International Institute of Forecasters Announces the Appointment of Two New Board Members

MEDFORD, Mass. - April 12, 2021 - PRLog -- The International Institute of Forecasters (IIF) announced today the appointment of two returning and two new members to their board of directors. This brings the number of board members to fourteen.

The elected board members are returning directors, Michael Gilliland, SAS, and professor Tao Hong, University of North Carolina, Charlotte, and new board members professor Fernando Cyrino and Chris Fry. All of the elected directors bring extensive experience in forecasting, as well as involvement in the IIF.

"I would like to welcome the new board members elect, Fernando and Chris, welcome back the returning members, Tao and Mike, and thank the outgoing board member, Ana Galvao. As president of the IIF, I am very proud of the diverse composition of the board in many dimensions, including gender, ethnicity, geography and discipline/subject matter/practitioner/academic," said George Athanasopoulos, president, IIF.

Michael Gilliland is marketing manager for SAS forecasting software. Prior to that, he spent 20 years in forecasting and supply chain positions in the food, consumer electronics and apparel industries, and in consulting.

Tao Hong is associate professor of systems engineering and engineering management at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, where he directs the Big Data Energy Analytics Laboratory (BigDEAL).

Professor Cyrino is head of graduate studies at the Industrial Engineering Department at Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro (PUC-Rio), Brazil. He has been working with time series and forecasting since his master's and Ph.D. studies, both with innovative proposal models for the Brazilian electrical system.

Chris Fry is a senior staff data scientist at Google, where he leads data science efforts dedicated to driving efficient utilization of Google's datacenter infrastructure. His team develops processes and tools for resource forecasting, capacity planning and risk sharing across the company.

Current board of directors
George Athanasopoulos, Monash University (president)
Michael Gilliland, SAS (treasurer)
Gloria González-Rivera, University of California, Riverside (past president)
Elaine Deschamps, Washington State Caseload Forecast Council
Ana Galvao, University of Warwick
Tao Hong, University of North Carolina at Charlotte
Tim Januschowski, Amazon's AWS AI Labs
Anastasios Panagiotelis, University of Sydney
Pierre Pinson, Technical University of Denmark
Pilar Poncela, Universidad Autonoma de Madrid
Aris Syntetos, Cardiff University
Len Tashman, editor, Foresight: The International Journal of Applied Forecasting
Shouyang Wang, Chinese Academy of Sciences
Doris Chenguang Wu, Sun Yat-sen University

About the IIF
The International Institute of Forecasters (IIF), a nonprofit organization founded in 1982, is dedicated to developing and furthering the generation, distribution and use of knowledge on forecasting.

For all media inquiries, contact Pam Stroud, IIF Business Director
+1 781 234 4077
pamstroud@forecasters.org
https://forecasters.org