MCGINNIS ELECTED FELLOW OF THE MILITARY OPERATIONS RESEARCH SOCIETY

Michael McGinnis, the retired brigadier general who is executive director of Old Dominion University's Virginia Modeling, Analysis and Simulation Center (VMASC), has been elected a Fellow of the Military Operations Research Society. About 40 Fellows are among the society's membership of 3,000.

The society has served the U.S. Department of Defense analytic community since the 1960s, seeking to enhance the effectiveness of military operations research. Members include top defense analysts/specialists from government, industry and educational institutions.

"This is wonderful news," said Mohammad Karim, the ODU vice president for research. He noted that McGinnis' election brings to 45 the number of the university's faculty members and administrators who are Fellows of national and international societies that emphasize research and scholarship.

McGinnis retired from the Army in 2006 and came directly to ODU to take the helm of VMASC.

He led the systems engineering department at West Point for the last seven years of his service and during that time was a regular member of official U.S. delegations to international symposia involving computer simulations. He directed the Army Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC) Analysis Center in Monterey, Calif., from 1997-99.

An Army memorandum issued at his retirement called him "one of the military's leading contemporary authors on the applications of operations research and systems engineering methods to solve military problems."

Since coming to VMASC, McGinnis has revamped the administrative structure and overseen the center's move to a new, $12.2 million facility where space is available for expanded research in areas such as robotics and game-based learning. Much of the research and development at VMASC during its 10-year existence has been done for military clients.