ISS Sandy Slaughter Early Career Award – 2026
Call for Nominations
The INFORMS Information Systems Society (ISS) invites nominations for the ISS Sandy Slaughter Early Career Award. The spirit of the award is to honor the memory of the late Professor Sandy Slaughter who was tireless in her pursuit of recognizing the potential leaders of the "next generation" of information systems academics. The award will recognize and honor early career individuals who are on a path towards making outstanding intellectual contributions to the information systems discipline.
Eligibility
To be eligible for these awards, individuals must have a) either received doctorate degrees or started tenure-track positions no more than 11 years from the year when they are being considered for the award, and b) must NOT be full professors. The award selection committee will automatically allow an exception to the eligibility criterion of 11 years under item a if a nominee has received an approved leave (e.g., maternity, sick or family leave) and the nominator(s) submit a digital copy of the memo or letter about the approved leave. The committee will consider other exceptions to the eligibility criterion of 11 years if a nominee underwent some extenuating circumstances and if the nominator(s) surface such details in their nomination letter. The award selection committee recognizes the multi-dimensional nature of intellectual contributions and will pay attention to a variety of scholarly contributions, including, but not limited to:
· Emerging body of thematic and high impact research in the form of publications that are likely to make a significant impact on theory, research, and practice.
· Evidence of growing intellectual leadership in the discipline as reflected in editorial appointments, particularly of INFORMS journals.
· Other evidence of intellectual contributions that provide a platform for future success.
Nominators are encouraged to provide the award selection committee with specific indicators of the nominee's contributions in these and other categories.
The nominator and the nominee must be members of ISS at the time of nomination, except for unusual circumstances approved by the President of ISS.
Submission Instructions
The nomination should include a brief (not to exceed two pages) description of the candidate's achievements and eligibility for the award, and should be accompanied with the nominee's up-to-date CV and supporting documents for approved leaves, if any. Any INFORMS ISS member may submit nominations and may nominate more than one candidate at their own discretion and judgment. One ISS member nomination is sufficient, multi-member nomination is not necessary.
Though self-nominations are discouraged, nominations may be submitted through the ISS 2026 Awards nomination portal (Qualtrics): https://commercevirginia.co1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_5i38OVCe2w1GcGa. The deadline for submission of nominations is 11:59 PM Pacific Time on August 8, 2026.
Process and Timeline
The committee members are Elena Karahanna (Chair), De Liu, Alex Tuzhilin, Eric Zheng, and Jingjing Li (ex-officio, Vice President-ISS).
The award selection committee will deliberate upon the pool of nominees solely based on the information available in the nomination letters, the nominees' CVs, and any supporting documents submitted for approved leaves. Winners of the award will be notified before the CIST. To be fair to all nominees, the selection committee cannot review new information about the nominees nor will the committee revote on the nominees after the notifications have been sent to the winners and nominators. We kindly request nominators of the non-selected nominees to provide additional information about their nominees in the nomination letters the next year.
The society will announce the full list of 2026 ISS Sandy Slaughter Early Career Award winners and present them with award plaques at the ISS Award session during the 2026 Conference on Information Systems Technology (CIST) in San Francisco, CA. We invite the winners and all of our members to come celebrate the winners' as well as our society's achievements at the Award session. Organization details of this celebration event will be updated later.
Prior to the Award session, winners may individually share the good news with their deans, department heads, nominators, mentors and mentees, but the winners and others aware of the winning results should not reveal such information via online social media.
It is a condition of the award that the ISS Sandy Slaughter Early Career Award winner be a member of ISS, and, except for unusual circumstances approved by the President of ISS, remain a member of the Society until they retire from full-time work.