Edelman Award Ceremony
Recognizing Distinction in Applications of Analytics, Operations Research, and the Management Sciences
The Franz Edelman Award, emphasizing beneficial impact; INFORMS Prize, emphasizing long-term, multi-project success; Daniel H. Wagner Prize, emphasizing innovative methods and clear exposition; and the UPS George D. Smith Prize, emphasizing effective academic preparation, will be awarded at this elegant presentation. Admission to the award ceremony is included in your registration fee. The ceremony begins at 5:30pm.
Since 1972, INFORMS and the OR/MS and analytics community has celebrated and honored the very best in applied work in business or government with the annual Franz Edelman Award Competition. 2021 marks the 50th anniversary of this outstanding and rigorous competition. Since 2006, we have marked this special occasion with the Edelman Award Ceremony, an evening filled with fun, excitement, and pride for the entire community. The 2021 Award Ceremony, scheduled for Tuesday, April 13, promises to have hundreds of international analytics professionals and business leaders in attendance.
2021 Franz Edelman Award Winner:
Congratulations to UN World Food Programme! For their work:
Towards Zero Hunger with Analytics
The world’s leading humanitarian organization, and 2020 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, is saving and changing lives by delivering food assistance in emergencies and working with communities to improve nutrition and build resilience. In 2020, WFP assisted nearly 100 million people across 88 countries. Analytics has underpinned WFP’s management of its vast and complex humanitarian operations, helping it reach more people, respond faster in emergencies, and realize significant savings that are used to improve lives and empower communities.
Thank You to Our Sponsors
Edelman Executive Level
Franz Edelman Laureates
The men and women who author Edelman finalist papers each year in INFORMS Journal on Applied Analytics are deemed Franz Edelman Laureates. Each is formally presented with The Franz Edelman Medal to recognize this distinction. Laureates are recognized for their significant contribution to work that is selected as representative of the best applications of analytical decision making in the world.
Franz Edelman Laureates are expected to perform two services: to serve as role models for others who wish to follow in their footsteps and to exemplify to those in attendance at the Franz Edelman Gala that challenges can be faced successfully and opportunities for improvement can be found in every organization through the innovative application of analytics.
Alibaba
Alibaba VRP Algorithms Have Enabled Its On-Time Hour Level Delivery
Haoyuan Hu
Jiangwen Wei
Ying Zhang
Yang Zhan
Xinhui Zhang
Shaojian Huang
Guangrui Ma
Yuming Deng
Siwei Jiang
Pei Li
JD.com
Operations Research Optimization Algorithms Drive Unmanned Warehouse Robots to Work
John Carlsson
Jianjun Gao
Dongdong Ge
Simai He
Haodong Hu
Hengle Qin
Jun Xiao
Linwei Xin
Lenovo
Advanced Planning and Scheduling in Large Manufacturing Plants Using Reinforcement Learning
Yong Rui
Jianping Fan
Wei Fan
Yi Liang
Zan Sun
Tianheng Song
Qiang Chou
Peng Bai
Chun Yang
Jessie Bai
Qiping Zhou
Memorial Sloan Kettering
Automated Radiotherapy Cancer Treatment Planning
Masoud Zarepisheh
Linda Hong
Ying Zhou
Qijie Huang
Jie Yang
Gourav Jhanwar
Hai D. Pham
Pinar Dursun
Pengpeng Zhang
Margie A. Hunt
Gig S. Mageras
Jonathan Yang
Josh Yamada
Joseph O. Deasy
OCP
The Impact of Analytics on OCP
Adrian Becker
Dimitris Bertsimas
Driss Lahlou Kitane
Steve Kokkotos
Nada El Majdoub
Gina Mourtzinou
UN World Food Programme
Towards Zero Hunger with Analytics
Koen Peters
Sérgio Silva
Tim Sergio Wolter
Luis Anjos
Nina van Ettekoven
Éric Combette
Anna Melchiori
Hein Fleuren
Dick den Hertog
Ozlem Ergun
You can view the listing of all Franz Edelman Laureates starting from when the award began in 1972.
