INFORMS Open Forum

This message has been cross posted to the following Discussions: Qual Stats and Reliability Section and INFORMS Open Forum .
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CALL FOR PAPERS

INFORMS 2015 QSR Best Student Paper Award

The Quality Statistics and Reliability (QSR) Section of INFORMS announces the Best Student Paper Award to recognize excellence among its student members. The award program brings prestige to the QSR Section as well as to the recipients honored.

Four finalists for the Best Student Paper Award will be selected to make presentations on Monday, November 2^nd, 2015 at the INFORMS Annual Meeting in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The winner will be announced at the QSR business meeting later at the conference.  All finalists will receive an award certificate and 3 years free QSR membership. The winner will also receive a plaque. The Best Student Paper Award is to be presented annually at the QSR Section meeting during the INFORMS annual meeting. All finalists' papers will be posted on the QSR Section webpage. 

The broad criteria for selecting the recipient of the QSR Best Student Paper Award are: (a) Academic significance (originality, depth, and completeness of the work and its potential impact on future research); (b) Engineering or business relevance (importance of the problem and its impact on engineering or business practice).

Eligibility Requirements and Application Process:

• Award nominees must be a student member of the QSR Section.
• Paper topic must fit the QSR themes.
• The student must be the first author. Moreover, a formal, signed statement by the student's advisor should be submitted along with the paper affirming that the majority of the original results presented in the paper are due to the student rather than the advisor or other collaborators involved in the work.
• The paper must be completed during the first author's undergraduate or graduate studies.
• Previous finalists who wish to compete again should submit an entirely different paper. However, past winners are not eligible for the competition.
• The student must be committed to present the paper at a special session on either Sunday (the first day), or Monday (the second day) of the annual INFORMS conference.
• Finalists may not be announced until other INFORMS sessions are already organized. Thus, papers considered for this competition MAY be simultaneously submitted to other sessions at the INFORMS conference. If a finalist is scheduled to present in another session, then they will present the paper twice: once in the QSR Best Student Paper Competition session on Monday/Sunday and once in their previously scheduled session.
• QSR Section does NOT own copyrights of the paper. However, the paper must be available to the QSR Section to be posted on their web page.
• Submitted Paper Format: The paper should be 4-6 pages, single-spaced, with two columns in 10 point Times Roman or Times New Roman typeface. Margins should be 1 inch or more. Papers should begin with a 50 word abstract. Please submit a blinded as well as an unblinded version. The submitted paper must follow the format or will be returned without review. A file (in the MS Word or PDF format) should be sent by email to the contest coordinator before the designated deadline. Papers received after the deadline will not be reviewed for competition.

To enter, submit via email a paper (4-6 pages and in MS WORD or PDF format) on a quality, statistics, or reliability topic to the 2015 contest coordinator, Dr. Eunshin Byon ebyon@umich.edu by June 15^th, 2015 (PLEASE NOTE THE DEADLINE).  Late submissions will be ineligible for the contest. 

All submitted papers will be reviewed and ranked by external referees and four finalists will be selected and announced on September 1^st, 2015. Please visit the QSR website at: http://qsr.section.informs.org/ for updates and best student papers in the past few years.