INFORMS Open Forum

Dear INFORMS members,

We are pleased to announce the finalists of 20^th INFORMS Data Mining and Decision Analytics (DMDA) Workshop Best Paper Competition. The finalists were selected from a pool of high-quality submissions, with each submission double-blind reviewed and scored by a panel of reviewers. The finalists are (ordered alphabetically by the first authors' last name):

Applied Track

Applied Track Finalists will present their works in Session: DMDA Workshop Best Paper Competition (Applied Track) (Oct 25, 2025, 1:00 PM) in the presence of a panel of judges.

1.     Title: Formulating Optimization Programs with Self-Improving LLM Experience Library

Authors: Minwei Kong (The London School of Economics and Political Science), Ao Qu (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), Xiaotong Guo (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), Wenbin Ouyang (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), Yining Ma (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), Junyi Li (Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology Centre), Han Zheng (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), Hai Wang (Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology Centre, Singapore Management University), Cathy Wu (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), Jinhua Zhao (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology Centre)

2.     Title: Mathematical Formulation of Transformer Architecture

Authors: Minseo Lee (Virginia Tech), I. Esra Buyuktahtakın (Virginia Tech)

3.     Title: Reuniting Forcibly Separated Families Through Shared Memories

Authors: Huifeng Su (Yale School of Management), Lesley Meng (Yale School of Management), Edieal Pinker (Yale School of Management)

4.     Title: Hierarchical Probabilistic Conformal Prediction for Distributed Energy Resources Adoption

Authors: Wenbin Zhou (Carnegie Mellon University), Shixiang Zhu (Carnegie Mellon University)

Theoretical Track

Theoretical Track Finalists will present their works in Session: DMDA Workshop Best Paper Competition (Theoretical Track) (Oct 25, 2025, 10:45 AM) in the presence of a panel of judges.

1.     Title: Real-Time Personalization with Simple Transformers

Authors: Lin An (Carnegie Mellon University), Andrew A. Li (Carnegie Mellon University), Vaisnavi Nemala (Carnegie Mellon University), Gabriel Visotsky (Carnegie Mellon University)

2.     Title: What Data Enables Optimal Decisions? An Exact Characterization for Linear Optimization

Authors: Omar Bennouna (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), Amine Bennouna (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), Saurabh Amin (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), Asuman Ozdaglar (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)

3.     Title: A Deterministic Global Optimization Algorithm for Large-scale Constrained Clustering

Authors: Pedro Chumpitaz-Flores (University of South Florida), My Duong (University of South Florida), Kaixun Hua (University of South Florida)

4.     Title: Multi-fidelity Bayesian Optimization via Fused Gaussian Process Surrogates

Authors: Muyun Lu (University of Houston), Jose E Aguilar Escamilla (Oregon State University), Huazheng Wang (Oregon State University), Ying Lin (University of Houston)

Thanks to the reviewers for their time and effort in the review! 

Congratulations to all the finalists! 

20^th DMDA Workshop Co-Chairs:

Hadis Anahideh (hadis@uic.edu), University of Illinois Chicago

Jiachang Liu (jiachang.liu@cornell.edu), Cornell University

Adam Meyers (axm8336@miami.edu), University of Miami

Hairong Wang (hairong.wang@austin.utexas.edu), UT Austin

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Hairong Wang
Assistant Professor
The University of Texas at Austin
Austin TX
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