Awards

Awards

Dissertation Award 

The Doctoral Dissertation Award for Operations Research in Telecommunications and Network Analytics is awarded by the INFORMS Technical Section on Telecommunications and Network Analytics Conferences to recognize the outstanding scholarly achievements of young researchers in the field. 

2023 Award

The 2023 Dissertation Award was given during the INFORMS Annual Meeting, October 15-18, 2023, Phoenix, Arizona, and the winner of the award was:

  • Dr. Hamidreza Validi, Oklahoma State University, Imposing Connectivity In Network Design Problems

The award selection committee included:

  • Michael R. Bartolacci, Professor, Penn State Berks

  • Mauricio G. C. Resende, INFORMS Fellow, Amazon Scientist, University of Washington Affiliate Professor

  • Bernard Fortz, Professor, Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium

Past Winners:

2020

Lei You, Uppsala Universitet (Sweden)
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 2026

The INFORMS Technical Section on Telecommunications and Network Analytics invites nominations for the Best Paper Award for an outstanding paper applying OR techniques in telecommunications and network analytics. The paper must present innovative OR approaches to complex problems in topics related to the field of telecommunications and network analytics, including, but not being limited to: network design and optimization; network performance and management; telecommunications applications; data analytics for networks. The paper must have been published (or accepted) in a refereed journal in 2025 or 2026 and written in English. Finalists will be recognized in a special session at the 2026 INFORMS Annual Meeting, and the Best Paper Award will be presented during the Section Business Meeting.

The eligibility criteria are:

  • At least one of the paper's authors must be a member of the INFORMS Technical Section on Telecommunications and Network Analytics. (Please renew your section membership if it expired.)
  • One of the authors should be able to present the paper in an award session at the 2026 INFORMS Annual Meeting.
  • Each submitting author may only submit one paper.

Please submit the paper (pdf) and a letter (maximum two pages) describing the merits of the paper to the Chair of the Best Paper Award by June 15, 2026 at the following email address.

Email: buchanan@okstate.edu

Subject Line: Best Paper Award, Telecommunications and Network Analytics Section

The members of the 2026 Best Paper Award Committee are:

Austin Buchanan (chair), Oklahoma State University

Stan Dimitrov, University of Waterloo

Young Myoung Ko, Pohang University of Science and Technology

Hamidreza Validi, Texas Tech University

Rui Zhang, University of Colorado

2025 Winner

The 2025 Best Paper Award was given during the INFORMS Annual Meeting, Atlanta, GA, the winner of the award was:

  • Political Districting to Minimize County Splits, Maral Shahmizad¹, Austin Buchanan²; ¹Delta Air Lines, Atlanta, GA, United States, ²Oklahoma State University, Stillwater, OK, United States

The finalists were: 

  • The Driver-Aide Problem: Coordinated Logistics for Last-Mile Delivery, Rui Zhang¹, Subramanian Raghavan²; ¹University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, CO, United States, ²University of Maryland-College Park, College Park, MD, United States
  • Maximizing Engagement in Large-Scale Social Networks, Samuel Kroger¹, Hamidreza Validi², Illya Hicks³; ¹Austin College, Sherman, TX, United States, ²Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX, United States, ³Rice University, Houston, TX, United States

The members of the Best Paper Award Committee are:

    • Maryam Daryalal (Chair)
    • Vladimir Boginski
    • Dilek Gunnec

    Past Winners

    2025 INFORMS Annual Meeting
    Shahmizad, Maral &  Buchanan, Austin, " Political Districting to Minimize County Split", Operations Research Volume, 73, Issue 2, pp. 752–774
    2023 INFORMS Annual Meeting
    Daryalal, Maryam, Hamed Pouya, and Marc Antoine DeSantis. "Network migration problem: A hybrid logic-based benders decomposition approach." INFORMS Journal on Computing 35, no. 3 (2023): 593-613.
    2022 INFORMS Annual Meeting
    Zhengyuan Zhou, Panayotis Mertikopoulos, Aris L. Moustakas, Nicholas Bambos, and Peter Glynn, "Robust Power Management via Learning and Game Design," Operations Research, Vol. 69, No. 1, pp. 331-345, 2021
    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, pp. 273-279, 2016
    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.