At the annual Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS) conference, a number of faculty members and students from Georgia Tech’s H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering (ISyE) received awards for their research. The conference was held from October 20-23, 2019, in Seattle, Washington.

William W. George Chair and Professor Pinar Keskinocak was installed as the president of INFORMS.

In addition, A. Russell Chandler III Chair and Professor Pascal Van Hentenryck gave a keynote address with outgoing INFORMS President President Ramayya Krishnan on "AI Strategy: Opportunities at the Intersection of AI and Operations Research."

George Family Foundation Early Career Professor and Associate Professor Turgay Ayer was selected as one of the Health Applications Society Distinguished Speakers and gave a talk, “Perspectives On Successful Healthcare Analytics Projects,” as part of the Distinguished Speakers Series.

First Place

Turgay Ayer, along with former advisee Can Zhang (Ph.D. 18) and Atalay Atasu and Beril Toktay (both from Scheller College of Business), won the MSOM Responsible Research in OM Award for “Truthful Mechanisms for Medical Surplus Product Allocation.”

Burak Kocuk (Ph.D. 16), along with his former advisors A. Russell Chandler III Professor Santanu Dey and Anderson-Interface Early Career Professor and Associate Professor Andy Sun, won the ENRE Best Publication Award in Energy for “Strong SOCP Relaxations for the Optimal Power Flow Problem.”

Assistant Professor He Wang received first place in the MSOM Student Paper Competition for the work “Dynamic Learning and Pricing with Model Misspecification,” coauthored with Mila Nambiar (MIT Ph.D. student) and David Simchi-Levi (MIT).

Ph.D. student Zhen Zhong received first place in the QSR Best Student Paper Competition for “Image-based Feedback Control using Tensor Analysis,” co-authored with his advisors, Carolyn J. Stewart Chair and Professor Jan Shi and Fouts Family Early Career Professor and Associate Professor Kamran Paynabar.

Second Place

Shixiang Zhu received second place in the “Doing Good with Good OR” Student Paper Competition for “Atlanta Police Zone Redesign: A Data-driven Optimization Approach,” co-authored with his advisor, Harold R. and Mary Anne Nash Early Career Professor and Associate Professor Yao Xie, and Assistant Professor He Wang.

Finalists

Ph.D. student Yufeng Cao was a finalist for the Aviation Applications Section (AAS) Best Student Presentation Competition for the work “Network Revenue Management Under a Spiked Multinomial Logit Choice Model,” coauthored with his advisors, Associate Professor Anton Kleywegt and Assistant Professor He Wang.

Ph.D. student Zhehui Chen was a finalist for the Data Mining Best Student Paper Competition for the paper, “A Hierarchical Expected Improvement Method for Effective Bayesian Optimization,” co-authored with Coca-Cola Chair in Engineering Statistics and Professor Jeff Wu and Simon Mak (Ph.D. 18). His advisors are Wu and Assistant Professor Tuo Zhao.

Ph.D. student Amanda Chu, Pinar Keskinocak, and Monica Villarreal (Ph.D. 14) were finalists for the Daniel H. Wagner Prize for Excellence in Operations Research Practice for the project “Empowering Denver Public Schools System to Optimize School Bus Operations.”

Ph.D. student Zhaowei She was a finalist for the MSOM Student Paper Competition for the paper, “Can Big Data Cure Risk Selection in Healthcare Capitation Programs?,” co-authored with his advisor Turgay Ayer and Daniel Montanera (Georgia State University).

SIAC Ph.D. student Andi Wang was a finalist for the Data Mining Section Best Paper Award for “Ranking Features to Promote Diversity: An Approach Based on Sparse Distance Correlation,” co-authored with his advisor, Jan Shi.

Liyan Xie was a finalist for the QSR Best Student Paper Competition for “Optimal Sequential Subspace Change-point Detection,” co-authored with her advisor, Yao Xie, and George Moustakides (Rutgers University).

Runner-up

ACO Ph.D. student Sebastian Perez was runner-up in the Computing Society Student Paper Prize for “Dynamic Resource Allocation in the Cloud with Near-optimal Efficiency” co-authored with his advisors, H. Milton Stewart Early Career Professor and Associate Professor Mohit Singh and Leo and Louise Benatar Early Career Professor and Associate Professor Alejandro Toriello, and Ishai Menache (Microsoft Research).

Liyan Xie was runner-up in the Computing Society Student Paper Prize for "Robust Hypothesis Testing with Wasserstein Uncertainty Sets," co-authored with her advisor, Yao Xie, and Rui Gao (Ph.D. 18).

Honorable Mention

Can Zhang (Ph.D. 18), co-advised by Turgay Ayer and Schneider National Chair in Transportation and Logistics and Professor Chip White, received an honorable mention for the George B. Dantzig Dissertation Award.