Student Analytical Scholar Case Study Competition
INFORMS will once again offer the Student Analytical Scholar Competition, a scholarship program that will send the winning recipient to the 2016 INFORMS Conference on Business Analytics and Operations Research. Supported by SAS and sponsored by the Analytics Section of INFORMS, the competitive program will recognize one outstanding student who would like to learn more about the practice of analytics at the conference in Orlando, Fla., April 10-12, 2016. The scholarship covers the cost of attending the event and additional networking opportunities. Additional Honorable Mentions may be named, and although funding will not be available for them many past winners have used this recognition to find funding elsewhere.
The purpose of the competition is to practice the process of structuring and presenting a compelling proposal for analytical work. Applicants will be asked to produce a “Statement of Work” (SOW) for a case study based on a real-life project. Such documents are usually created early in a project, after some exploratory work, but may or may not fully define the problem.
SAS will provide a case study. A discussion forum will be available for applicants, who are encouraged to ask questions and explore the problem definition in order to put together a viable, professional SOW. The winner will be selected as would occur in a real bidding contest – based on the cohesion, proper use of assumptions and demonstrated technical and presentation skills in the SOW, as well as the practicality of the proposed approach to solve the business problem.
The deadline to apply is Feb. 22, 2016. For more information, visit the competition website, where the 2016 rules and the case study are posted.