Junior Faculty Forum Paper Competition

2024 First Place

Winning material: Incentivizing Resource Pooling

Purpose of the Award

The INFORMS Junior Faculty Interest Group (JFIG) Forum invites submissions to the INFORMS JFIG paper competition. JFIG was created in 2001 to promote the career development of tenure- track faculty in INFORMS. The goals of the paper competition are to encourage research among junior faculty and to increase the visibility of research conducted by junior faculty within the fields of operations research and management science. The JFIG award committee will judge the submissions and select up to six finalists. The papers submitted for the competition will be evaluated based on the importance of the topic, appropriateness of the research approach, and the significance of research contribution.

Winners will be announced at the INFORMS Annual Meeting, where all finalists will present their research (either virtually or in-person) at a JFIG-sponsored session. The first, second and third place winners will be invited to submit their papers (if not already under review or published) to Operations Research for an expedited review that extends the review process undertaken during the competition. For the 2021 competition, $500 will be awarded for first place,$250 for second place, and $150 for third place, with the remaining finalists receiving $100 each.

The prizes awarded by the competition are intended to be a recognition for outstanding research developments. Every author listed in a paper submitted to the competition—independent of their role or involvement—is considered a contributor to the paper. Therefore, as the goal of the competition is to encourage the research conducted/directed by junior faculty, there are strict limitations regarding the eligibility of submitted papers based on the list of authors. In particular, the competition forbids the direct involvement of senior researchers on submitted papers.

Application Process

View information about eligibility, procedures and deadlines
Click here for more information