INFORMS Prize
This prize is awarded annually to the company that effectively integrates analytics into organizational decision-making, and has repeatedly applied ORMS principles in pioneering, novel and lasting ways. The 2021 prize winner, Amazon, will describe their innovative O.R. work in the INFORMS Prizes and Special Sessions Track on Wednesday, April 14 at 11am EDT. The 2021 winner will be recognized at the Edelman Awards Ceremony on Tuesday, April 13.
Previous winners include: Booz Allen Hamilton, B.N.S.F. Railways, Disney, U.S. Air Force, GM, Chevron, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, Sasol, Jeppesen, Intel, General Electric Global Research Center, Schneider National, Air Products and Chemicals, Procter & Gamble, UPS and other leading companies.
UPS George D. Smith Prize
The George D. Smith Prize is aimed at strengthening ties between academia and industry by rewarding institutions of higher education for effective and innovative preparation of students to be good practitioners of operations research. The Prize is generously underwritten by UPS. Awarded for the first time in 2012, past winners are Carnegie Mellon University, H. John Heinz III College, Sauder School of Business, University of British Columbia – Center for Operations Excellence, MIT Leaders for Global Operations, Naval Postgraduate School, and Tauber Institute for Global Operations at University of Michigan.
The 2021 Competitors are:
Mili Mehrotra
Vishal Sachdev
Sridhar Seshadri
Ramanath Subramanyam
Gedas Adomavicius
Ravi Bapna
Alok Gupta
De Liu
Ellen Trader
Ann Campbell
Nanette Chapa
Lindsey Peters
Zach Veigulis
The teams will present their work to the judges on Friday, April 9. Videos of the competition will be found in the video on-demand library on the virtual meeting platform.
The Smith Prize winner will be announced at the Edelman Awards Ceremony on Tuesday, April 13. The 2021 winner will give their presentation on Wednesday, April 14 in the INFORMS Prizes & Special Sessions Track.
2021 UPS George D. Smith Prize Winner:
University of Iowa, Department of Business Analytics
The Smith Prize winner was announced at the Edelman Awards Ceremony on Tuesday, April 13. The 2021 winner will give their presentation on Wednesday, April 14 in the INFORMS Prizes & Special Sessions Track.
Daniel H. Wagner Prize for Excellence in Operations Research
The Daniel H. Wagner competition is held each fall at the INFORMS Annual Meeting. The 2020 Wagner Prize Reprise will take place on Monday, April 12 in the INFORMS Prizes & Special Sessions Track.
The 2020 Wagner winning submission was authored by:
Saurabh Bansal
Genaro J. Gutierrez
Mahesh Nagarajan
Distribution Estimation and Efficient Optimization for Portfolio Management in Agribusiness: Analytical Developments and Benefits
We worked with an agribusiness firm to develop new mathematical algorithms to manage the firm’s annual $1 Billion portfolio of more than 200 seeds offered to farmers in the continental U.S. The algorithms included, (i) optimization-development to deduce probability distributions for production yields for new products when managers provide partial information for the distributions, and (ii) a decomposition based development to optimize the production plan for the firm’s portfolio with more than 600 uncertainties. The algorithms have yielded substantial monetary savings and intangible benefits.
This prize emphasizes the quality and coherence of the analysis used in practice. Dr. Wagner strove for strong mathematics applied to practical problems, supported by clear and intelligible writing. The Wagner Prize recognizes those principles by emphasizing good writing, strong analytical content and verifiable practice successes. The competition is held and the winner is announced at the INFORMS Annual Meeting in the fall.
Past awardees include practitioners and researchers from Lehigh University and the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections, The Forestry Research Institute of Sweden, CDC, Ford, U.S. Coast Guard, Intel, IBM T. J. Watson Research, Schneider National, Boston University, University of Florida, and others.
Consider applying for the 2021 Wagner Prize competition!
Submission deadline
May 2, 2021
Innovative Applications in Analytics Award (IAAA)
Sponsored by INFORMS Analytics Society, Kinaxis, and Adelphi University
The IAAA Finalists will present on Tuesday, April 13 in the INFORMS Prizes & Special Sessions Track. The winner will be announced at the closing plenary session on Wednesday, April 14.
