Dr. Richard C. Larson has made significant contributions to understanding urban systems as service systems, including urban emergency services. In the popular press, bringing a deeper understanding of service waiting times to the general public, Dr. Larson is known as “Dr. Queue.” As former president of leading operations research professional associations (1993 to 1994, and again in 2005), he provided visible leadership to one of the pillar academic disciplines underlying a wide range of service innovations.

Dr. Larson is Professor (Post Tenure), Institute for Data, Systems, and Society at MIT. Dr. Larson’s career has focused on operations research and systems expertise on a wide variety of problems, in both public and private sectors. He is author, co-author or editor of six books and author or co-author of over 175 scientific articles. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and is an INFORMS Founding Fellow. He has been honored with the INFORMS President’s Award and the Kimball Medal. In 2017, he was given the first-ever Lifetime Achievement Daniel Berg Medal for “making significant contributions to technology innovation, service systems and strategic decision making.” Currently he is principal investigator of the MIT BLOSSOMS Initiative. His new book (Model Thinking for Everyday Life), being published by INFORMS, is now in production.

For more about Dr. Larson’s career and accomplishments, go to: MIT, Wikipedia, Google Scholar, LinkedIn.

Dr. Raymond P. Fisk has made significant contributions to understanding service marketing from both historical and ethical design perspectives. As founder of the leading service marketing professional association (American Marketing Association SERVSIG, in 1993), Dr. Fisk has provided visible leadership within the broader marketing discipline, which is one of the pillar academic disciplines underlying a wide range of service innovations.

Dr. Fisk is Founder and President of ServCollab (a human services nonprofit), which seeks to serve humanity through collaborative research. He is also Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Marketing at Texas State University. His research focuses on services marketing, service design, and transformative service research. He has published in the Journal of Service Research, Journal of Marketing, Journal of Retailing, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, European Journal of Marketing, Journal of Public Policy and Marketing, and others. Ray has published six books including Serving Customers: Global Services Marketing Perspectives. In 1993, he founded the AMA Services Marketing Special Interest Group (SERVSIG). In 2005, Ray received the Career Contributions to the Services Discipline Award from SERVSIG. In 2012, he received the Grönroos Service Research Award from the Hanken School of Economics in Finland. In 2016, the American Marketing Association made Ray the Inaugural Recipient of the SIG Leadership Award.

For more about Dr. Fisk’s career and accomplishments go to: Personal website , Texas State University, Google Scholar, LinkedIn.

Dr. Stephen K. Kwan is Professor Emeritus in the Lucas College and Graduate School of Business at San José State University, and a fellow of the International Society of Service Innovation Professionals (ISSIP). He retired from being the Associate Dean of Graduate Business Programs and Lucas Professor of Service Science. He was the founding chair of the MIS department, had served as the Director of Online Programs Development and Senior Associate Dean of the College. He is still actively involved in research and community activities in Service Science, Management, Engineering, and Design (SSMED), global E-Commerce, service standards and standardization. He was a recipient of multiple IBM Faculty Awards, grants from the National Science Foundation (NSF), and National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). He was a contributor to the IEEE online course on Innovation and Competition – Success Through Global Standards. He currently serves on the ISO/IEC JTC1 Sub-Committee 42 Artificial Intelligence; ISO Committee on Consumer Policy (COPOLCO) Working Groups on Shared Economy, Privacy, and Consumer Issues in Services; American National Standards Institute (ANSI) Committee on Education; ANSI Consumer Interest Forum; and the International Cooperation for Education about Standardization (ICES). He had published in the areas of Service Science, Queueing Systems, Database Management, E-Commerce, Service Standards, Standards Education and Standards Policy. He received a B.S. and M.S. in Computer Science from the University of Oregon, and a Ph.D. in Management from UCLA.

Louis E. Freund is a Professor Emeritus and Adjunct Professor in the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering at San Jose State University, San José, CA.  During his early career, he worked on hospital systems design and improvements, focusing on service productivity, quality and nurse staffing algorithms.   After joining SJSU in 1986, he taught and worked in systems simulation, process quality control, workload measurement, as well as on topics in human factors and ergonomics.  He founded the SJSU interdisciplinary HF/EMS degree program in 1993 and served as the HF/E program Director for over 15 years.  Between 2000 and 2009 he was Chair of the ISE Department at SJSU.  Dr. Freund began the Service Systems Engineering course at SJSU in 2006, and an MS emphasis area in Service Systems Engineering soon after.  From 2010 – 2018, he served as Co-Chair of the Human Side of Service Engineering sub-conference of the AHFE.  He is the recipient of several IBM Faculty Awards to recognize and support his work and contributions to service science.  He is a past President of the Society for Health Systems.  Dr. Freund was elected a Fellow of the Institute of Industrial and Systems Engineers in 2009.  In 2011 he received the “50 in 50” award from the Hospital Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) recognizing him as one of the 50 most influential persons in health care systems in the first 50 years of the Society.   He was a founding board member of ISSIP.  His research interests are in the development of metrics to describe the T-Shape construct for professional growth and achievement, and in the assessment of service systems quality with consideration of the customer’s contribution. Lou may be reached at louis.freund@sjsu.edu.

Stephen L. Vargo is a Shidler Distinguished Professor and Professor of Marketing at the University of Hawai’i and has held visiting positions at the Judge Business School at the University of Cambridge, the University of Warwick, Karlstad University, the University of Maryland, College Park, the University of Auckland, and a number of other major universities, as well as VTT Technical Research Center of Finland. Prior to entering academics, he had a career in entrepreneurial business and has consulted for a variety of major national, regional, and local corporations and governmental agencies.

Ph.D. in Business Administration with Marketing and Accounting Emphasis, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1975.
Courses:
Undergraduate: MTG 480 & 480H – Marketing Research for Entrepreneurs
Doctoral: MKTG 696a – Perspectives and Principles of Research Marketing
Honors Faculty Fellow

Mary Jo Bitner is the Edward M. Carson Chair in Service Leadership, Executive Director for the Center for Services Leadership, and Professor of Marketing at the W. P. Carey School of Business, Arizona State University (ASU). In her more than 25-year career as a professor and researcher, Dr. Bitner has been recognized as one of the founders and pioneers in the field of service marketing and management worldwide. At ASU she was a founding faculty member of the Center for Services Leadership and has been a leader in its emergence as the premier university-based center for the study of services marketing and management. She also serves currently on the Board of the American Marketing Association.