Grace Lin

Founder / Adjunct Professor, WRO / Columbia Univ

Dr. Grace Lin is a leader, innovator, and educator in Supply Chain Management (SCM) and Value Net Optimization. She served as Researcher, Manager, and Senior Manager for SCM & e-Business Optimization at the IBM T.J. Watson Research Center, and as Relationship Manager for the Integrated Supply Chain Organization from 1993 to 2003. She went on to become IBM’s Global Business Services’ Global Sense-and-Respond Leader, then CTO and Director for Innovation and Emerging Solutions until 2009, when she founded World Resource Optimization, Inc. to help build a more harmonious, intelligent, and sustainable planet. Dr. Lin is also an Adjunct Full Professor at the Department of Industrial Engineering and Operations Research (IEOR) at Columbia University. Dr. Lin’s background and experience have positioned her at the intersection of technology, innovation, business consulting, and management; the fusion of business and IT; and the interaction of academia and industry. She and her IBM R&D team pioneered Extended Enterprise SCM. Dr. Lin also initiated IBM’s Sense-and-Respond Value Net efforts, and founded the Value Chain Innovation Center, then later created Sense-and-Respond consulting offerings, bringing state-of-the-art business models and technology to IBM and its global customers in both public and private sectors. Referred by Forrester as one of the six “Supply Chain Gurus” in 2002, Dr. Lin has published more than 60 technical papers, book chapters, and articles, and co-authored seven patents, with another five pending. Her awards include: The Franz Edelman Award, the IBM Outstanding Technical Achievement Award, the IBM Corporate Logistics Award, the IBM Research Division Award, as well as the IIE Doctoral Dissertation Award, and Purdue’s Outstanding Industrial Engineer Award. Dr. Lin was named an IBM Distinguished Engineer, and a member of the IBM Academy of Technology. Twice elected INFORMS’ VP Practice, she is an INFORMS Fellow, and Service Science Chair Elect, a member of INFORMS Fellow Selection Committee, and an Edelman Award judge. Dr. Lin has served on university and government panels and boards and on editorial boards of major journals. She has chaired a number of INFORMS and IEEE conferences, and is a frequent keynote speaker at international conferences and global company strategy sessions. Dr. Lin received her Ph.D. in IE and M.S. in Applied Math from Purdue University, and an M.S. and B.S. in Math from Taiwan’s Tsing-Hua University.