Call for Papers 

Best Case Study Paper Competition  

INFORMS QSR Section Refereed Sessions 

 

The Quality, Statistics, and Reliability (QSR) Section of the Institute for Operations Research and Management Sciences (INFORMS) announces the Best Case Study Paper Award to recognize excellence among the high-quality papers involving real-life problems and collaborations from industry, consulting, and government submitted to INFORMS QSR refereed sessions. This award program brings prestige to the QSR Section as well as to the recipients of this honor. 

 

Conference dates: October 16-19, 2022 

Location: Indianapolis, IN 

Conference website: https://meetings.informs.org/wordpress/indianapolis2022/ 

 

The primary objectives of organizing the refereed session for the QSR Best Case Study Paper Competition in the 2022 INFORMS Annual Meeting are to present a collection of novel papers on real-life applications in the areas of quality, statistics, reliability, and data science that cater to next-generation problems in industry, consulting, and government, and to foster a community in QSR that involves substantive collaborations between members of academia and individuals from industry, consulting, and government. This competition is differentiated from existing competitions in its focus on impactful and new case studies that (a) present innovative and well-reasoned strategies to solve challenging problems, (b) demonstrate the Scientific Method, and (c) can lead to further productive discussions and collaborations between academia and industry, consulting, and government. In addition, committee members and judges for this competition are drawn from industry, consulting, and government so as to put more emphasis on relevant applied considerations during the evaluation of the submissions. 

 

Real-life case studies from all domains and sectors can be submitted for this competition. 

 

On behalf of the organizing committee, we would like to invite you to submit a short paper (not exceeding six pages) for this peer-review process. We particularly encourage academic members of QSR to submit papers that are based on their collaborations and partnerships with industry, consulting, and government. The primary authors of the selected papers will be invited to present their work in a refereed session at the 2022 INFORMS Annual Meeting. All submitted papers and oral presentations will be reviewed and ranked by external referees. The winner will be announced during the QSR Business Meeting at the conference. The broad criteria for selecting the recipient of the QSR Best Paper Award are: (a) Novelty of the real-life problem, (b) Challenges associated with the problem, (c) Practical significance of the problem, and its impact on engineering or business, (d) Originality, depth, and completeness of the work, strategies, and solution, (e) Demonstration of the Scientific Method, and (f) The potential impact of the work and/or solution on future research and collaborations between academia and industry, consulting, and government. 

 

Eligibility Requirements and Application Process: 

• At least one co-author of the paper must be a member of the QSR Section at the time of submission of the paper. 
• At least one co-author must be currently employed in a company, medical facility, non-profit, or governmental agency, or previously employed in a company, medical facility, non-profit, or governmental agency at the time that the work on the case study project was conducted.  
• One of co-authors must be committed to presenting the paper at a special QSR session of the 2022 INFORMS Annual Meeting. 
• The co-author that presents the work should be a member of the QSR Section. 
• The submitted paper should be unpublished work. 
• The submitted paper should not have been selected as a winner of past competitions in IISE and/or INFORMS conferences. 
• Finalists may not be announced until other INFORMS sessions are first organized. Thus, papers considered for this competition MAY be simultaneously submitted to other sessions of the INFORMS Annual Meeting. If a finalist is scheduled to present in another session, they need to present the paper twice: once in the QSR Best Case Study Paper Competition session, and once in their previously scheduled session. 
• The QSR Section does NOT own the copyright of the paper. However, the paper must be available to the QSR Section to be posted on their web page. 
• Required Format for Submission: The submitted paper should be at most 6 pages long, single-spaced, with two columns in 10 point Times Roman or Times New Roman typeface. Margins should be 1 inch or more. The paper must begin with an abstract of at most 50 words. The paper must follow the required format, or it will be returned without review. 
   
   

To enter the competition, a blinded as well as an unblinded version of the paper in MS WORD or PDF format should be emailed to the contest coordinators (qsrbestcasestudypaper@gmail.com) prior to the deadline of July 15, 2022. This deadline will not be extended. Late submissions will be ineligible for the competition, and not reviewed. 

 

 

Timeline: 

July 15 11:59 PM (Pacific):      Paper submission deadline 

September 15:                          Decisions sent to authors 

October 16-19:                          Presentation in the refereed QSR session 

 

 

For inquiries, please contact the Chair of the INFORMS QSR Best Case Study Paper Competition. 

 

Committee:

 

Dr. Arman Sabbaghi, Purdue University (Chair): sabbaghi@purdue.edu 

Dr. Ron Kenett, KPA Group and Samuel Neaman Institute, Technion 

Dr. Peter Parker, NASA Langley Research Center 

Dr. Kamran Paynabar, Georgia Institute of Technology 

Dr. Shan Ba, LinkedIn 

Dr. Raquel de Souza Borges Ferreira, Intel 

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Arman Sabbaghi
Associate Professor
Purdue University
West Lafayette IN
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