The following subdivision awards were presented at the INFORMS Annual Meeting in Denver.

Applied Probability


The Erlang Prize: The 2004 Erlang Prize was awarded to David Gamarnik from the IBM T. J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, N.Y. This award recognizes David's deep and creative contributions to stability theory for queueing network models, especially through the use of piecewise linear Lyapunov functions, along with important contributions to network performance analysis, statistical learning theory and probabilistic analysis of combinatorial structures. The Applied Probability Society of INFORMS awards the Erlang Prize every two years to honor a research scholar under the age of 35 who has contributed significantly to applied probability.

Aviation Applications


Best Dissertation Award: The Aviation Applications Section presented the 2004 Best Dissertation Award to Laurie Anne Garrow of the Georgia Institute of Technology for the thesis, "Comparison of Choice Models Representing Correlation and Random Taste Variation: An Application to Airline Passengers' Rescheduling Behavior."

Computing Society


ICS Prize: The INFORMS Computing Society awarded the 2004 ICS Prize for research excellence in the interface between operations research and computer science to Nikolaos V. Sahinidis and Mohit Tawarmalani for their contributions to the field of nonlinear global optimization summarized in their book, "Convexification and Global Optimization in Continuous and Mixed-Integer Nonlinear Programming," and embodied in the BARON software package. The work embodied in this book and the BARON software package comprises a path-breaking advance in the theory and computational practice of optimizing nonconvex nonlinear models. Mathematical programming methods have traditionally only been able to compute local optima of such models, and practitioners seeking global optima had to resort to a variety of heuristic and ad hoc techniques. This work, drawing on original contributions of the authors and the work of many other researchers, addresses the computation of provably global optima by bringing together a variety of mathematical programming techniques ranging from branch and bound to convex analysis. It thus unites a number of traditionally separate research areas in creating an enabling technology for new application fields. The book also includes interesting engineering applications, with computational results giving persuasive proof of the work's usefulness. Given the challenging nature of the models it addresses, the success of BARON is remarkable. Work of this nature opens up new applications for the future of mathematical programming.

CPMS, The Practice Section


Wagner Prize: Tom Duffy, Manos Hatzakis, Russ Labe, Bonnie Liao, Je Oh, Adeesh Setya and Lihua Yang of Merrill Lynch won this year's Wagner Prize for "Liquidity Risk of Revolving Credit Lines." Major Steven A. Stoddard, Dinesh Mehta, Alexandra M. Newman and R.E.D. Woolsey were finalists for "Maximizing Federal Natural Gas Royalties."

Decision Analysis Society


Student Paper Competition Award: The 2004 Student Paper Competition Award was given to Warren J. Hahn for "A Discrete-Time Approach for Valuing Real Options with Underlying Mean-Reverting Stochastic Processes." The award is given annually to the best decision analysis paper by a student author, as judged by a panel of Society members.

Practice Award: The 2004 Practice Award was given to Craig W. Kirkwood, Arnold Maltz and Matthew P. Slaven for "Reconfiguring Supply Chain Decision Making at IBM." The award is given annually to the best decision analysis application, as judged by a panel of Society members.

Award finalists included Daniel Johnson, Charles Persinger and Robert Cole for "Risk Evaluation and Decision Making for the Temporary Shutdown of a Pharmaceutical Plant;" Erik Johnson and Anthony Artuso for "Asset Strategy Evaluation for a Multiple Indication Oncology Product;" and Jeff Keisler and Mark Brodfuehrer for "Using Value of Information Techniques to Prioritize Business Process Changes at General Motors."

Publication Award: The 2004 Publication Award was given to Richard M. Anderson and Benjamin F. Hobbs for the paper "Using a Bayesian Approach to Quantify Scale Compatibility Bias," published in Management Science, 2002. The award is given annually to the best decision analysis article or book published in the second preceding calendar year, as judged by a panel of Society members.

Ramsey Medal: The Frank P. Ramsey Medal, the Society's highest honor, was awarded to Carl S. Spetzler for distinguished contributions in decision analysis in 2004.The medal is named in honor of Frank Plumpto Ramsey, a Cambridge University mathematician who was one of the pioneers of decision theory in the 20th century. Ramsey medallists are recognized for having made substantial further contributions to that theory and its application to important classes of real decision problems.

Energy, Natural Resources and the Environment Section


Best Paper in Forestry Sponsored Sessions Award: The 2001 Best Paper in Forestry Sponsored Sessions Award was given to Laurel Travis, Michael Bevers and Curtis Flather for the paper "Spatial Reserve Design: A Comparison of Methods for Determining Optimal Layouts for an Endangered Species."

