Alfred Blumstein


Alfred Blumstein is an American scientist and the J. Erik Jonsson University Professor of Urban Systems and Operations Research at the Heinz College and Department of Engineering and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon University. He is known as one of the top researchers in criminology and operations research.

Biography

Blumstein graduated with his bachelor's degree and PhD from Cornell University and worked at the Institute for Defense Analyses before joining the Heinz College.
Blumstein directs the NSF-funded at Carnegie Mellon and was Dean of the Heinz College from 1986-1993
He is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Society of Criminology and serves as President of the latter.
Blumstein was president of the Operations Research Society of America in 1977-78, The Institute of Management Sciences in 1987-88 and in 1996 he was the president of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences. He became an INFORMS Fellow in 2002.
He was awarded the Wolfgang Award for Distinguished Achievement in Criminology in 1998 and was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 1998. He also shares the 2007 Stockholm Prize in Criminology, the highest award in the field—he and his co-recipient are the first two Americans to earn the prize. In 1996, he was awarded an honorary Doctor of Laws degree by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice of the City University of New York.
He is married and has three daughters and four grandchildren.

Work

Blumstein's research centers around modeling criminal careers, deterrence, prison population, transportation analysis, drug-enforcement policy, and he developed "lambda" in criminology as a measurement of an individual's offending frequency.

Publications