Best Student Paper Award (INFORMS Annual Meeting)

The Service Science Section's Best Student Paper Award is intended to celebrate high-quality research generated by Ph.D. students that are presented at the Section's sponsored cluster at the INFORMS Annual Meeting.

Service Science student members submit papers in their cluster session for consideration. The award committee then invites finalists to present their work in a Best Student 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 student 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: Abhishek Deshmane. “Designing Layouts for Sequential Experiences: Application to Cultural Institutions”
    • Second Place: Jingwei Zhang. “Planning Bike Lanes with Data: Ridership, Congestion, and Path Selection”
    • Third Place (tie): Xiao Lei. “Matchmaking Strategies for Maximizing Player Engagement in Video Games”
    • Third Place (tie): Kan Xu. “Learning Across Bandits in High Dimension via Robust Statistics”
  • 2021
    • First Place: Pia Ramchandani, Hamsa Bastani, Emily Wyatt. "Unmasking human trafficking risk in commercial sex supply chains with machine learning"
    • Second Place (tie): Georgia Perakis, Divya Singhvi, Omar Skali Lami, Leann Thayaparan. "COVID-19: A Multiwave SIR Based Model for Learning Waves"

    • Second Place (tie): Hanwei Li, David Simchi-Levi, Michelle X. Wu, Weiming Zhu. "Estimating and Exploiting the Impact of Photo Layout: A Structural Approach"

  • 2020 
    • No competition this year due to the COVID-19 pandemic
  • 2019
    • First Place (tie): Neda Mirzaeian, “A Queueing Model for Autonomous Vehicles on Highways”
    • First Place (tie): Xiao Lei, “Loot Box Pricing and Design”

    • Third Place: Andrew Daw, “Beyond Safety Drivers: Staffing a Teleoperations System for Autonomous Vehicles”

  • 2018 
    • First Place: Shan Wang, “Managing Appointment-based Services in the Presence of Walk-in Customers”
    • Second Place: Yunke Mai, “Courteous or Crude? Understanding and Shaping User Behavior in Ride-hailing”
    • Third Place: Rakesh Mallipeddi, “A Framework for Analyzing Influencer Marketing in Social Networks: Selection and Scheduling of Influencers”
  • 2017
    • First Place: Wenchang Zhang, "Managing Market Thickness in Online B2B Markets”
    • Second Place: Hossein Jahandideh, “Dynamic Network Revenue Management for a Cloud Provider Hosting Interactive Applications”
    • Third Place: Seung-Yup Lee, “Proactive Inpatient Bed Reservations from ED to Reduce Patient Boarding”
  • 2015: 
    • First Place: Greggory J. Schell, Mariel S. Lavieri, Jeremy B. Sussman, Rodney A. Hayward, "Optimal Coinsurance Rates for a Heterogeneous Population under Inequality and Resource Constraints"
    • Second Place: Vince Slaugh, Sridhar Tayur, Bahar Biller, "Managing Rentals with Usage-Based Loss"
    • Third Place: Luyi Yang, Laurens Debo, Varun Gupta, "Trading Time in a Congested Environment"
  • 2014:
    • First Place: Maxime C. Cohen, Ngai-Hang Zachary Leung, MIT, "The Impact of Linear Optimization on Promotion Planning"
    • Second Place: Matthew C. Walsman, Cornell University, "Examining the Characteristics and Managerial Challenges of Professional Services: An Empirical Study of Management Consultancy in the Travel, Tourism, and Hospitality Sector"
    • Third Place (tie): Changmi Jung, Carnegie Mellon University, "Volume Based Learning with Structured eVisits: Impact of Individual and Organizational Usage Experience on Service Productivity"
    • Third Place (tie):  Tianshu Sun, University of Maryland, "Understanding the Effects of Message Design on Firm-Mediated Online Social Interactions: A Randomized Field Experiment"
  • 2013:
    • First Place: Yao Cui, Stephen M. Ross School of Business, University of Michigan, “Should Event Organizers Prevent Resale of Tickets?”
    • Second Place: Gregory J. King, Industrial and Operations Engineering, University of Michigan, “Dynamic Customer Acquisition and Retention Management”
    • Third Place: Aparupa Das Gupta, Anderson School of Management, UCLA, “The Design of Experiential Services with Acclimation and Memory Decay: Optimal Sequence and Duration”
    • Honorable Mention: Howard Hao-Chun Chuang, Mays Business School, Texas A&M University, “Traffic-Based Labor Planning in Retail Stores” 
  • 2012:
    • First Place: Joline Uichanco, MIT, "Stochastic Optimization for Resource Allocation with Random Emergencies"
    • Second Place: Constantin Alba, IE Business School, "Downstream Consequences of Upstream Planning Variety: Evidence from an Enterprise System Maintenance Unit"
    • Third Place: Oscar A. Herrera-Restrepo, Virginia Tech, "Modeling Social Service Delivery Organizations Based on Agents"
  • 2011:
    • First Place: Murat Kurt, University of Pittsburgh, "Valuing Prearranged Paired Kidney Exchanges: A Stochastic Game Approach"
    • Second Place: Wei Sun, MIT, "Congestion Pricing for Service Industries"
    • Third Place: Jun Li, U. Pennsylvania, "Are Consumers Strategic: Structural Estimation for the Air Travel Industry"
    • Honorable Mention: Ioannis Bellos, Georgia Tech, "Designing Experiential Services"
  • 2010: 
    • First Place: Murat Kurt, et al., University of Pittsburgh, "Optimal Statin Initiation Guidelines for Patients with Type 2 Diabetes"

  • 2009:

    • First Place: Mustafa Akan, et al., Northwestern University, "A Broader View of Designing the Liver Allocation System"