The 2002 Best Paper in Forestry Sponsored Sessions Award was given to Sonney George for the paper "Biased Selection Simulated Annealing Algorithm For Spatially Explicit Harvest Scheduling Models."

Student Paper Contest: The first-place 2004 Student Paper Contest Award was given to Yihsu Chen of Johns Hopkins University for the paper, "An Oligopolistic Power Market Model with Tradable NOx Permits" (co-authored with Benjamin F. Hobbs). Honorable mention went to Ravi Subramanian of the University of Michigan Business School for the paper, "Emissions Compliance Strategies: A Permit Auction Model" (co-authored with Sudheer Gupta and Brian Talbot) and Yicheng Wang of the University of Illinois for the paper, "Designing a Conservation Reserve Network with Minimal Fragmentation" (co-authored with Hayri Önal). Second place went to Jordi Cabero of Universidad Pontificia Comillas for the paper, "Electricity Production Planning and Portfolio Optimization with a CVaR Objective" (co-authored with Álvaro Baíllo, Santiago Cerisola and Mariano Ventosa) and Jian Yao of the University of California at Berkeley for the paper, "Cournot Equilibrium in Price-capped Two-Settlement Electricity Markets" (co-authored with Shmuel S. Oren and Ilan Adler).

Financial Services Section


Best Presentation Award: The 2004 Best Presentation Award was given to Dessislava Pachamanova, Michael Allietta and Thomas Malloy of Babson College for the paper, "The Profitability of Home Equity Protection."

Best Student Research Paper: First place in the 2004 Best Student Research Paper Award went to Lepeng Li of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute for the paper, "Behavioral Modeling in Optimal Investment — Consumption Decisions for Long-term Financial Planning." Honorable mention went to Gang Chen, Olga Bagatourova, Fred Hale, Mark Hutchins, Debraj Mallick, Sud Mallya and Atul Modi of Bank of America for the paper, "A Multi-Period Model for Bank of America Transaction Services in the Post-Check21 Era;" Charles Reichenbach, Hung-Nan Chen, Jihong Jin and Geetha Rajavelu of Wells Fargo for the paper, "Optimizing Workforce Planning within a Consumer Credit Originations Environment;" Lyn Thomas and Leilei Tang of the University of Southampton (UK) for the paper, "Modeling When and Which Customers Purchase and Terminate Their Insurance Products;" and Tridib Bandyopadhyay of the University of Texas at Dallas for the paper, "Claim Strategy, Market Signal and (under) Development of Cyber Insurance Market." Second place went to Aytac Ilhan of the University of Oxford for the paper, "Optimal Static-Dynamic Hedges for Exotic Options" and Xiaodong Xu of Northwestern University for the paper, "Joint Production and Financing Decisions: Modeling and Analysis."

Health Applications Section


Bonder Scholarship for Applied Operations Research in Health Applications: The Health Applications Section presented the 2004 Bonder Scholarship for Applied Operations Research in Health Applications to Steven Shechter. The purpose of the scholarship is to promote the development and application of process modeling and operations research analyses to health care design, delivery and operations. The tenure of the award is one year. The scholarship provides funding of $5,000.

Created in 2002 to honor the work and commitment of Seth Bonder, the scholarship provides funding to support the development of highly qualified individuals and promote the interchange of health services research knowledge in conjunction with INFORMS.

Pierskalla Best Paper Award: The Health Applications Section presented the Pierskalla Best Paper Award to Panos M. Pardalos, Wanpracha Chaovalitwongse, Leonidas D. Iasemidis, J. Chris Sackellares, Deng-Shan Shiau, Paul R. Carney, Oleg A. Prokopyev and Vitaliy A. Yatsenko for their paper, "Seizure Warning Algorithm Based on Optimization and Nonlinear Dynamics."

INFORMS Subdivision Committee


Judith Liebman Award for Student Chapter Service: The Judith Liebman Award for Student Chapter Service was presented to Michele Pfund in appreciation of her outstanding service to the Arizona State University Student Chapter; to Deepak Rajan in appreciation of his outstanding service to the University of California-Berkeley Student Chapter; and to Anne Robinson in appreciation of her outstanding service to the Stanford University Student Chapter.

Moving Spirit Award: The Moving Spirit Award was presented to Dr. Ignacy Kaliszewski in appreciation of his outstanding service to the Poland Chapter.

Forum Moving Spirit Award: The Forum Moving Spirit Award was presented to Professor Erhan Erkut in appreciation of his outstanding service to the Forum On Education (INFORM-ED).

