Pierskalla Award

Previous Recipients

Year	Recipient	Title
2019	Arielle Anderer, Hamsa Bastani, John Silberholz	Adaptive Clinical Trial Designs with Surrogates: When Should We Bother?
	Zhijin Zhou, Yingfei Wang, Hamed Mamani, David G. Coffey	How Do Tumor Cytogenetics Inform Cancer Treatments? Dynamic Risk Stratification and Precision Medicine Using Multi-Armed Bandits
	Baris Ata, Yichuan Ding, Stefanos Zenios	Achievable-Region-Based Approach for Kidney Allocation Policy Design with Endogenous Patient Choice
	Sze-Chuan Suen, Diana M. Negoescu, Joel Goh	Design of Incentive Programs for Optimal Medication Adherence
2018	Pengyi Shi, Jonathan Helm, Jivan Romain Deglise-Hawkinson, and Julian Pan	Timing it Right: Balancing Inpatient Congestion versus Readmission Risk at Discharge
	Stephen Chick, Noah Gans, and Ozge Yapar (Runner-up)	Bayesian Sequential Learning for Clinical Trials of Multiple Correlated Medical Interventions
	Taylor Corcoran, Elisa Long, and Fernanda Brava	Flexible FDA Approval Policies
	Hamsa Sridhar Bastani, Osbert Bastani, and Carolyn Kim	Interpreting Predictive Models for Human-in-the-Loop Analytics
	Rongqing Han, Vishal Gupta, Song-Hee Kim, and Hyung Paek	Maximizing Intervention Effectiveness
2017	Sze-chuan Suen, Margaret L. Brandeau, and Jeremy D. Goldhaber-Fiebert	Optimal Timing of Drug Sensitivity Testing for Patients on Firstline Tuberculosis Treatment
	Hrayer Aprahamian, Douglas R. Bish, and Ebru K. Bish (Runner-up)	Optimal Risk-based Group Testing in Public Health Screening
	Wenqi Hu, Carri W. Chan, José R. Zubizarreta, and Gabriel J. Escobar (Runner-up)	An Examination of Early Transfers to the ICU Based on a Physiologic Risk Score
	Anil Aswani, Philip Kaminsky, Yonatan Mintz, Yoshimi Fukuoka, and Elena Flowers (Finalist)	Non- Stationary Bandits with Habituation and Recovery Dynamics
	Saša Zorc, Stephen E. Chick, and Sameer Hasija (Finalist)	Outcomes-based Reimbursement Policies for Chronic Care Pathways
2016	Hamsa Bastani and Mohsen Bayati	Online Decision-Making with High-Dimensional Covariates
	Anil Aswani, Zuo-Jun (Max) Shen, and Auyon Saddiq (Runner-up)	Data-Driven Incentive Design in the Medicare Shared Savings Program
	Susan Feng Lu and Lauren Xiaoyuan Lu (Finalist)	Do Mandatory Overtime Laws Improve Quality? Staffing Decisions and Operational Flexibility of Nursing Homes
	Turgay Ayer, Anthony Bonifonte, Can Zhang, Anne Spaulding, and Jagpreet Chhatwal (Finalist)	Prioritizing Hepatitis C Treatment in U.S. Prisons
2015	Baris Ata, Anton Skaro, and Sridhar Tayur	OrganJet: Overcoming geographical disparities in access to deceased donor kidneys in the United States
	Stephen E. Chick, Martin Forster, and Paolo Pertile (Runner-up)	A Bayesian decision-theoretic model of sequential experimentation with delayed responses
	Hadi El-Amine, Ebru K. Bish, and Douglas R. Bish (Finalist)	Robust post-donation blood screening under prevalence rate uncertainty
	Dan Yamin, Yoku Ibuka, Alison P. Galvani, and Jeffrey P. Townsend (Finalist)	Optimal dosing of rotavirus vaccination in Japan
	Justin Jia and Hui Zhao (Finalist)	Mitigating the U.S. drug shortages: Pareto-improving contract design
2014	Soo-Haeng Cho, Hoon Jang, Taesik Lee, and John Turner	Simultaneous Location of Trauma Centers and Helicopters for Emergency Medical Service Planning
	Joel Goh, Mohsen Bayati, Stafanos Zenios, Sundeep Singh, and David Moore	Data Uncertainty in Markov Chains: Application to Cost-effectiveness Analyses of Medical Innovations
	Diana Negoescu, Kostas Bimpikis, Margaret Brandeau, and Dan Iancu (Finalist)	Dynamic Learning of Patient Response Types: An Application to Treating Chronic Diseases
	Nicos Savva, Michael Freeman, and Stefan Scholtes (Finalist)	Decomposing the Effect of Workload on Patient Outcomes: An Empirical Analysis of a Maternity Unit
2013	Dimitris Bertsimas, Allison O'Hair, Stephen Relyea, and John Silberholz	An Analytics Approach to Designing Clinical Trials for Cancer
	Song-Hee Kim, Carri W. Chan, Marcelo Olivares, and Gabriel Escobar (Finalist)	ICU Admission Control: An Empirical Study of Capacity Allocation and its Implication on Patient Outcomes
	Dan Yamin and Arieh Gavious (Finalist)	Incentives' Effect In Influenza Vaccination Policy
	Ludwig Kuntz, Roman Mennicken, and Stefan Scholtes (Finalist)	Stress on the Ward: Evidence of Safety Tipping Points in Hospitals
2012	Vishal Ahuja and John Birge	Fully Adaptive Designs for Clinical Trials: Simultaneous Learning from Multiple Patients
	Tinglong Dai, Soo-Haeng Cho, and Fuqiang Zhang (Runner-up)	Contracting for On-Time Delivery in the US Influenza Vaccine Supply Chain
	Reza Yaesoubi and Ted Cohen (Runner-up)	Framework for Real-Time Decision Making During Epidemics
	Joel Goh and Stefanos A. Zenios (Finalist)	Active Postmarketing Drug Surveillance for Multiple Adverse Events
	Amin Khademi, Denis R. Saure, Andrew J. Schaefer, Mark Roberts, and Scott Braithwaite (Finalist)	HIV Treatment Allocation in Resource-limited Settings
2011	Douglas Bish, Ebru Bish, Shiguang Xi, and Anthony Slonim	Optimal Selection of Screening Assays for Infectious Agents in Donated Blood
	Donald Lee and Stefanos Zenios (Runner-up)	An Evidence‐Based Incentive System for Medicare’s End‐Stage Renal Disease Program
	Oguzhan Alagoz, Fatih Erenay, and Adnan Said (Finalist)	Optimizing Colonoscopy Screening for Colorectal Cancer
	Dimitris Bertsimas, Vivek F. Farias, and Nikos Trichakis (Finalist)	Fairness, Efficiency and Flexibility in Organ Allocation for Kidney Transplantation
2010	Soroush Saghafian, Wallace Hopp, Mark Van Oyen and Jeffrey Desmond and Steven Kronick	Patient Streaming as a Mechanism for Improving Responsiveness in Emergency Departments
2009	Mariel Lavieri, Martin Puterman, Scott Tyldesley and William Morris	When to Treat Prostate Cancer Patients Based on their PSA Dynamics
2008	Wanpracha Chaovalitwongse, Ya-Jun Fan, and Rajesh Sachdeo	Novel Optimization Models for Abnormal Brain Activity Classification Spending and Disparity
2007	Chris P. Lee and Stefanos Zenios	A Shadow Price Framework for Quantifying Health Care Demand, Spending and Disparity
2006	Stephen Chick, Hamed Mamani, and David Simchi-Levi	Supply Chain Coordination and Influenza Vaccination
2005	Eva Lee, Siddhartha Maheshwary, and Jacquelyn Mason	Emergency Treatment Response and Real-Time Staff Allocation for Bioterrorism and Infectious Disease Outbreak
2004	Panos Pardalos, Wanpracha Chaovalitwongse, Leonidas Iasmidis, J. Chris Sackellares, Deng-Shan Shiau, Paul R. Carney, Oleg A. Prokopyev, and Vitaliy A. Yatsenko	Seizure Warning Algorithm Based on Optimization and Nonlinear Dynamics
2003	H. Edwin Romeijn, Ravindra K. Ahuja, James F. Dempsey, and Arvind Kumar	A Column Generation Approach To Radiation Therapy Treatment Planning Using Aperture Modulation
2002	Michael Ferris, Jinho Lim, and David Shepard	An Optimization Approach for Radiosurgery Treatment Planning
2001	Gregory Zaric and Margaret Brandeau	Optimal Investment in a Portfolio of HIV Prevention Programs
2000	Allen Holder	Designing Radiotherapy Plans with Elastic Constraints and Interior Point Methods

