This is a friendly reminder that nominations for the Section on Location Analysis Student Paper Competition are open through June 30, 2025.
--------------------------------------
The INFORMS Society on Location Analysis (SOLA) announces the 2025 SOLA Student Paper Competition. The award is given biennially for student papers judged to be the best in the broad field of facility location. We encourage papers that promote the development of analytical methods, techniques and tools in the tradition of operations research/management science (OR/MS) as applied to the study of facility location.
All finalists will be invited to present their paper in a SOLA Best Student Paper Competition session during the INFORMS Annual Meeting. The SOLA Best Student Paper Competition winner will receive a plaque during the SOLA Business Meeting at the annual conference.
Eligibility Criteria:
- Applicant must have been a student anytime between Jan. 1, 2023 – June 30, 2025.
- The research was conducted during the time the applicant was a student.
- The submitted paper must present original research conducted primarily by the student applicant.
- The applicant does not need to be the first author, but the applicant's contribution to the paper needs to be more than 50%
- The applicant or applicant's primary research advisor must be a member of SOLA on the date of submission
- The paper must not be a part of a dissertation that won the first-place award in the SOLA Dissertation Award Competition.
Submission Requirements:
- A summary file containing the applicant's and applicant's primary research advisor's contact information, abstract, appropriate keywords for the submitted paper.
- A letter from the primary research advisor discussing, in detail, the applicant's specific contribution to the paper and whether the applicant meets the eligibility criteria
- The paper in anonymous form with a length of at most 35 pages including the appendix, tables, figures, and references, and compliant with submission formatting standards similar to that of the leading INFORMS journals. The file name should be the short title of the paper.
The above three documents (in pdf format) should be sent to the committee chair, Gita Taherkhani, at gtaherkhani@luc.edu with the subject line "SOLA Best Paper Award". Applications should be received on or before June 30, 2025.
------------------------------
Kayse Maass
Assistant Professor
Northeastern University
k.maass@northeastern.edu------------------------------