Awards Hall

The purpose of the INFORMS President’s Award is to recognize, and thereby encourage, important contributions to the welfare of society by members of our profession at the local, national, or global level. The award is an engraved citation.

This year, the President’s Award is given to:

SHELDON JACOBSON

University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Sheldon H. Jacobson is a Founder Professor of Computer Science, director of the Simulation and Optimization Laboratory, and founding director of the Bed Time Research Institute at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

Citation

The 2023 INFORMS President’s Award is awarded to Professor Sheldon H. Jacobson for advancing the field of operations research through his research that has influenced national policy, his influential role in communicating his research contributions to the public, and for his exceptional service to INFORMS and the broader operations research community.

Jacobson is a Founder Professor of Computer Science, director of the Simulation and Optimization Laboratory, and founding director of both the Bed Time Research Institute and Institute of Computational Redistricting at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. His research record is outstanding and extensive, spanning several methodology and application areas. His methodological research focuses on discrete-event simulation optimization and decision-making under uncertainty, and his applied research contributions focus on homeland security, healthcare, and public health. He has made several seminal research contributions, all focusing on applying operations research to address societal problems of national interest. His research has been widely recognized by his peers, and he has briefed government policymakers on his research findings.

Professor Jacobson’s service to the profession of operations research spans multiple directions. Notable service contributions include serving as a program director at the National Science Foundation (2012-2014) and serving on National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine committees. Professor Jacobson is a thought leader who has communicated his research findings to numerous stakeholders and the general public. He has leveraged his research to bring media attention to important scientific issues, where he has showcased the application of operations research to issues of national concern.

Professor Jacobson has served in numerous roles within INFORMS for more than three decades. He served as the general chair of the 2022 INFORMS Annual Meeting in Indianapolis, the first fully in-person meeting after the COVID-19 pandemic, that introduced a new format with events and workshops to provide additional options for learning. He served as treasurer on the INFORMS Board of Directors (2015-2016) and served on numerous committees. Additionally, he has been a devoted mentor to many members of the operations research community. INFORMS is extremely grateful to Professor Jacobson for his contributions to the profession of operations research through his service, and the impact that he has had in “making the world a better place.”

Professor Jacobson’s research and service efforts will have a lasting impact on future generations of operations research professionals. It gives me immense pleasure to bestow this year’s President’s Award on Professor Sheldon Jacobson.

George E. Kimball Medal

The George E. Kimball Medal is awarded for recognition of distinguished service to the Institute and to the profession of operations research and the management sciences. The award is a commemorative engraved medallion and a framed citation.
Learn more about the Kimball Medal and how to be nominated on the INFORMS website.

This year, there are two Medal winners:

JONATHAN OWEN, CAP

General Motors

Jonathan H. Owen, PhD, CAP, is chief scientist for OR/MS and Analytics, General Motors, and director of GM’s Advanced Analytics Center of Expertise (AACE).

Citation

Jonathan Owen, Ph.D., CAP, is director of the Advanced Analytics Center of Excellence and chief scientist for OR/MS and Analytics at General Motors. He has volunteered substantial service and leadership in a variety of capacities at INFORMS. He served on INFORMS Board of Directors as Vice President of Practice Activities, advocating for stronger collaborative ties between the academic and practitioner communities. He represented GM on the INFORMS Roundtable for 14 years and has served 7 years on its Board of Directors, including two terms as president. He played a pivotal role in implementing the Certified Analytics Professional program. Owen has also been active in promoting the public understanding of contributions to society made by the OR/MS profession.

Owen’s awards include the 2005 Franz Edelman Award, INFORMS Prize, Daniel H. Wagner Prize finalist, IISE Outstanding Middle Career IE Leadership Award for Business/Industry, SME Outstanding Young Manufacturing Engineer Award, among others. He was inducted as an INFORMS Fellow in 2018 and IISE Fellow in 2023. He is an eight-time recipient (the most ever awarded) of GM’s “Boss” Kettering Award for outstanding innovations, which have provided substantial benefit to GM and serve as excellent examples of OR/MS real-world impact.

