2020 ICS Student Paper Award Winner
The 2020 INFORMS Computing Society Student Paper Award winner is Tyler Perini
Award winning paper: "A Criterion Space Method for Biobjective Mixed Integer Programming: The Boxed Line Method" by Perini, Boland, Pecin, Savelsbergh, INFORMS Journal on Computing 32:1, 16-39 (2020).
Runner up: Margarita Paz Castro for the paper: "A Combinatorial Cut-and-Lift Procedure with an Application to 0-1 Chance Constraints" by Castro, Cire, Beck, under review.
Honorable mentions (in alphabetical order):
- Hussein Hazimeh for the paper "Sparse Regression at Scale: Branch-and-Bound rooted in First-Order Optimization" by Hazimeh, Mazumder, Saab, under review.
- Prateek Srivastava for the paper "A Robust Spectral Clustering Algorithm for Sub-Gaussian Mixture Models with Outliers" by Srivastava, Sarkar, Hanasusanto, under review.
2020 ICS Student Paper Award Selection Committee members are:
- Claudia d'Ambrosio, Chair (LIX, École Polytechnique)
- Georgina Hall (INSEAD, Decision Sciences)
- Ruiwei Jiang (University of Michigan)
2019 ICS Student Paper Award Winner
The 2019 INFORMS Computing Society Student Paper Award winner is Ryan Cory-Wright and Jean Pauphilet, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Award-winning paper: “A Unified Approach to Mixed- Integer Optimization: Nonlinear Formulations and Scalable Algorithms”.
Honorable mentions: Sebastián Pérez-Salazar, Georgia Tech, “Dynamic Resource Allocation in the Cloud with Near-Optimal Efficiency”, and Liyan Xie, Georgia Tech, “Robust Hypothesis Testing Using Wasserstein Uncertainty Sets”.
2019 ICS Student Paper Award Selection Committee members are:
- Sergiy Butenko (Texas A&M University, Industrial and Systems Engineering)
- Frank E. Curtis, Chair (Lehigh University, Industrial and Systems Engineering), and
- Georgina Hall (INSEAD, Decision Sciences)
2018 ICS Student Paper Award Winner
The 2018 INFORMS Computing Society Student Paper Award winner is Aleksandr M. Kazachkov of the Carnegie Mellon University for the paper, "V-Polyhedral Disjunctive Cuts." Aleksandr's advisor and co-author is Dr. Egon Balas.
The citation for this award:
This paper develops a novel approach - based on so-called V-Polyhedral Cuts (VPCs) - for generating valid inequalities when solving mixed-integer linear programming (MILP) problems. The cuts are motivated by several shortcomings of existing cut generation techniques, such as issues related to numerical instability and a "tailing off" effect when they are used recursively. The use of VPCs mitigates such effects by providing a practical method for generating strong cuts without recursion. Theoretical properties of such cuts are presented and computational tests of their performance are conducted. The computational results indicate that the cuts generated are strong and that there appear to exist classes of MILP instances for which VPCs work especially well.
Runners-up for this award, in alphabetical order, were:
- Colin P. Gillen, University of Pittsburgh, "Fortification Against Cascade Propagation Under Uncertainty".
- Chris Lourenco, Texas A&M University, "Asymptotically Optimal Exact Solution of Sparse Linear Systems via Left-Looking Roundoff-Error-Free LU Factorization".
2018 ICS Student Paper Award Selection Committee
- Sergiy Butenko (Texas A&M University, Industrial and Systems Engineering)
- Frank E. Curtis (Lehigh University, Industrial and Systems Engineering)
- Anna Nagurney - Chair (University of Massachusetts Amherst, Isenberg School of Management)
2017 ICS Student Paper Award Winner
The 2017 INFORMS Computing Society Student Paper Award winner is Berk Ustun of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for the paper, "Learning Optimized Risk Scores from Large-Scale Datasets." Berk's advisor and co-author is Dr. Cynthia Rudin.
The citation for this award:
This paper considers the question of how to learn risk scores from large datasets in a principled manner. Risk scores are ubiquitous tools used to make crucial predictions such as the risk of seizure for ICU patients. However, despite their widespread use, most risk scores have been developed in an ad hoc manner. This has been the case since learning risk scores from data is particularly challenging, especially in the presence of inconvenient operational constraints that translate as the need for sparsity, small-integer coefficients, and rank- accuracy. In this paper, the authors pose the risk score identification problem as a mixed-integer nonlinear program, and present a novel cutting-plane algorithm that recovers the optimal solution efficiently. The cutting plane algorithm is shown to scale linearly with the size of the dataset, and requires little to no parameter tuning. The generality of the formulation and the strength of the numerical experiments are illustrative of the high potential impact of this work.
Runners-up for this award, in alphabetical order, were:
- Rui Gao, Georgia Institute of Technology, "Wasserstein Distributional Robustness and Regularization in Statistical Learning"
- Christian Kroer, Carnegie Mellon University, "Theoretical and Practical Advances on Smoothing for Extensive-Form Games"
- Hamed Rahimian, The Ohio State University, "Identifying Effective Scenarios in Distributionally Robust Stochastic Programs with Variation Distance"
2017 ICS Student Paper Award Selection Committee
- Raghu Pasupathy, Chair
- Frank Curtis
- Anna Nagurney
2016 ICS Student Paper Award Winner
The 2016 INFORMS Computing Society Student Paper Award winner is Georgina Hall of Princeton University for the paper, "DC Decomposition of Nonconvex Polynomials with Algebraic Techniques." She is advised by Prof. Amir Ali Ahmadi.
Runners-up, in alphabetical order, were:
- Hadi Charkhgard, University of Newcastle, "A Criterion Space Search Algorithm for Biobjective Mixed Integer Programming: The Triangle Splitting Method"
- Terrence Mak, Australian National University, "Dynamic Compressor Optimization in Natural Gas Pipeline Systems"
2016 ICS Student Paper Award Selection Committee
- Hande Benson, Chair
- Anna Nagurney
- Raghu Pasupathy