ISS Gordon B. Davis Young Scholar Award – 2026
Call for Nominations
The INFORMS Information Systems Society (ISS) invites nominations for the ISS Gordon B. Davis Young Scholar Award. The award is named in honor of University of Minnesota professor, Gordon Davis, who was part of the founding fathers of the information systems discipline. The award recognizes and honors young scholars who are on a path towards making outstanding intellectual contributions to the information systems discipline.
Eligibility
This award focuses on recognizing non-tenured junior scholars who have completed their PhDs no more than seven years from the year when they are being considered for the award. The award selection committee will automatically allow an exception to the eligibility criterion of seven 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 award selection committee will consider other exceptions to the eligibility criterion of seven years if there are extenuating circumstances and if the nominator(s) surface such details in their nomination letter. Nominees are to have demonstrated competence in pursuing and executing quality IS research that makes meaningful intellectual contribution to the IS discipline.
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 Han Zhang (Chair), Chris Forman, Sumit Sarkar, Param Singh, 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 re-nominate their nominees the next year and provide additional information about the nominees in next year's nomination letters.
The society will announce the full list of 2026 ISS Gordon B. Davis Young Scholar 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 Gordon B. Davis Young Scholar 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.