John Birge is the Hobart W. Williams Distinguished Service Professor of Operations Management at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. Professor Birge earned a bachelor's degree in mathematics from Princeton University in 1977 and a master's degree and a PhD in operations research from Stanford University in 1979 and 1980, respectively. He joined the Chicago Booth faculty in 2004.

Before he joined Chicago Booth, he was a former dean of the Robert R. McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Northwestern University. He has also worked as a consultant for a variety of firms including the University of Michigan Hospitals, Deutsche Bank, Allstate Insurance Company, and Morgan Stanley, and he uses cases from these experiences in his teaching.

Professor Birge's work focuses on application, theory, and computation for decision making under uncertainty with applications in the management of operations in finance, energy, health care, manufacturing, public policy, and transportation. He is an INFORMS Fellow, MSOM Society Distinguished Fellow, member of the US National Academy of Engineering, and Editor-in-Chief of Operations Research.