Ernest Forman

Ernest Forman is a Professor of Decision Sciences at The George Washington University’s School of Business. He has extensive experience with executive decision-making methodologies, resource allocation, project portfolio management, risk analysis and risk management, operations management and statistics.

In 1983, Dr. Forman partnered with Thomas Saaty, creator of The Analytic Hierarchy Process, to co-found Expert Choice, and along with Mary Ann Selly and Rozann Whiticker developed Expert Choice decision software (now called Expert Choice Comparion)  and popularized the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) which is based partly on the eigenvector solution that was later used by Larry Page in his pagerank algorithm that established Google as the leader of the search industry.

AHP has become the most cited decision methodology in the world today. Expert Choice Comparion applications include a wide range of government and business decisions involving trade-offs among conflicting objectives, some quantitative, some qualitative. Examples of such problems include government policy, allocation of R&D funds, project portfolio management, cost/benefit analysis, employee evaluation, setting corporate priorities, group decision-making, conflict resolution and strategic planning.

Dr. Forman is currently doing R&D for risk assessment and management and has recently designed Riskion, the first and currently only tool for risk assessment that is both comprehensive and scientifically valid.

Dr. Forman’s expertise is widely recognized and has consulted with numerous organizations such as IBM, MERCK, John Deere, Ford, Booz Allen Hamilton, NIST, Boeing, GAO, IRS, NASA, CIA, DoD, state, and local governments.

Dr. Forman  received one of the first United States patents issued for computer software  and has seven patents related to decision-making and risk analysis.

Dr. Forman has authored Decision by Objectives, and has co-authored An Analytic Framework for Marketing Decisions, The Hierarchon – A Dictionary of Hierarchies, and Advances in Telematics.   He is engaged in research, development and writing about the theory of measurement, risk analysis and management, evaluation and choice; corporate and public sector applications of decision analysis; strategic planning; resource allocation; conflict resolution and project portfolio management. (See Publications and Patents).

Prior to joining the faculty of George Washington University, Dr. Forman was a member of the technical staff of the MITRE Corporation, where he conducted seminal research on the development of the ARPA computer network — which eventually became the Internet.

Other research areas at MITRE included computer performance evaluation, computer security, source data automation, and database management systems.

Dr. Forman was a Lieutenant in the United States Navy and was selected by Admiral Rickover to serve at the U.S. Naval Nuclear Power School, where he taught mathematics and electrical engineering.

Education:
Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering from the University of Rochester
Master of Science in Management Science from Johns Hopkins University
Doctor of Science in Operations Research from The George Washington University.