STEVE GRAVES

MIT sloan school of management

Stephen Graves is the Abraham J. Siegel Professor of Management and Professor Post Tenure in the Operations Management group at the MIT Sloan School of Management. He has a joint appointment with the MIT Department of Mechanical Engineering.

Citation

Stephen C. Graves has been a remarkably influential and effective leader in the governance and administration of INFORMS (ORSA/TIMS), an award winning and distinguished researcher and practitioner, a leader in service to our journals, and a leader in advising students and practitioners. He has also been an instrumental leader in recognizing and promoting the high-quality, applied work of others.

As president of INFORMS, he was instrumental in guiding the organization through the financial disruption and uncertainty caused by COVID-19 as well as in helping to establish a new strategic plan for INFORMS. Through his editorship of Manufacturing & Service Operations Management and other editorial responsibilities, he attracted exceptional research articles with a focus on practice as well as theory. As long-term editor of the Edelman Special Issues of INFORMS Journal on Applied Analytics (formerly Interfaces), as well as in serving as a member of the Edelman Award Committee, Professor Graves played a central role in selecting best practice accomplishments and worked closely with practitioners so that they could effectively communicate their contributions to a broad range of OR/MS professionals.

John von Neumann Theory Prize

The John von Neumann Theory Prize is awarded annually to a scholar (or scholars in the case of joint work) who has made fundamental, sustained contributions to theory in operations research and the management sciences. The prize is awarded for a body of work, typically published over a period of several years. Although recent work should not be excluded, the prize typically reflects contributions that have stood the test of time. The criteria for the prize are broad, and include significance, innovation, depth, and scientific excellence.
Learn more about the von Neumann Prize and how to be nominated in the INFORMS website.

This year’s winner is:

CHRISTOS PAPADIMITRIOU

Columbia University

Christos Charilaos Papadimitriou is a Greek theoretical computer scientist and the Donovan Family Professor of Computer Science at Columbia University.

Citation

The 2023 INFORMS John von Neumann Theory Prize is awarded to Christos H. Papadimitriou and Mihalis Yannakakis for their fundamental and sustained contributions to computational complexity theory and providing an understanding of the limits of efficient solvability for a wide range of decision and optimization problems central to operations research and the management sciences (OR/MS).

As an example of a major contribution, Papadimitriou and Yannakakis introduced Max-NP and Max-SNP, natural variants of the NP complexity class, comprised of certain optimization problems that can be approximated with bounded error (Papadimitriou & Yannakakis 1988). Within these classes, they showed that several common problems have polynomial-time approximation schemes only if the whole class does.

Other major contributions include establishing the NP-completeness of the Euclidean traveling salesman problem (Papadimitriou 1977), an early tour de force in the traditional framework, and characterizing the complexity of many other natural problems. Examples include: checking the validity of facets of polytopes (Papadimitriou and Yannakakis 1984); determining whether a problem has a unique optimal solution (Papadimitriou 1984); local search (Johnson, Papadimitriou and Yannakakis 1988); the extension complexity of LP formulations for the matching and traveling salesman problems (Yannakakis 1988), a paper that erected a firewall to scores of would-be P=NP proofs; and computing Nash equilibria. In the online setting, their work on finding online solutions with a bounded competitive ratio (Papadimitriou and Yannakakis 1991, 1993) has been highly influential. Finally, the introduction of the concept of the “price of anarchy” (Koutsoupias & Papadimitriou 1999, Yannakakis 2009) was a catalyst for major developments in algorithmic game theory, substantially reinforcing the links between economics, computer science, and operations research.

Such contributions have addressed modeling and computational issues at the core of multiple areas in OR/MS; they have helped characterize what is possible and inherently impossible, and more broadly, have provided new tools for such characterizations. Their work has resolved fundamental open problems and sparked new and fruitful lines of research, leading to a better understanding of the field of optimization at large.

MIHALIS YANNAKAKIS

Columbia University

Mihalis Yannakakis is professor of computer science at Columbia University. He is noted for his work in computational complexity, databases, and other related fields.

