Chinese Scholar Wins POMS Distinguished Service Award

On May 11, 2025, Professor Mao Zhaofang, Party Secretary of the College of Management and Economics at Tianjin University and former vice president of the Production and Operations Management Society (POMS), was awarded the Sushil K. Gupta POMS Distinguished Service Award at the 2025 POMS Annual Conference.

He is the third Chinese recipient of this award after Stanford University's Professor Hau Lee (2014) and UCLA's Professor Chris Tang (2017), as well as the first awardee from a Chinese university.

Professor Mao Zhaofang has actively promoted the international development of management science. Elected as POMS Vice President (overseeing Asia and Australasia) in 2019, he facilitated resource integration between these regions and the global community. In 2019, as initiator and founding conference chair, he established the China POMS International Conference through collaboration between Tianjin University, Xi'an Jiaotong University, Zhejiang University, and the University of Science and Technology of China, creating an academic exchange platform for scholars and industry practitioners. The conference has completed its first cycle of four successful editions in Tianjin, Xi'an, Hangzhou, and Hefei, receiving over 2,300 paper submissions and becoming one of POMS' most influential international conference series.

Professor Mao has served multiple leadership roles including permanent advisor for China POMS conferences, steering committee member for the 2019 Mostly OM conference, advisor for the 2022 India POMS conference, and chair of the 2024 POMS Asia-Pacific Emerging Economies Doctoral Student Award (EEDSA) committee.

About POMS

The Production and Operations Management Society (POMS) was co-founded on June 30, 1989 by Professor Kalyan Singhal and about 300 professors and corporate executives. The society held its first international conference in Washington D.C. in October 1990, and launched its journal Production and Operations Management in March 1992.

POMS has become the gateway to the POM world, with the long-term vision to serve as the "home" organization for all POM professionals, recognized by peer organizations, accreditation bodies, university administrators, corporate leaders, and academic colleagues. It maintains the most authoritative repository of fundamental POM knowledge and serves as the premier source for POM developments.

About the Award

Established in 2013, the Sushil K. Gupta POMS Distinguished Service Award is presented annually to recognize outstanding contributions to the development of production and operations management internationally.

By: College of Management and Economics

Editor: Sun Xiaofang