William Pierskalla

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 includes an honorarium for the best paper presented in a Health Applications Society sponsored session at the annual INFORMS conference. 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 a Distinguished Professor Emeritus at the Anderson School at UCLA and the Ronald A. Rosenfeld Professor Emeritus, The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, and serves as an editor on numerous operations research journals.

Eligibility

To be considered for the award, a full paper must be submitted by the application deadline to the Chair of the Pierskalla Committee (see Application Process details below). The submission can be a working paper, a paper under review, or a previously published paper, and is not restricted to papers written by students. If desired by the authors, the winning paper will be published in Health Care Management Science if it has not been published or is not under review elsewhere.

Judging

Papers are judged by a panel of up to four representatives from the Health Applications Society 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 session devoted to the competition. The panel judging the papers reserves the right not to award a prize in any given year.

Application Process

A complete entry consists of:

1. 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 CorrespondingAuthorLastName_CoverLetter.pdf.

2. A completely anonymous paper in PDF format that meets the following criteria:

Author(s) names or affiliations should not appear anywhere in the paper
At most 32 pages excluding the appendix but including tables, figures, and references. The paper must include all material necessary for judges to assess its technical correctness and confirm the validity of results.
The formatting standards for submitting a paper to major INFORMS journals (such as Management Science or Operations Research) apply.
The filename of the submitted paper should be ShortTitleOfThePaper.pdf.

The above two documents should be sent by the entrant as e-mail attachments to PierskallaCompetition2020@gmail.com. The email's subject line should be: 2020 INFORMS Pierskalla Award Submission. Complete entries must be received on or before Friday June 12, 2020.

Any question(s) related to the competition should be sent by email to: PierskallaCompetition2020@gmail.com.

The winning paper will be announced at the Health Applications Society's business meeting at the INFORMS annual meeting.

2020 Committee Chairs

Arielle Anderer, University of Pennsylvania
Hamsa Bastani, University of Pennsylvania
John Silberholz, University of Michigan