40th Annual Winter Simulation Conference

Russel Barton

Russell Barton served as program chair for the 40th anniversary Winter Simulation Conference held in Washington, D.C. on December 9-12, 2007. The conference was sponsored by seven organizations, including INFORMS, the American Statistical Association, ACM, and IIE. With over 750 registrants, it was the largest attendance in 36 years. The conference featured more than 350 presentations in 23 themes, with nearly 300 papers appearing in the refereed Proceedings. Approximately 40% of the authors came to the conference from outside the United States. Special features of the conference included two Landmark Papers sessions, highlighting ten influential papers from the first 40 years of the conference. Three special Cross-Fertilization sessions featured leading researchers from fields outside simulation who shared concepts and developments that might stimulate new simulation research initiatives: Malvin Kalos spoke on Monte Carlo models in physics, Barry Silverman presented research on modeling crowd behavior, and Glenn Shafer described a game-based development of probability theory. New Clinic sessions had simulation experts advise practitioners on thorny problems in real-world simulation applications. The conference also had a special recognition ceremony for the 1967 Conference Committee: Harold Hixson, Julian Reitman, and Arnold Ockene. More conference information is available on the Web site www.wintersim.org.