Averill M. Law, Ph.D.
This interview took place during the Winter Simulation Conference in Washington, D.C.
Interviewer: Robert G. Sargent
Interview place: Washington, D.C.
Interview date: 2013-12-11
Averill M. Law, Ph.D.
Averill M. Law is the founder and president of Averill M. Law & Associates, a firm that focuses on consulting, educating consumers about simulations and statistics, and selling developed statistics software. He has been a consultant to numerous companies, government agencies, and military organizations. Previously, Law was a tenured professor at the University of Arizona (1981-1991) and a faculty member at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (1974-1981). Law’s educational history includes a BS in Mathematics from Penn State University (1966), an MA in Mathematics (1970), and a Ph.D. as well as MS in Operations Research from the University of California at Berkeley (1974).
Law is considered to be one of the foremost experts on simulation, perhaps best known for his authorship of Simulation Modeling and Analysis (5th Edition, McGraw-Hill, 2014) which has been one of the preeminent textbooks on simulation since 1982. The third edition, coauthored with W. David Kelton, received The Institute of Management Sciences (TIMS) College on Simulation 2001 Best Publication Award. His series of papers on the simulation of manufacturing systems published in Industrial Engineering received the Best Publication Award in 1988 from the Institute of Industrial Engineering. Law’s 1982 paper, coauthored with W. David Kelton and published in Management Science, received TIMS College on Simulation and Gaming 1983 Best Publication Award. He has held several positions of TIMS College on Simulation and Gaming including the Chair (1980-1982). In 2009, he received the Institute for Operations Research and Management Sciences (INFORMS) Simulation Society Lifetime Professional Achievement Award.
