AFIT’s Department of Operational Sciences from 1990 to 2011, and served as Department Head in 2004-2005 and again in 2011.