Citation

The 2023 INFORMS John von Neumann Theory Prize is awarded to Christos H. Papadimitriou and Mihalis Yannakakis for their fundamental and sustained contributions to computational complexity theory and providing an understanding of the limits of efficient solvability for a wide range of decision and optimization problems central to operations research and the management sciences (OR/MS).

As an example of a major contribution, Papadimitriou and Yannakakis introduced Max-NP and Max-SNP, natural variants of the NP complexity class, comprised of certain optimization problems that can be approximated with bounded error (Papadimitriou & Yannakakis 1988). Within these classes, they showed that several common problems have polynomial-time approximation schemes only if the whole class does.

Other major contributions include establishing the NP-completeness of the Euclidean traveling salesman problem (Papadimitriou 1977), an early tour de force in the traditional framework, and characterizing the complexity of many other natural problems. Examples include: checking the validity of facets of polytopes (Papadimitriou and Yannakakis 1984); determining whether a problem has a unique optimal solution (Papadimitriou 1984); local search (Johnson, Papadimitriou and Yannakakis 1988); the extension complexity of LP formulations for the matching and traveling salesman problems (Yannakakis 1988), a paper that erected a firewall to scores of would-be P=NP proofs; and computing Nash equilibria. In the online setting, their work on finding online solutions with a bounded competitive ratio (Papadimitriou and Yannakakis 1991, 1993) has been highly influential. Finally, the introduction of the concept of the “price of anarchy” (Koutsoupias & Papadimitriou 1999, Yannakakis 2009) was a catalyst for major developments in algorithmic game theory, substantially reinforcing the links between economics, computer science, and operations research.

Such contributions have addressed modeling and computational issues at the core of multiple areas in OR/MS; they have helped characterize what is possible and inherently impossible, and more broadly, have provided new tools for such characterizations. Their work has resolved fundamental open problems and sparked new and fruitful lines of research, leading to a better understanding of the field of optimization at large.

INFORMS Fellows Class of 2023

Congratulations to the 2023 INFORMS Fellows! We’re so excited to have you join the ranks of other great contributors to our organization.
View previous Fellows classes and learn more about the process to elect a Fellow on the INFORMS website.

Selim Akturk

Bilkent University

Maged Dessouky

University of Southern California

Ozlem Ergun

Northeastern University

ARNOLD GREENLAND, CAP

Retired

Simge Kucukyavuz

Northwestern University

Andrea Lodi

Cornell Tech and Technion – Israel Institute of Technology

RANGANATH NUGGEHALLI, CAP

UPS

Ted Ralphs

Lehigh University

Rhonda Righter

University of California, Berkeley

J. COLE SMITH

Syracuse University

Kwok-Leung Tsui

Virginia Tech

Peiling Wu-Smith

General Motors

Saul Gass Expository Writing Award

The Saul Gass Expository Writing Award honors an operations researcher or management scientist whose publications demonstrate a consistently high standard of expository writing. The awardee’s written work, published over a period of at least 10 years, should indicate (in terms of breadth of readership) an influence and accessibility enhanced by expository excellence.
Learn more about the Saul Gass Award and how to apply on the INFORMS website.

This winner of this year’s award is:

Mark Daskin

University of Michigan

Frederick W. Lanchester Prize

The Lanchester Prize is awarded for the best contribution to operations research and the management sciences published in English in the past five years.
Learn more about the Lanchester Prize and how to be nominated on the INFORMS website.

The winners of this year’s prize are:

Guanghui (George) Lan

Georgia Tech

Rakesh Vohra

University of Pennslyvania

Philip McCord Morse Lectureship Award

The Lectureship is awarded in honor of Philip McCord Morse in recognition of his pioneer contribution to the field of operations research and the management sciences. The award is given in odd-numbered years at the Annual Meeting if there is a suitable recipient. The term of the lectureship is two years. The award is $2,000, a certificate, a travel fund of $5,000, a copy of Morse’s autobiography, In at the Beginnings: A Physicist’s Life, and a copy of Morse and Kimball’s Methods of Operations Research.
Learn more about the Philip McCord Morse Lectureship Award on the website.