The purpose this award is to recognize the creative and unique application of a combination of analytical techniques in a new area. The prize promotes the awareness and value of the creative combination of analytics techniques in unusual applications to provide insights and business value. The Analytics Section leadership would like to cordially thank all the members of the judging committee for their hard work in selecting these finalists.
2021 IAAA Competition Winners:
Winner (1st):
Data-driven COVID-19 Vaccine Development for Janssen
Team:
Dimitris Bertsimas, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Najat Khan, Janssen Pharmaceuticals
Jennings Xu, Janssen Pharmaceuticals
Jose Zamalloa, Janssen Pharmaceuticals
Amir Hashemi, Janssen Pharmaceuticals
Ankit Lodha, Janssen Pharmaceuticals
Yuqi Shang, Janssen Pharmaceuticals
Kris Standish, Janssen Pharmaceuticals
Shi-hua Yu, Janssen Pharmaceuticals
Levon Demirdjian, Janssen Pharmaceuticals
Xiaoying Wu, Janssen Pharmaceuticals
Sid Jain, Janssen Pharmaceuticals
Michael Lingzhi Li, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Omar Skali Lami, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Hamza Tazi Bouardi, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Ali Haddad-Sisakht, Dynamic Ideas LLC
Runner-up (2nd):
Operations Research Improves Biomanufacturing Efficiency at MSD Animal Health
Team:
Tugce Martagan, Eindhoven University of Technology
Bram van Ravenstein, MSD Animal Health
Oscar Repping and Marc Baaijens, MSD Animal Health
Second Runner-up (3rd):
Predictive Analytics for Detection of Metastatic Cancer
Team:
Brian Denton, University of Michigan
Selin Merdan, University of Michigan
Christine Barnett, University of Michigan
David Miller, University of Michigan
James Montie, University of Michigan
Learn more about the Innovative Applications in Analytics Award here.
Finalist Teams and Abstracts:
Tuesday, April 13 at 1:45pm EDT
Tuesday, April 13 at 2:25pm EDT
Tuesday, April 13 at 3:05pm EDT
Tuesday, April 13 at 3:45pm EDT
Tuesday, April 13 at 4:25pm EDT
Tuesday, April 13 at 5pm EDT
Syngenta Crop Challenge in Analytics
Brought to you by INFORMS Analytics Society
Powered by IdeaConnection
The population of Earth is growing daily and our world is running out of land needed to produce food. Meanwhile, the crops farmers plant face escalating challenges due to increasingly variable growing conditions and climate change.
Today, the agriculture industry works to maximize the amount of food we gain from crops by breeding plants with the strongest, highest-yielding genetics. Plant breeding is complex, and data analytics can help scientists at research and development organizations like Syngenta make advances in seed product development
Syngenta has proven that data-driven strategies can help our industry accelerate innovation and breed better seeds that require fewer resources and are adaptable to more diverse environments. Developing models that can predict the performance of potential corn products can help scientists more accurately select seeds that increase the productivity of the crops farmers plant – and will help address the growing global food demand.
Teams will put their analytics skills to the test for a chance to win up to $5,000.
The finalists will present on Monday, April 12. The winner will be announced at the closing plenary session on Wednesday, April 14.
2021 Syngenta Crop Challenge in Analytics Winners:
First Place:
Optimal Schedules for Corn Planting and Storage
Reena Kapoor and Rodolfo García-Flores affiliated with CSIRO Data61 (Australia)
Second Place:
A Multiobjective, Soft Constraint Solution to the 2021 Syngenta Crop Challenge
Mingshi Cui, Kunting Qi, and Byran Smucker from Miami University (USA)
Third Place:
Optimizing Crop Planting Schedule Considering Planting Window & Harvesting Capacity
Saiara Samira Sajid and Guiping Hu from Iowa State University (USA)
Learn more about the Syngenta Crop Challenge here.
Finalist Teams:
Monday, April 12 at 10am EDT
Monday, April 12 at 10:30am EDT
Monday, April 12 at 11am EDT
Monday, April 12 at 11:30am EDT
