Barrett Thomas '97

A member of the Grinnell College Board of Trustees, Barrett Thomas received a B.A. in mathematics/economics (with honors) from Grinnell College and holds M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in industrial and operations engineering from the University of Michigan. Currently, he is an associate professor in the Department of Management Sciences at the University of Iowa and Faculty Director of the Strategic Innovation Academy in the full-time M.B.A. program of the Tippie School of Management. He recently completed a term as a board member for the Institute of Operations Research and Management Sciences, the largest professional association for advanced analytics, operations research, and management sciences. His areas of expertise are process improvement, logistics, vehicle routing, dynamic programming, and heuristic search. He is active in his field as a speaker, researcher, and as an editor and referee for peer-reviewed journals