With deep affection and appreciation we honor our colleague Ward Whitt, who just turned 75 years old, for his decades of landmark contributions in applied probability, operations research and related topics, spanning theory and applications, and for his exceptional and generous mentorship to so many. Ward is currently the Wai T. Chang Professor in the Department of Industrial Engineering and Operations Research at Columbia University where he has been since 2002. After completing his doctorate from Cornell University in 1969, and spending one year at Stanford University, he then became a faculty member at Yale University (1969-1977) after which (1977—2002) he was a researcher at Bell Labs/AT&T Labs. Some of his honors/awards include:

Member of The National Academy of Engineering (since 1996). INFORMS von Neumann Prize (for theory) 2001. INFORMS Lanchester Prize for his book “Stochastic-Process Limits” (2002)