Past Awards
The 2010 INFORMS PRESIDENT’S AWARD is awarded to Jonathan Caulkins for his pioneering work in developing policies to fight the national epidemic of drug abuse, prevent crime, reduce violence, address the sad dilemma of juvenile delinquency, and balance the need for both law enforcement and prevention in treating serious social ills.
The blight of drug abuse in the United States not only damages the lives of addicts and their families, but also hurts the American economy, drains national, state, and local budgets, and spills over America’s borders causing violence in countries where drug crops are secretly grown for American addicts. Making emotional decisions about what many American presidents have called the War on Drugs is often a temptation, but the great hope for success is well-reasoned policy analyses. That has been the life work of Jonathan Caulkins. Throughout his career, Professor Caulkins has devoted himself to collecting the most relevant data about drug abuse, building models to analyze the data, and making sound policy recommendations.
Professor Caulkins has conducted his research not only at the Heinz School of Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon University but as co-director of RAND’s Drug Policy Research Center in Santa Monica and as founder of the RAND office in Pittsburgh. He has chaired the Office of National Drug Control Policy’s Data, Research, and Evaluation Committee, served as a scientific advisor for Australia’s Drug Policy Modeling Project, donated his time to the National Research Council Committee on Immunotherapies and New Treatments for Addiction, and shared his insights with the Partnership for a Drug-Free America Social Marketing Advisory Board.
His expertise in quantitative modeling of the effectiveness of drug control strategies and associated issues of crime, violence, and prevention has brought him recognition through the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s prestigious National Health Investigator Award, the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management’s David R. Kershaw Award, and numerous National Science Foundation grants and to support his pivotal research.
The INFORMS President's Award is made for contributions to the welfare of society. Jonathan Caulkins’ work developing policies to battle drug abuse benefits the hopelessly addicted, those who care for them, those who enforce our drug laws and those who seek to write better laws that will make a lasting improvement in this serious social and health problem. I am therefore pleased to present the 2010 INFORMS President's Award to Jonathan Caulkins, the H. Guyford Stever Professor of Operations Research and Public Policy, Heinz School, Carnegie Mellon University.