This year’s winner is:

David Shmoys

Cornell University

Prize for the Teaching of OR/MS Practice

The purpose of this award is to recognize a teacher who has succeeded in helping their students to acquire the knowledge and skills necessary to be effective practitioners of operations research or the management sciences. An “effective practitioner” has respect for, understanding of, and the skills to surmount both the practical difficulties and technical challenges of doing good OR/MS work.
Learn more about the Prize for the Teaching of OR/MS Practice on the INFORMS website.

This year’s winners are:

Timothy Chan

University of Toronto

Donald P. Gaver, Jr. Early Career Award

This award was established by a generous endowment from the Donald P. Gaver family. The purpose of the award is to support creative and diverse work in operations research in the early career of the recipient. The candidate must be within 10 years of receiving a Ph.D. and be in a tenure-track academic appointment.
Learn more about the establishment of the Gaver Award and how to be nominated on the INFORMS website.

The winner of this year’s award is:

SANTIAGO BALSEIRO

Columbia University

Volunteer Service Award

The Volunteer Service Award was first awarded in 2016. Its purpose is to recognize exceptional volunteer service to INFORMS.
Learn more about the Volunteer Service Award on the website.

This year’s winners are:

Michael Johnson

University of Massachusetts

Beverly Wright

Burtch Works

Jun Zhuang

University at Buffalo

INFORMS Case Competition

The purpose of this annual competition is to encourage the creation, dissemination, and classroom use of new, unpublished cases in operations research and the management sciences. All cases are reviewed by a panel of judges familiar with the case method.
Learn more about the Case Competition and how to apply on the INFORMS website.

This year’s finalists are:

WINNER

Mobismile Bike-Sharing

Deniz Akturk

Washington University in St. Louis, Olin Business School

Ozan Candogan

University of Chicago Booth School of Business

Runner-up

Racial bias in automated traffic law enforcement and the price of unjustness

Eleftheria Kontou

University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Chrysafis Vogiatzis

University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Honorable mention

Three Mountain Communications: Fairness Considerations for Workplace Task Allocation

Saurabh Bansal

Penn State University

Rashmi Sharma

Penn State University

Wei Wu

Penn State University

Daniel H. Wagner Prize for Excellence in the Practice of Advanced Analytics and Operations Research

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. This prize recognizes those principles by emphasizing good writing, strong analytical content, and verifiable practice successes. This award is administered by the Practice Section of INFORMS.
Learn more about the Wagner Prize and how to apply on the INFORMS website.

Here are this year’s finalists:

Smart Parcel Consolidation at Cainiao

Yujie Chen

Cainiao Network

Yuwei Chen

Cainiao Network

Haoyuan Hu

Cainiao Network

Biao Yuan

Shanghai Jiao Tong University

Yinzhi Zhou

Cainiao Network

The Sort-Assemble-Blend Routing Problem and its Application to Semiconductors

Karl Kempf

Intel Corporation

Nicholas Mason

Intel Corporation

Evan Rash

Intel Corporation

Rachel Rosenberg

Intel Corporation

Delta Coverage: The Analytics Journey to Implement a Novel Nurse Deployment Program

Jacob Cecil

Mary Drewes

Indiana University

Jonathan Helm

Indiana University

Pengyi Shi

Purdue University

INFORMS Scholarship

INFORMS is pleased to announce scholarships for undergraduate students to attend the 2023 INFORMS Annual Meeting. This scholarship program aims to foster the professional pipeline of operations research, management science, and analytics researchers by providing undergraduate students an opportunity to experience these exciting fields and gain professional development opportunities by attending the INFORMS Annual Meeting.
Learn more about the INFORMS Scholarship and how to apply on the INFORMS website.

Here are the 2023 scholarship winners:

Valeria Castro Donoso

Universidad de los Andes

Changkun Guan

Bucknell University

Mung Yao Jia

Johns Hopkins University

Zach Jordan

University of Colorado

Ruofeng (Charlie) Liu

Rice University

Jake Palmieri

University of Southern California

Xinchang Wang

University of Michigan

Seth Bonder Scholarship for Applied Operations Research in Health Services

The purpose of the Bonder Scholarship in Health Services is to promote the development and application of process modeling and O.R. analyses to healthcare design, delivery, and operations. The tenure of the award is one year. The scholarship provides funding from the Seth Bonder Scholarship Endowment and an additional $2,000 grant is funded by the Seth Bonder Foundation.
Learn more about the Bonder Scholarship for Health Services and how to apply on the INFORMS website.