Past Awardees

2024 First Place
Chen Chen, NYU Shanghai
 Yilun Chen, The Chinese University of Hong Kong Shenzhen
 Pengyu Qian, Boston University
2024 Second Place
Bhavani Shanker Uppari, Singapore Management University Sasa Zorc
2024 Third Place
Dmitry Mitrofanov, Leonard N. Stern School of Business, New York University
 Benjamin Knight, Instacart
2024 Finalist
Zhengyuan Zhou, New York University Xiaoyu Fan, NYU Stern
Mathieu Dahan, Georgia Institute of Technology
 Bastián Bahamondes, Georgia Institute of Technology
Thodoris Lykouris, Cornell University Wentao Weng, MIT
2023 First Place
Levi DeValve
2023 Second Place
Salar Fattahi, University of California, Berkeley
2023 Third Place
Andres Gomez, University of Pittsburgh
2023 Finalist
Nikhil Garg, Stanford University
Leela Nageswaran
Shixin Wang, The Chinese University of Hong Kong
2022 First Place
Ningji Wei, Texas Tech University
 Peter Y. Zhang, Carnegie Mellon University
2022 Second Place
Ali Aouad, MIT Antoine Desir, Columbia University
2022 Third Place
Hanyang Li, University of Minnesota Twin Cities
 Ying Cui, University of Minnesota Twin Cities
2022 Finalist
Andrew Daw, Cornell University, School of Operations Research and Information Engineering
Daan Rutten, Georgia Institute of Technology
 Debankur Mukherjee, Georgia Institute of Technology
Man Yiu Tsang, Lehigh University
 Karmel S. Shehadeh, Lehigh University
2021 First Place
Rajan Udwani, MIT
2021 Second Place
Bradley Sturt, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
2021 Third Place
Karthyek Murthy, Singapore University of Technology and Design
2021 Finalist
Fasheng Xu, Syracuse University, Whitman School of Management
Digvijay Boob , Georgia Institute of Technology
Hrayer Aprahamian, Texas A&M University
Cristóbal Guzmán , Catholic University of Chile
2020 First Place
Adam Elmachtoub, Columbia Paul Grigas, UC Berkeley
Rui Gao, UT Austin
2020 Second Place
Siva Theja Maguluri, Georgia Tech
2020 Honorable Mention
Mingbin Ben Feng , Waterloo
 Eunhye Song , Penn State
Jing Dong, Columbia
2019 First Place
Ruiwei Jiang, University of Florida
2019 Second Place
Ruomeng Cui, Emory University
2019 Third Place
Sze-chuan Suen, University of Southern California Diana Negoescu, Princeton University Joel Goh, Harvard Business School
2019 Honorable Mention
Xi Chen , New York University
Yining Wang, University of Florida
 Yuan Zhou, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Jose Walteros , University at Buffalo
Austin Buchanan , Oklahoma State University
Luyi Yang Shiliang Cui
2018 Winner(s)
Weijun Xie, Virginia Tech
2018 First Place
He Wang, Georgia Institute of Technology
2018 Second Place
Nathan Kallus, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
2018 Honorable Mention
Santiago Balseiro, Columbia University Yonatan Gur, Columbia University
Gah-Yi Ban, University of Maryland Andres Gomez, University of Pittsburgh
Gah-Yi Ban, University of Maryland N. Bora Keskin, Duke University
2017 First Place
Krishnamurthy Iyer , Cornell University
2017 Second Place
Velibor Misic, University of California Los Angeles
2017 Third Place
Yiwei Chen, Singapore University of Technology and Design Cong Shi, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
2017 Honorable Mention
Ruiwei Jiang, University of Florida Johanna Mathieu, University of Michigan
Shipra Agrawal, Columbia University
2016 First Place
Daniel Russo, Stanford University
Yunan Liu, North Carolina State University
2016 Second Place
Henry Lam, Columbia University
2015 First Place
Juan Pablo Vielma, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
2015 Second Place
David Goldberg, Cornell University Linwei Xin, University of Chicago
2015 Third Place
Shuangchi He, National University of Singapore
2015 Honorable Mention
Soroush Saghafian, Harvard University
Erick Moreno Centeno, Texas A&M University
Rouba Ibrahim, University College London
2014 First Place
Fatma Kılınç-Karzan, Carnegie Mellon University Sercan Yıldız, Carnegie Mellon University
2014 Second Place
Itai Ashlagi , Stanford University Yash Kanoria, Columbia University Jacob Leshno, Columbia University
2014 Third Place
Xu Andy Sun, IBM T. J. Watson Research Center
2014 Honorable Mention
Guodong Pang, Pennsylvania State University
Ming Hu, University of Toronto Yi Yang, Zhejiang University
Ilya O. Ryzhov, University of Maryland
2013 First Place
Dan Iancu, Stanford University Nikolaos Trichakis, Massachussetts Institute of Technology
2013 Second Place
Sajad Modaresi, Duke University Juan Pablo Vielma, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Denis Saure, University of Pittsburgh
2013 Third Place
Nan Liu, Columbia University
2013 Finalist
John Gunnar Carlsson, University of Minnesota
Lei Sun, University at Buffalo Alexander Nikolaev, University at Buffalo
Peter Frazier, Princeton University
2012 First Place
Saeed Ghadimi, University of Florida Guanghui Lan, Georgia Institute of Technology
2012 Second Place
Carri W. Chan, Columbia University Galit Yom-Tov, Technion – Israel Institute of Technology Gabriel Escobar, Kaiser Permanente Northern California
2012 Finalist
Henry Lam, Columbia University
James Luedtke, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Santanu S. Dey, Georgia Institute of Technology Diego A. Morán, Georgia Institute of Technology
Sujin Kim, National University of Singapore Yibo Ji, National University of Singapore Dali Zhang, Sing Health
2011 First Place
Vivek Farias, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Ciamac C. Moallemi, Columbia University Vijay V. Desai, Columbia University
2011 Second Place
Saravanan Kesavan, University of North Carolina Vidya Mani, Pennsylvania State University
2011 Third Place
Karan Girotra, INSEAD, France Elena Belavina, INSEAD, France
2010 First Place
Felipe Caro, UCLA Victor Martinez de Albeniz, IESE
2010 Second Place
Ying-Ju Chen, University of California-Berkeley
2010 Third Place
Achal Bassamboo, Northwestern University Ramandeep Randhawa, University of Southern California
2010 Finalist
Jiaqiao Hu, State University of New York-Stony Brook
Jose Blanchet, Columbia University Jingchen Liu, Columbia University
Daniel Dadush, Georgia Institute of Technology Santanu Dey, Purdue University Juan Pablo Vielma, University of Pittsburgh
2009 First Place
Qi Feng, University of Texas-Austin Lauren Xiaoyuan Lu, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill
2009 Second Place
Vivek Farias, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Denis Saure, University of Pittsburgh Gabriel Weintraub, Stanford University
2009 Third Place
Simge Kucukyavuz, Ohio State University
2009 Finalist
Goker Aydin, Indiana University Bloomington Serhan Ziya, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill
Nicolas E. Stier-Moses, Columbia University Jose R. Correa, Universidad de Chile Nicolas Figueroa, Universidad de Chile
Anton Ovchinnikov, Queen's University
Senthil Veeraraghavan, University of Pennsylvania Krishnan S. Anand, University of Utah Mehmet Fazil Pac, University of Pennsylvania
2008 First Place
Raghu Pasupathy, Virginia Tech
2008 Second Place
Oguzhan Alagoz, University of Wisconsin-Madison
2008 Finalist
Xin Chen, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Wei-yu Kevin Chiang, City University of Hong Kong
Kartik Hosanagar, University of Pennsylvania
2007 First Place
David B. Brown, Duke University Melvyn Sim, National University of Singapore
2007 Second Place
L. Jeff Hong, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology
2007 Finalist
Özlem Ergun, Georgia Institute of Technology
School of Industrial/Systems Engineering
 Richa Agarwal, Amazon.com
Nicolas E. Stier-Moses, Columbia University Patrick Maille
Eva Regnier, Naval Postgraduate School
Senthil Veeraraghavan, University of Pennsylvania Laurens Debo, Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth
2006 First Place
Mor Armony, NYU Itai Gurvich, Cornell University
2006 Second Place
Justin Ren, Boston University Yong-Pin Zhou, University of Washington
2006 Finalist
Greys Sosic, University of Southern California
Manu Goyal, University of Maryland Serguei Netessine, The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania
2006 Honorable Mention
Xuanming Su, University of California - Berkeley, Haas School of Business Fuqiang Zhang, University of California, Irvine
Paat Rusmevichientong, Cornell University Tim Huh, Columbia University
2005 First Place
Savas Dayanik, Columbia University Semih O. Sezer, Princeton University
2005 Second Place
Ismael Regis de Farias, Jr., State University of New York at Buffalo
2005 Honorable Mention
Mohit Tawarmalani, Purdue University
A. Gürhan Kök, College of Administrative Sciences and Economics, Koç University Kevin H. Shang, University of California, Irvine
2004 First Place
Ebru Bish, University of Alabama Qiong Wang, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
2003 First Place
I. Popescu, An SDP approach to moment bounds for distributions with convex properties
2003 Second Place
R. Berger S. Raghavan, University of Maryland, Robert H Smith School of Business
2003 Honorable Mention
E. Plambeck T. Taylor
J.C. Smith A. Schaefer J. Yen