INFORM-ED (Forum on Education)


The INFORM-ED (Forum on Education) honored Andres Weintraub in recognition of two years as vice president of Education and Outreach.

Junior Faculty Interest Group Forum


JFIG Paper Competition Award: The Junior Faculty Interest Group Forum presented the 2004 JFIG Paper Competition Award to Ebru Bish and Qiong Wang of the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University Grado Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering for the paper, "Optimal Investment Strategies for Flexible Resources, Considering Pricing and Correlated Demands."

Manufacturing and Service Operations Management Society


Distinguished Fellows Award: Morris A. Cohen of the University of Pennsylvania and Awi Federgruen of Columbia University received the Distinguished Fellows Award from the Manufacturing and Service Operations Management Society in recognition of their outstanding research and leadership in the field of operations management. Election as an MSOM Fellow is considered a rare distinction, comparable with membership in Omega Rho.

Student Paper Competition: The Manufacturing and Service Operations Management Society presented the 2004 Student Paper Competition first-place award to Retsef Levi and Martin Pal of Cornell University for the paper, "Approximation Algorithms for Stochastic Inventory Control Models." Second place went to Ravi Subramanian of the University of Michigan for the paper, "Emissions Compliance Strategies: A Permit Auction Model." Honorable mention went to Xinxin Hu of the University of Michigan for the paper, "Optimal Joint Inventory and Transshipment Control Under Uncertain Capacity."

Military Applications Society


Bonder Scholarship for Applied Operations Research in Military Applications: The Military Applications Society presented the 2004 Bonder Scholarship for Applied Operations Research in Military Applications to Amanda Muller. The purpose of the scholarship is to promote the development and application of process modeling and operations research analyses to military issues. The tenure of the award is one year. The scholarship provides funding of $5,000 to support the development of a highly qualified individual and promote the interchange of military O.R. knowledge in conjunction with INFORMS. The scholarship was created in 2002 to honor the work and commitment of Seth Bonder.

Koopman Prize: The Military Applications Society awarded the 2004 Koopman Prize to Matthew S. Goldberg and Anduin E. Touw for their outstanding paper, "Statistical Methods for Learning Curves and Cost Analysis." The prize was named after Bernard Koopman, a founding father of military operations research. It is awarded for outstanding publications in military operations research of the previous year.

Omega Rho


Distinguished Lecturer: The International Honor Society Omega Rho certified Seth Bonder as an honorary member of the Society. The objective of Omega Rho is to encourage operations research and management sciences related disciplines.

Optimization Section


Optimization Prize for Young Researchers: The Optimization Section presented the 2004 Optimization Prize for Young Researchers to Jiawei Zhang for his paper, "Approximating the Two-Level Facility Location Problem Via a Quasi-Greedy Approach." The paper presents a novel and elegant approach for solving the two-level uncapacitated facility location problem (TFLP) and its generalization. The TFLP is a classic and extensively studied NP-hard combinatorial optimization problem and has many applications in designing supply chains, telecommunication networks, etc. The author combines the techniques originally developed in the context of the one-level problem in a clever way and gets a 1.77 approximation that represents a substantial improvement over the previous best 3 approximation result, especially in light of the 1.46 lower bound. The way the paper combines the known techniques is quite novel and very nice.

Quality, Statistics and Reliability Section


Best Student Paper Award: The Quality, Statistics and Reliability (QSR) Section honored Abhyuday Mandal of the Georgia Institute of Technology with the 2004 Best Student Paper Award in recognition of the paper, "Sequential Elimination of Level Combinations by Means of Modified Genetic Algorithms." Finalists were Chang-Ho Chin of Texas A&M University for the paper, "Optimal Filter Design Approach to Statistical Process Control," Shwu-Tzy Jiang of the University of Oklahoma for the paper, "Proportional Intensity Model Robustness for Right-Censored Failure Data" and Z. Lian of the Pennsylvania State University for the paper, "Setup Error Adjustment of Multiple Lots Using a Sequential Monte Carlo Method."

Railroad Applications Section


Management Science in Railroad Applications Student Competition Award: The Rail Applications Special Interest Group in conjunction with Railway Age awarded Michiel J. Vromans first place in the 2004 Management Science in Railroad Applications Student Competition for the paper, "Heterogeneity and Reliability of Railway Services." Second place was awarded to Guvenc Sahin for the paper "New Approaches for Train Dispatching Problems." Finalists receiving honorable mention were Amar Kumar Narisetty for the paper, "An Optimization Model for Assignment of Empty Cars in Railroad Networks" and Balachandran Vaidyanathan for the paper, "A Network Flow Approach for Railroad Crew Scheduling."