This year’s scholarship recipient is:

YUMING SUN

Georgia Institute of Technology

Seth Bonder Scholarship for Applied Operations Research in Military and Security Applications

The purpose of the Bonder Scholarship for Applied Operations Research in Military & Security Applications is to promote the development and application of process modeling and operations research analyses to military issues. The scholarship provides funding from the Seth Bonder Scholarship Endowment and an additional $2,000 grant is funded by the Seth Bonder Foundation.
Learn more about the Bonder Scholarship for Military and Security Applications and how to apply on the INFORMS website.

This year’s scholarship recipient is:

ESTHER JOSE

University at Buffalo

Amazon SCOT and INFORMS Scholarships

This scholarship program, sponsored by Amazon SCOT, aims to foster the professional pipeline of operations research, management science, and analytics researchers by providing undergraduate juniors and seniors as well as graduate students from underrepresented groups an opportunity to experience these exciting fields and gain professional development opportunities by attending the INFORMS Annual Meeting.
Learn more about the Amazon SCOT and INFORMS scholarships and how to apply on the INFORMS website.

The year’s scholarships winners are:

Fernando Acosta-Perez

Adeola Adegbemijo

State University of New York at Binghamton

Nathan Adeyemi

Northeastern University

Grace Babalola

Binghamton University

Ayesha Farooq

Austin Iglesias Saragih

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Henry Ivuawuogu

North Carolina Agriculture & Technical State University

Caroline Johnston

University of Southern California

Jiayue (Sylvia) Li

University of California, Berkeley

Ogechi Vivian Nwadiaru

University of Massachusetts

Paula Penagos

University of Missouri-St. Louis

Anastasia Rivera

Huston-Tillotson University

Ryan Rodriguez

Jessica Shi

Columbia University

Morgan Wood

George Nicholson Student Paper Competition

The George Nicholson Student Paper Competition is held each year to identify and honor outstanding student papers in the field of operations research and the management sciences.
Learn more about the Nicholson Competition and how to apply on the INFORMS website.

Here are this year’s finalists:

First Place

Bayesian Design Principles for Frequentist Sequential Learning

Yunbei Xu

Columbia University

Second Place

Large Deviations and Metastability Analysis for Heavy-Tailed Dynamical Systems

Xingyu Wang

Northwestern University

Finalists

Dynamic Resource Allocation: Spectrum of Achievable Performances and Algorithmic Design Principles

Akshit Kumar

Columbia University

Mean-field Analysis for Load Balancing on Spatial Graphs

Daan Rutten

Georgia Institute of Technology

Distributionally Robust Linear Quadratic Control

Bahar Taşkesen

EPFL

Estimate-Then-Optimize Versus Integrated-Estimation-Optimization: A Stochastic Dominance Perspective

Haofeng Zhang

Columbia University

George B. Dantzig Dissertation Award

The George B. Dantzig Award is given for the best dissertation in any area of operations research and the management sciences that is innovative and relevant to practice. The award was established to encourage academic research that combines theory and practice and stimulates greater interaction between doctoral students (and their advisors) and the world of practice. Learn more about the Dantzig Award and how to apply on the INFORMS website.

Here are this year’s finalists:

Winner

Experimental Design and Decision-Making in Marketplace Platforms

Hannah Li

Stanford University

Honorable Mentions

Revenue Management in Video Games and with Fairness

Xiao Lei

Columbia University

Social choice for social good: Proposals for democratic innovation from computer science

Paul Goelz

Carnegie Mellon University

Uncertainty in Service Systems: Performance Measure Estimation and Optimization Methods for Contact Centers with Information Uncertainty

Antonio Castellanos

Technion – Israel Institution of Technology

Adaptivity, Structure, and Objectives in Sequential Decision-Making

Sean Sinclair

Cornell University

Doing Good with Good O.R. Student Paper Competition

Doing Good with Good O.R. Student Paper Competition is held each year to identify and honor outstanding projects in the field of operations research and the management sciences conducted by a student or student group that have a significant societal impact. Operations research and management science methods and tools (broadly interpreted) must be central to the success of the projects described.
Learn more about the Doing Good with Good O.R. competition and how to apply in the future on the INFORMS website.

