Best Cluster Paper Award (INFORMS Annual Meeting)

This award is a competitive award, started in 2013, which is based on the best papers submitted to the Section's sponsored cluster at the INFORMS Annual Meeting.

Service Science members submit papers in their cluster session for consideration. The award committee then invites finalists to present their work in a Best Paper Award Competition session at the INFORMS Annual Meeting, and a panel of distinguished service scholars determines the rank ordering of winners. Winners are announced at the Service Science Section business meeting.

Presenters need to be a Service Science Section member (before the Annual Meeting) to be considered for this award. Thus, nominated authors must register as a Service Science Section member and submit the paper that the presentation is based on (the submission portal will be announced before the competition).

Prior award winners are:

  • 2022
    • First-Place: Bora Keskin. ”Data-driven Clustering and Feature-based Retail Electricity Pricing with Smart Meters”
    • Second-Place: Junyu Cao. “Stall Economy: The Value of Mobility in Retail on Wheels”
    • Third Place: Michael Hamilton. “Optimal Feature-Based Market Segmentation and Pricing”
  • 2021
    • First-Place (tie): Luyi Yang, Shiliang Cui, Sezer Ulku, Zhongbin Wang, Yong-Pin Zhou. "Pooling Servers for Customer-Intensive Services: Theory and Experimental Evidence"
    • First-Place (tie): Qiuping Yu, Yiming Zhang, Yong-Pin Zhou. "Delay Information in Virtual Queues: A Large-Scale Field Experiment on a Ride-Sharing Platform"
    • Third Place: Pnina Feldman, Ella Segev. "The Important Role of Time Limits when Consumers Choose their Time in Service"
  • 2020 
    • No competition this year due to the COVID-19 pandemic
  • 2019
    • First Place: Sheldon H. Jacobson, "Multi-objective Optimization for Political Districting: A Scalable Multilevel Approach"
    • Second Place: Divya Singhvi, “Learning Personalized Product Recommendations with Customer Disengagement”
    • Third Place (tie): Masoud Kamalahmadi, “Call to Duty: Just-in-time Scheduling in a Restaurant Chain”
    • Third Place (tie): Ricky Roet-Green, “Restaurant Chain, The Armchair Decision: On Queue-length Information When Customers Travel to a Queue”
  • 2018
    • First-Place (tie): Tamar Cohen-Hillel, Georgia Perakis, Kiran Panchamgam, “High-Low Promotion Policies for Peak End Demand Models”
    • First-Place (tie): Maxime Cohen, Michael D. Fiszer, Baek Jung Kim, “Frustration-Based Promotions: A Field Experiment in Ride-Sharing”
    • Third Place:  Selin Merdan, Christine Barnett, Brian T. Denton,  James E. Montie, David C. Miller, “Analytics for Optimal Detection of Metastatic Prostate Cancer”
  • 2017
    • First Place: Anna Papush, Georgia Perakis, and Pavithra Harsha, “A Data-Driven Approach to Personalized Bundle Pricing and Recommendation”
    • Second Place (tie): Guihua Wang, Jun Li, and Wallace J. Hopp, “An Instrumental Variable Tree Approach for Detecting Heterogeneous Treatment Effects in Observational Studies”
    • Second Place (tie): Renyu (Philip) Zhang and Maxime C. Cohen, “Coopetition and Profit Sharing for Ride-sharing Platforms”
  • 2014 (Sponsored by National Taiwan University)
    • First Place: Christos Zacharias, Michael Pinedo, "Managing Arrivals in Service Systems with Multiple Servers"
    • Runner Up: Ming-Hui Huang, Chekitan Dev, "Growing the Service Brand"
    • Runner Up: Roland Rust, Tuck Siong Chung, Michel Wedel, "Adaptive Mobile News Personalization Using Social Networks"
    • Runner Up: Mahyar Movahed Nejad, Daniel Grosu, Lena Mashayekhy, "Truthful Mechanisms for Resource Allocation and Pricing in Clouds"
  • 2013 (Sponsored by National Taiwan University)
    • First Place: Guillaume Roels, “A Service Classification Framework Based on Joint Production”
    • Runner Up: M. Ali Ulku, Lynn C. Dailey, Muge H. Yayla-Kullu, “At Your Service?: Consumer’s Return Behavior and Retailer’s Profitability”
    • Runner Up: Ivanka Kastalli, Bart Van Looy, “Servitization: Disentangling the Impact of Service Business Model Innovation on Manufacturing Firm Performance”