The Health Applications Society of INFORMS sponsors an annual competition for the Pierskalla Award, which recognizes research excellence in the field of health care management science. The award is named after Dr. William Pierskalla to recognize his contribution and dedication to improving health services delivery through operations research. Dr. Pierskalla is the John E. Anderson Professor of Management and Former Dean of the John E. Anderson Graduate School of Management at UCLA, and the Ronald A. Rosenfeld Professor Emeritus at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.
Eligibility
Papers must be submitted by June 14th, 2026 using the application process below. Submissions may be working papers, under review or revision, or published. Author teams may include any combination of students, faculty, and industry professionals. Note that the submitting author must be a Health Applications Society member at the time of submission.
Evaluation
Papers are judged by a panel of committee members on:
- Contribution to operations research/management science in health care
- Readability, clarity, and organization of the paper
- Technical content and scope relative to the length of the paper
- Originality
Up to five finalists will be selected and invited to present their work at the INFORMS annual meeting in a Pierskalla finalist session. Note that the panel judging the papers reserves the right not to award a prize in any given year.
Application Process
A complete entry consists of:
- A single-page PDF cover letter containing the following:
- Names and affiliations of all co-authors
- Complete contact information of the corresponding author
- The paper title
- Appropriate keywords for the submitted paper
- The filename of the cover letter should be ShortTitleOfThePaper_CoverLetter.pdf.
- A completely anonymous paper in PDF format that meets the following criteria:
- Author(s) names or affiliations should not appear anywhere in the paper.
- 32 page maximum, which should include all tables, figures, and references. Supplementary content may be included in an appendix of up to 16 pages, which should appear in the same PDF file. Thus, PDF submissions should not exceed 48 pages. The paper must include all material necessary for judges to assess its technical correctness and confirm the validity of the results.
- The formatting standards for submitting a paper to major INFORMS journals (e.g., Management Science, M&SOM, Operations Research) apply.
- The filename of the submitted paper should be ShortTitleOfThePaper.pdf.
The above two documents should be submitted via the Google Form: https://forms.gle/U2X6qSChGwcGeCmp8. Please note that submissions will require a Gmail account. Complete entries must be received on or before June 14th, 2026.
Any question(s) related to the competition should be sent by email to matt.baucum@okstate.edu and jeremywatts@iourology.com.
The winning paper will be announced at the Health Applications Society business meeting at the INFORMS annual meeting.
Matt Baucum – Spears School of Business, Oklahoma State University
Jeremy Watts – IO Urology
2026 Committee Co-Chairs
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Matt Baucum
Assistant Professor
Oklahoma State University
Stillwater OK
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