CALL FOR PAPERS
INFORMS 2025 Data Mining Best Paper Award Competition
The Data Mining Society (DMS) of INFORMS announces the Data Mining (DM) Best Paper Award Competition to recognize excellence among the society's members. The competition has two tracks:
● General Track for the Best Paper Award, and
● Student Track for the Best Student Paper Award.
Four finalists will be selected for each track to make oral presentations at the 2025 INFORMS Annual Meeting to be held in Atlanta, GA on October 26-29, 2025.
The goal of the competition is to highlight significant research achievements by DMS members and to enhance the visibility and impact of their work. DMS invites high-quality and original research contributions that advance the methodology, theory, or application of data mining. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the following:
● Feature engineering & Dimensionality reduction
● Pattern mining & Anomaly detection
● Clustering & Unsupervised learning
● Machine learning for data mining (incl. deep learning, Bayesian methods)
● Uncertainty quantification
● Simulation and optimization in data mining
● Interpretable/explainable data mining
● Fairness & privacy in data mining
● Generative AI
● Temporal data mining (e.g., time series, longitudinal data)
● Data stream mining
● Text and language mining
● Graph, network & web data mining
● Spatial and spatiotemporal analysis
● Federated and distributed learning
● Multimodal & heterogeneous data mining
● Applications of data mining in healthcare, manufacturing, energy, environment, logistics, supply chain, finance, social media, & more
Eligibility Requirements & Submission Details
● The award nominee must be a member of the Data Mining Society at the time of the 2025 INFORMS Annual Meeting.
● Student Track only: Nominees must be student members of the Data Mining Society by the 2025 INFORMS Annual Meeting and must be the lead author and primary contributor of the submitted work. A confirmation letter from both the advisor and the student is required at submission: Advisor and Student Statements.docx.
● The submitted paper should be unpublished work.
● Past finalists must submit work that is clearly distinct from any previously recognized submission to be eligible this year.
● Finalists will be announced prior to the annual meeting and will present their papers in the Data Mining Best Paper Award Competition, General or Student track, sessions at the 2025 INFORMS Annual Meeting. Presentations as a finalist will not count toward the one presentation limit at the 2025 INFORMS Annual Meeting.
● Papers selected as a finalist in either DMS competition track may not simultaneously serve as finalists in other competitions at the 2025 INFORMS Annual Meeting (including those within DMS). Please notify the co-chairs if a conflict arises (contact details are at the end of this document).
● Finalists in either track may opt for fast-track submission to the INFORMS Journal on Data Science (IJDS). Papers must not be under review elsewhere or subject to other copyright restrictions. Submissions are due by November 30, 2025, with further details provided to finalists.
● Required paper format: Maximum of 12 pages with 1-inch margins (including references), 11-pt font or higher, single column, single-spaced, and 50-word abstract. Note that any content after the 12th page will be removed.
All paper submissions will be evaluated by external referees using a double-blind process. The winners of each track will be determined based on the external review evaluation and the oral presentation at the 2025 INFORMS Annual Meeting.
Submission Guidelines
Prospective authors should prepare the following files:
● A file of the blinded version of the paper in PDF format.
● A file of the unblinded version of the paper in PDF format.
● Student Track only: A signed confirmation letter from the advisor and lead author (student) in PDF format: Advisor and Student Statements.docx.
Please upload all files and complete the submission form(s) before the deadline of June 30, 2025, 11:59 PM, Eastern Time. The submission forms are available at:
General Track: Submission Form - General Track
Student Track: Submission Form - Student Track
Key Dates
● June 30: Paper submission deadline (General Track and Student Track)
● August 1: Speaker registration deadline
● August 15: Announcement of competition finalists
● September 13: Early pricing registration deadline
● October 26-29: Presentations by finalists at the 2025 INFORMS Annual Meeting (exact date, time, and room TBD)
If you have any questions, please contact the INFORMS Data Mining Best Paper Award Competition Co-Chairs:
● Dr. Hadis Anahideh (hadis@uic.edu), University of Illinois Chicago
● Dr. Adam Meyers (axm8336@miami.edu), University of Miami
● Dr. Zimo Wang (zimowang@binghamton.edu), Binghamton University
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Hadis Anahideh
Assistant Professor
University of Illinois Chicago
Chicago IL
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