Awards

Dissertation Award

To stimulate interest in telecommunications and network analytics among young researchers, the INFORMS Technical Section on Telecommunications and Network Analytics funds a dissertation competition with a cash prize. Finalists present their dissertation research at the INFORMS Telecommunications and Network Analytics Conference before a panel of judges selected by the Section. Dissertations are evaluated based on their specific contributions in the use of quantitative and analytical or OR techniques in addressing existing and future problems recognized to be valuable to the field of telecommunications. The competition is announced in conjunction with each Telecommunications and Network Analytics Conference where it will be judged. The award will then be given at the annual business meeting. 

2020 Application Process:

Candidates are accepted for the Doctoral Dissertation Award for Operations Research in Telecommunications and Network Analytics awarded by the INFORMS Technical Section on Telecommunications and Network Analytics at its biennial conference in March 2020. The award aims to recognize merit, innovation and outstanding scholarly achievements of PhD students in the field. Possible topics include, but are not limited to:

• Network Design, network routing, network optimization and algorithms
• Wireless, sensor, and broadband network optimization (5G and beyond),
• Telecommunications modeling, policy and technology,
• Data analysis for improving/predicting the performance, reliability, and vulnerability of networks,
• Data-driven optimization problems and methods related to telemetry/metrology, traffic analysis and control, root cause analysis/diagnostic, intrusion and anomaly detection/ identification, fault detection-identification and recovery, resource allocation and control, etc.,
• Cost-effective analysis methods for large volumes of data.

Each candidate must send by December 15, 2019

• a letter of recommendation by the dissertation advisor
• a 10 page extended abstract of the dissertation, and
• the dissertation itself

to
Professor Arie M.C.A. Koster (chair of the award selection committee)
RWTH Aachen University
Lehrstuhl II für Mathematik
52056 Aachen
Germany
e-mail: koster@math2.rwth-aachen.de

The other members of the committee are: 
Professor S. Raghavan, University of Maryland
Dr. Dimitri Papadimitriou, University of Antwerp

Please include a cover letter that provides contact information for both the candidate and the dissertation advisor, the name of the academic institution and department granting the doctoral degree, and the department’s acceptance date of the dissertation. Electronic submissions to Professor Arie Koster are preferred. In case of hardcopy submissions please make sure to send five copies of the extended abstract and the letter of recommendation.

The letter of recommendation by the dissertation advisor should clearly indicate the specific contribution(s) the dissertation has made in the use of quantitative methods and analytical or operations research techniques to address important existing and future problems in the field of telecommunications and network analytics. The letter should discuss why the dissertation is considered innovative, and why the research is relevant and valuable for both researchers and practitioners.

The academic PhD committee must have accepted the dissertation of the candidate no earlier than January 1, 2018 and no later than December 15, 2019. All items must reach the chair of the award selection committee by December 15, 2019.

Selected finalists will receive notification by February 1, 2020. Each finalist must present a synopsis of his/her dissertation to the Award Selection Committee at the 15th INFORMS Telecommunications and Network Analytics Conference in Berlin, Germany. The winner will be awarded $ 1,000.

Past Winners:

2018	Martim Joyce-Moniz, Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium
2014	Manuel Kutschka, RWTH Aachen University, Germany
2012	Young Myoung Ko, Texas A&M University, TX, USA
2010	Fabio D’Andreagiovanni, Sapienza Universita di Roma, Rome, Italy
2004	Alexander Hall, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich, Switzerland
2006	Ramesh Johari, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA
2002	Andreas Eisenblätter, Zuse Institut Berlin (ZIB), Germany
	Fan Zhang, Columbia University, USA

Application Process

• More details to be announced when the next award is available. 

Best Paper Award

The INFORMS Technical Section on Telecommunications and Network Analytics Best Paper Award will be given to an outstanding paper applying OR techniques in the context of telecommunications. The paper must have been published in a refereed journal and written in English.  The paper must present innovative OR approaches to complex problems in all topics related to the field of telecommunications including, but not being limited to: telecommunications modeling, policy, and technology, network economics, network design, algorithms, and optimization, sensor networks, wireless and broadband networks, vehicle and mobile computing, semantic networks, network survivability and reliability, information security and privacy, quality of service, internet and multimedia, data mining applications in telecommunications networks. The best paper award will be judged at the biennial Telecommunications and Network Analytics Conference and presented during the annual business meeting. 

Past Winners

2019 INFORMS Annual Meeting	M. Pioro , Y. Fouquet, D. Nace , M. Poss “Optimizing Flow Thinning Protection in Multicommodity Networks with Variable Link Capacity”, Operations Research , Vol. 64, No. 2, 2016 , pp. 273 279.
2016 INFORMS Telecommunications Conference	Si Chen, Ivana Ljubić, and S. Raghavan, "The Generalized Regenerator Location Problem," INFORMS Journal on Computing, vol. 27, pp. 204-220, 2015.
2014 INFORMS Annual Meeting	F. D'Andreagiovanni, C. Mannino, and A. Sassano, "Gub Covers and Power-Indexed Formulations for Wireless Network Design," Management Science, vol. 59, pp. 142-156, 2013.

Best Student Paper Award

The INFORMS Technical Section on Telecommunications and Network Analytics Best Student Paper Award will be given to an outstanding paper applying OR techniques in the context of telecommunications. The paper must have been published in a refereed journal and written in English.  The paper must present innovative OR approaches to complex problems in all topics related to the field of telecommunications including, but not being limited to: telecommunications modeling, policy, and technology, network economics, network design, algorithms, and optimization, sensor networks, wireless and broadband networks, vehicle and mobile computing, semantic networks, network survivability and reliability, information security and privacy, quality of service, internet and multimedia, data mining applications in telecommunications networks. The best student paper award will be judged at the biennial telecommunications conference and presented during the annual business meeting.