Richard Larson (academic)

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Richard C. Larson
Born
Richard Charles Larson

1943 (age 80–81)
Bayside, Queens, New York City, New York, U.S.
NationalityAmerican
Alma materMassachusetts Institute of Technology (S.B., S.M., PhD)
Spouse
Susan Jean Wheeler
​
(m. 1969)​
Awards
Scientific career
InstitutionsMassachusetts Institute of Technology
ThesisModels for the Allocation of Urban Police Patrol Forces (1969)
Doctoral studentsKent W. Colton
Maia Majumder
WebsiteMIT profile

Richard "Dick" Charles Larson[4] (born 1943) is an American engineer and operations research specialist known for his contributions to urban service systems, disaster planning, pandemics, queueing theory, logistics, technology-enabled education, smart-energy houses, and workforce planning. He is currently professor of data, systems, and society at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Larson has authored, co-authored, or edited six books and over 175 scientific articles throughout his career.[5]

Early life[edit]

Larson was born in 1943 in Bayside, Queens, New York City to Gilbert C. Larson.[6][7][8] Larson moved to Sunbury, Pennsylvania at the age of five. Six years later, he moved to North Plainfield, New Jersey. After graduating from Needham High School, Larson received his Bachelor of Science in 1965, Master of Science in 1967, and PhD in 1969, all in Electrical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.[6][8]

Career[edit]

Larson's primary area of research is in urban systems, especially on the effectiveness and efficiency of urban emergency services. Beginning in the late 1960s under the auspices of the RAND Corporation, he studied police and other emergency services dispatch systems in New York City, resulting in a number of papers.[9]

In 1981, Larson co-authored *Urban Operations Research* with Amedeo R. Odoni, a text with 1346 citations that integrates methods of geometrical probability, queueing theory and transportation networks to aid decision-making in urban services.[10]

Larson's research on queues has led to the development of new computational techniques, such as the Queue Inference Engine and the Hypercube Queueing Model, which have been widely cited and covered in national and international media. Later, Larson shifted his research focus to technology-enabled learning.[11]

Larson served as president of the Operations Research Society of America (ORSA) from 1993 to 1994, and then again in 2005 after it merged with the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS). [5] He was named a founding fellow of INFORMS in 2002.[12][13]

In 1995, became the Director of MIT's Center for Advanced Educational Services, which sought to use technology to provide educational content to a much wider audience. During his tenure, he focused on bringing technology-enabled learning to students both on and off campus, with initiatives such as the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology. He held this role until 2003.[6][5]

As "Doctor Queue", Larson is frequently cited as an expert on queuing theory and the psychology of waiting in lines. He has appeared on National Public Radio and the Washington Post, among others.[4][14]

Larson was elected a member of the National Academy of Engineering in 1993 for "developing and applying operations research methodologies in public and private-sector service industries".[15] He has served as a consultant to numerous companies and government agencies, including the U.S. Postal Service and the City of New York. He has also held leadership positions in professional organizations.[16]

Currently, Larson serves as Professor, Post-Tenure at MIT. He also serves as the Principal Investigator of the MIT BLOSSOMS initiative, which creates and distributes video lessons covering topics in math and science to students around the world.[5] In addition, he is the Founder and Director of Learning International Networks Coalition, a professional society for utilizing technology to deliver quality education at scale.[5]

Publications[edit]

  • Richard C. Larson, Urban Police Patrol Analysis, MIT Press, August 1972, 289 pages (ISBN 978-0-2621-2052-4).
  • Richard C. Larson, Amedeo R. Odoni, Urban Operations Research, Prentice Hall, 1981, 573 pages, (ISBN 978-0-1393-9447-8).
  • Prescription for waiting–in line blues: Entertain, enlighten and engage
  • A hypercube queuing model for facility location and redistricting in urban emergency services
  • OR forum—perspectives on queues: Social justice and the psychology of queueing
  • Approximating the performance of urban emergency service systems
  • STEM crisis or STEM surplus? Yes and yes
  • Optimal location of discretionary service facilities
  • Optimal Server Location on a Network Operating as an M/G/1 Queue
  • Too Many PhD Graduates or Too Few Academic Job Openings: The Basic Reproductive Number R0 in Academia
  • Methods for allocating urban emergency units: a survey
  • Uncertainty management for engineering systems planning and design
  • Disasters: lessons from the past 105 years
  • The energy box: Locally automated optimal control of residential electricity usage
  • Facility locations with the Manhattan metric in the presence of barriers to travel

Awards[edit]

Personal life[edit]

Larson is known for his interest in technology-enabled education, which he became passionate about in the early 1990s after witnessing its benefits firsthand with his own three children. He and his late wife, Mary Elizabeth Murray, used to jointly give invited seminars on the MIT BLOSSOMS program in various countries throughout the world.[7]

References[edit]

  1. ^ "Dick Larson". MIT.
  2. ^ "Harold Larnder Prize - Canadian Operational Research Society". Canadian Operational Research Society.
  3. ^ "klein-award : U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics". Bureau of Labor Statistics.
  4. ^ a b "'Dr. Queue' Helps You Avoid Rage in Line". National Public Radio. November 24, 2009. Retrieved June 19, 2021.
  5. ^ a b c d e f g h i "Richard Larson". idss.mit.edu. Archived from the original on July 30, 2021. Retrieved June 18, 2021.
  6. ^ a b c d e f "Richard C. Larson". INFORMS. Retrieved June 19, 2021.
  7. ^ a b "Susan Wheeler weds Mr. Larson". The Boston Globe. July 6, 1969. Retrieved June 18, 2021 – via Newspapers.com. Open access icon
  8. ^ a b "Richard Larson '65, SM '67, PhD '69". infinite.mit.edu. Retrieved June 19, 2021.
  9. ^ "Richard C. Larson". Rand Corporation. Retrieved June 19, 2021.
  10. ^ "Urban Operations Research by Larson/Odoni". web.mit.edu.
  11. ^ "Richard Larson, MD – Bucksbaum Institute for Clinical Excellence". bucksbauminstitute.
  12. ^ "About Us". Structured Decisions Corporation. Retrieved June 19, 2021.
  13. ^ "Companies are moving on the idea of queue management". Times Leader. November 23, 1992. p. 5B. Retrieved June 19, 2021 – via Newspapers.com. Open access icon
  14. ^ Swanson, Ana (November 27, 2015). "What really drives you crazy about waiting in line (it actually isn't the wait at all". The Washington Post. Retrieved June 19, 2021.
  15. ^ "Dr. Richard C. Larson". National Academy of Engineering. Retrieved July 2, 2021.
  16. ^ "Richard Larson". Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.
  17. ^ "Richard C. Larson". INFORMS. Retrieved June 19, 2021.
  18. ^ "RICHARD LARSON RECEIVES DANIEL BERG LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT MEDAL". idss.mit.edu. December 22, 2017. Retrieved June 19, 2021.

External links[edit]

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