Obituary of Hong Xu

Xu Hong (1952 - 2014) Dr. Susan Hong Xu, age 62, died at her home in Vienna, Virginia on Tuesday, July 1, 2014, after a spirited and determined two an half year fight with cancer. A long time resident of State College, Pennsylvania, she is survived by her husband, admirer, and best friend, Robert Carritte of Vienna, Virginia. She also is survived by her parents Xu Jingqi and Fang Ye and her sister Xu Mei of Beijing, China, as well as her younger brother Xu Zuoying of Asburn, Virginia. Xu Hong was also the sister of the late Xu Zuoquen of Beijing, China. Dr. Xu was a tenured Professor of Management Science and Supply Chain Management at the Pennsylvania State University Smeal College of Business. At Penn State, she served as the Chair of the Intercollege Dual-Title Degree Graduate Program in Operations Research from 1998 to 2007. From 2010 to 2012, Professor Xu was the Director of PhD Programs for Penn State's Smeal College. In 2011, she was made the Robert G. Schwartz Fellow of Supply Chain and Information Systems for Smeal College of Business. An enthusiastic and accomplished researcher, Dr. Xu published extensively in a number of leading, peer reviewed, A-ranked professional journals in the areas of supply chain management, operations research, information systems and statistics including Management Science, Operations Research, Mathematics of Operations Research, IIE Transactions on Operations Engineering, Stochastic Models, IEEE Transaction on Automatic Control, Journal of Applied Probability, Journal of Multivariate Analysis, and Telecommunication Systems, among others. Her primary areas of interests involved the understanding and modeling of stochastic processes, dynamic programming, queueing systems, stochastic scheduling, stochastic inventory theory, stochastic ordering, dependent stochastic systems, and their applications in manufacturing, logistics systems, and communication networks. Since 1987, Dr. Xu was a member of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS), an international society for practitioners in the fields of operations research and management science, as well as its predecessor organizations the Operations Research Society of America (ORSA) and The Institute of Management Sciences (TIMS). She served on a number of committees for INFORMS. Dr. Xu was an Associate Editor of the journal Probability in Engineering and Informational Systems and an ad-hoc Associate Editor for Operations Research. She was also a referee for a number of other journals. Active as a scholar nationally and internationally, Dr. Xu was an invited lecturer, funded researcher, and visiting professor for a number of academic institutions including the National Science Foundation, the McDonough School of Business at Georgetown University, Robert H. Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland, Department of Operations Research at George Mason University, Department of Industrial Engineering and Operations Research at the University of California at Berkeley, College of Administrative Sciences and Economics at Koc University in Istanbul, Turkey, the Singapore Institute of Manufacturing Technology, the Science and Engineering Research Council of Singapore, Institute of Applied Mathematics at the Chinese Academia Sinica in Beijing, the School of Economics and Management at Tsinghua University in Beijing, and the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Xu Hong was born in Beijing, China in 1952. Her professional and academic achievements came from the application of her strong intellect and tremendous self discipline, work ethic, and sheer determination. She was denied a formal high school education by the insane policy known as the Cultural Revolution, promulgated by Mao Zedong and his morally bankrupt communist government. She over came this obstacle by learning mathematics and advance calculus largely through self learning. When China reopened its schools and institutes for higher learning, Xu Hong earned an undergraduate degree in Mathematics from Northeastern Normal University, China. In 1982, she was among the first group of students from the People's Republic of China to attend graduate school at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York. At RPI she earned Masters of Science and PhD degrees in Operations Research and Statistics in 1984 and 1987, respectively. Dr. Xu joined the Penn State faculty as an Assistant Professor in 1987 and was promoted to Associated Professor in 1993 and full Professor in 1999. Perhaps her greatest legacy is the more than forty five graduate students she helped train while serving as thesis or dissertation advisor or committee member. Today, those students are active at academics institutes for higher learning around the world. She will be dearly missed, long remembered, and admired by her husband, relatives, friends, colleagues, and students. There will be no wake or viewing held. A Requiem Mass will be celebrated on Monday, July 7 at 11:00 am at Saint Catherine of Siena Catholic Church in Great Falls, Virginia. Family, friends, and colleagues welcome. Interment and a graveside service will be at Saint Joseph's Cemetery in Lynn, Massachusetts on Friday, July 11 at 11:30 am. In lieu of flowers, memorial contributions may be made to the Little Sisters of the Poor, 1503 Michaels Road, Henrico, Virginia 23229.