Revenue Management and Pricing Section


Revenue Management and Pricing Section Historical Prize: The 2004 Revenue Management and Pricing Section Historical Prize was awarded to Kenneth Littlewood for work he conducted while at British Overseas Airways Corporation and published at the 1972 AGIFORS (Airline Group of the International Federation of Operations Research Societies) Symposium: "Forecasting and Control of Passenger Bookings," 12th AGIFORS Symposium Proceedings, pp. 96-117, 1972. This work is in the best tradition of the practice of operations research and the management sciences. During the past 30 years, not only has this publication made an outstanding contribution toward the advancement of revenue management, but it is also an often-cited and seminal work in the field of revenue management. The publication represents an excellent example of a practitioner blending a combination of operations research theory and practical techniques to address real world challenges.

Revenue Management and Pricing Section Prize: The 2004 Revenue Management and Pricing Section Prize was awarded to Professors Garrett J. van Ryzin and Kalyan T. Talluri for their joint work on three papers and one book: 1) An analysis of bid-price controls for network revenue management, Management Science, Vol. 44, pp. 1577-1593, 1999. 2) A randomized linear programming method for computing network bid prices, Transportation Science, Vol. 33, pp. 207-216, 1999. 3) Revenue Management under a general discrete choice model of consumer behavior, Management Science, Vol. 50, pp. 15-33. 4) "The Theory and Practice of Revenue Management," Kluwer Academic Publishers, Norwell, Massachusetts, 2004. These works are in the best tradition of the practice of operations research and the management sciences. Together, they make an outstanding contribution toward the advancement and communication of revenue management and pricing theory.

Technology Management Section


Best Dissertation Award: The Technology Management Section presented the 2004 Best Dissertation Award to Corrine Post of Pace University for the thesis, "Allocating Favorable Work Contexts in Industrial R&D: The Role of Race/Ethnicity, Gender, Family Characteristics and Organizational Setting." The award recognizes the best doctoral dissertation in the field of technology and innovation management in terms of furthering the field and making a theoretical and practical contribution. The award includes a plaque and a $500 cash prize.

Distinguished Service Award: The Technology Management Section presented the TMS Distinguished Service Award to Jeffrey Liker of the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor in recognition of his distinguished service to TMS, which has helped to advance significantly the goals and objectives of the section.

Distinguished Speaker Award: The Technology Management Section presented the Distinguished Speaker Award to Scott Shane, professor of Economics at the Weatherhead School of Management, Case Western University in Cleveland for the presentation, "Academic Entrepreneurship: University Spinoffs and Wealth Creation." The TMS presents its distinguished speaker award to an outstanding academic leader in the field of technology management.

Transportation Science and Logistics Section


Best Paper Award: The Transportation Science and Logistics Section presented the first-place award for Best Paper in Transportation Science and Logistics to Gilbert Laporte, Francois V. Louveaux and Luc Van Hamme for the paper, "An Integer L-Shaped Algorithm for the Capacitated Vehicle Routing Problem with Stochastic Demand." The TSL Best Paper Award honors an outstanding paper in the field of transportation science and logistics that has been published in a refereed journal and presents innovative approaches for solving complex problems in transportation planning with an emphasis on operations research and quantitative methods.

Best Dissertation Award: The Transportation Science and Logistics Section presented the first-place 2004 Dissertation Award to Lawrence Snyder of Northwestern University for the dissertation, "Supply Chain Robustness and Reliability: Models and Algorithms." The award is the oldest and most prestigious honor for doctoral dissertations in the transportation science and logistics area.

The section also recognized Miguel Figliozzi of the University of Maryland as a finalist receiving honorable mention for the dissertation, "Performance and Analysis of Spot Truck-Load Procurement Markets Using Sequential Auctions."

The following papers were honored at the Ninth Annual INFORMS Conference on Information Systems & Technology (CIST), held in conjunction with the INFORMS Annual Meeting in Denver: The Best Conference Paper Award was presented to Mark Bergen, Robert J. Kauffman and Dongwon of the Lee Carlson School of Management, University of Minnesota, for their paper, "Store Quality Image and the Rational Inattention Hypothesis: An Empirical Study of the Drivers of $9 and 9¢ Price-Endings Among Internet-Based Sellers." The Best Doctoral Student Paper Award was presented to Sunil Mithas and M.S. Krishnan of the Michigan Business School, University of Michigan, for the paper, "Causal Effects of CRM Systems on Cross Selling Effectiveness and Sales-force Productivity by Bounding a Matching Estimator."