The George B. Dantzig Dissertation Award serves to promote greater interaction between academia and industry by encouraging researchers to conduct innovative research that is relevant to practice in any area of operations research and management science. The first and second place winners will receive awards of $800 and $400 respectively. Additional finalists will receive honorable mentions with $100 awards. Prizes will be awarded at the INFORMS Annual Meeting.
Each entry must:
- Consist of a doctoral dissertation written primarily by the entrant and successfully defended no more than 15 months prior to the submission deadline (completed between March 31, 2024 and June 30, 2025) and not previously submitted.
- Present original ideas obtained predominantly by the entrant.
- Clearly illustrate and demonstrate the relevance of the work in practice and the potential impact in industry.
Entrants should submit the following items by June 30, 2025:
- A letter of recommendation from the entrant's thesis advisor that describes the significance of the research and comments on the originality of the work.
- A letter of recommendation from an industry associate that describes the relevance and the potential benefits of the research in their organization. This letter must be written by a manager familiar with the research who has served as an advisor to the research or as a coordinator to the on-site research project. The manager should be informed that they may be contacted by the committee members asking questions regarding the entrant's search. Submissions without this letter will not be considered.
- A summary of the dissertation (less than 5 double-spaced pages) highlighting the significance of the problem, the novelty of the methodological approach, the contribution of the research to practice, and the scope of the dissertation.
- A self-contained paper (less than 25 double-spaced pages) based on the dissertation for the award committee to evaluate the contribution of the work.
All application materials should be submitted online by June 30, 2025 using the INFORMS Awards' Nomination Submission software:
Click here to submit your application
The entries in the first round will be judged and up to five finalists will be selected by the award committee. Each finalist will be notified and requested to submit the entire dissertation to the chair of the committee. All finalists will give a presentation of their work in a special session at the Annual Meeting.
Selection criteria used by the award committee include relevance to practice, appropriateness and rigor of the methodology, creativity and novelty, and quality of exposition.
Committee members for the 2025 competition are Junyu Cao, Sebastien Martin, Ozge Sahin, Auyon Siddiq (Chair), and Nur Sunar.
Please reach out to auyon.siddiq@anderson.ucla.edu if you have any questions about the competition.
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Auyon Siddiq
Assistant Professor
UCLA Anderson School of Management
Los Angeles, CA
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