Published: January 31, 2026
The 2026 INFORMS President Mark Lewis brings not just technical brilliance to his role as president, but a deep care for the people who make this field so impactful. His vision reminds us that analytics isn’t just about solving problems – it’s about building communities, growing opportunity, and creating a better world through smarter decisions.
Interviewed this episode:
Mark Lewis
2026 INFORMS President
Mark E. Lewis is the Maxwell M. Upson Professor of Engineering at Cornell University and is the first African American elected as INFORMS president-elect.
Lewis has served INFORMS in numerous other capacities, including co-founder and president (twice) of the organization’s Minority Issues Forum. He is a past chair of the INFORMS Applied Probability Society and has served on several other INFORMS committees. Lewis has also earned multiple INFORMS awards and honors for his tireless service and extensive contributions to INFORMS, including being named to the inaugural class of the INFORMS Minority Issues Forum fellows.
Professionally, Lewis’ research and expertise is primarily in the dynamic control of service systems. He applies his work in routing to transportation systems, control of inventory systems and allocation of interswitch handoffs in wireless communication. He is also passionate about solving general problems in resource allocation. During his current sabbatical from the School of Operations Research and Information Engineering at Cornell, Professor Lewis is working as an Amazon Scholar on pricing and logistics.
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AI, Analytics, and What’s Next: A Conversation with the 2026 INFORMS President