Here are this year’s finalists:

Winner

Community-engaged School District Design: A Stream-based Approach

Aysu Ozel

Northwestern University

Second Place

Reducing Air Pollution through Machine Learning

Léonard Boussioux

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Cynthia Zeng

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Honorable Mentions

Analytics for Societal Impact: Improving Access to Volunteers on VolunteerMatch

Akshaya Suresh

Yale University

Hartford HealthCare Improves Hospital Operations with Patient Outcome Predictions

Kimberly Villalobos Carballo

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Liangyuan Na

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Undergraduate Operations Research Prize

The Undergraduate Operations Research Prize Competition is held each year to honor a student or group of students who conducted a significant applied project in OR/MS, and/or original and important theoretical or applied research in OR/MS, while enrolled as an undergraduate student.
Learn more about the Undergraduate Prize and how to apply on the INFORMS website.

This year’s finalists are:

Winner

Smoothed Analysis of Online Non-parametric Auctions

Naveen Durvasula

University of California, Berkeley

Honorable Mention

A Time-Discretized Mathematical Model and Heuristic for Breast Cancer Radiotherapy

Scholar Sun

University of Waterloo

Finalists

Getting Away with More Network Pruning: From Sparsity to Geometry and Linear Regions

Junyang Cai

Bucknell University

Estimating and Visualizing Demand for Dockless Shared Micromobility Systems

KYRAN FLYNN

Brown University

Retail on Autonomous Wheels: A Time-Sensitive Traveling Salesman Problem

Zhuolun Dong

Xi’an Jiaotong University

Cornell University Uses Integer Programming to Optimize Final Exam Scheduling

Tinghan Ye

Cornell University

Moving Spirit Award

The Moving Spirit Award has been established to recognize outstanding volunteers who have been a “moving spirit” in their chapter or forum.

Learn more about the Moving Spirit Awards for Chapters and Forums, previous winners, and how to make a nomination on the INFORMS website.

K Jo Min

Iowa State University

Jose Ramirez

Universidad Galileo

Banafsheh Behzad

California State University, Long Beach (WORMS)

Judith Liebman Award

The Judith Liebman Award has been established to recognize outstanding student volunteers who have been “moving spirits” in their universities, their student chapters, and INFORMS.
Learn more about the Judith Liebman Award, previous winners, and how to make a nomination on the INFORMS website.

Please help us congratulate and celebrate this year’s winners, seen below:

Durant Fullington

Mississippi State University

Madison Evans

Auburn University

Student Chapter Annual Awards

The purpose of the Student Chapter Annual Awards is to recognize achievements of student chapters.
Learn more about the Student Chapter Annual Awards and how to apply on the INFORMS website.

Summa cum laude

University of Michigan
Texas A&M University
University at Buffalo SUNY
University of South Florida (USF)
The University of Texas at Dallas
Koc University

Magna cum laude

University of Illinois at Chicago
Northeastern University
Galileo University
Northwestern University
Lehigh University
The Ohio State University
University of Massachusetts Amherst
The University of Texas at Austin
Pontifical Catholic University of Chile
Virginia Tech
Clemson University

Cum laude

Mississippi State University
Georgia Southern University
University of Oklahoma
Pennsylvania State University
Auburn University
Oklahoma State University
The University of Louisville
Iowa State University
Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Honorable Mention

Carnegie Mellon University
Arizona State University
Claremont Colleges
University of Maryland, College Park
Georgia Institute of Technology
University of Wisconsin – Madison
University of Arkansas
Texas Tech University

2023 Community Awards

Every year, each INFORMS Community has numerous awards to recognize the efforts of community members and volunteers.

Congratulations to our Community Award winners!

Click here to view our community award winners