Dr. Thomas received a B.A. in mathematics/economics (with honors) from Grinnell and holds M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in industrial and operations engineering from the University of Michigan. He is an associate professor with tenure in the Department of Management Sciences at the University of Iowa. Dr. Thomas is also the coordinator of the Process Excellence track of the Strategic Innovation Academy in the full-time MBA program of the Tippie School of Management. His areas of expertise are process improvement, logistics, vehicle routing, dynamic programming, and heuristic search. Dr. Thomas was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa in 1997. He is active in his field as a speaker, researcher, and as an editor and referee for peer-reviewed journals.