On behalf of the prize committee, we extend our heartfelt congratulations to Rui Gao (University of Texas at Austin) and Bradley Sturt (University of Illinois Chicago) for being selected as the runner-up and winner, respectively, of the inaugural Roger J-B Wets Junior Researcher Best Paper Prize. This award was presented at the International Conference on Stochastic Programming (ICSP), held at École des Ponts, IP Paris, France, in July 2025.
This award recognizes outstanding contributions by junior researchers in the field of stochastic programming who are within seven years of earning their highest degree. It has been newly named in honor of Professor Roger J-B Wets, Professor of Mathematics at the University of California, Davis, who sadly passed away earlier this year. The Stochastic Programming Society (SPS) is deeply grateful to the Wets family for their generous support and endowment.
Here is the detailed information of the two:
Runner-up:
- Rui Gao, for the paper:
"Finite-sample guarantees for Wasserstein distributionally robust optimization: Breaking the curse of dimensionality."
Operations Research, 71(6), 2291–2306, 2023.
Winner:
- Bradley Sturt, for the paper:
"A nonparametric algorithm for optimal stopping based on robust optimization."
Operations Research, 71(5), 1530–1557, 2023.
Congratulations to Rui and Bradley again on this well-deserved recognition of their exceptional research contributions!
Sincerely,
The 2025 Roger J-B Wets Junior Researcher Best Paper Prize Committee:
Wim van Ackooij (EDF-Lab Paris-Saclay, Committee Chair).
Andrzej Ruszczynski (Rutgers University)
Siqian Shen (University of Michigan at Ann Arbor)
Phebe Vayanos
Chair, Stochastic Programming Society
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Siqian Shen, Ph.D.
Professor of Industrial and Operations Engineering
Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering (courtesy appointment)
University of Michigan at Ann Arbor
https://websites.umich.edu/~siqian/------------------------------