Recognizing excellence at the 2019 Edelman Gala

The 2019 INFORMS Business Analytics Conference, which hosted more than 1,000 operations research and analytics professionals from around the world in Austin, Texas, featured keynote speakers, presentations and panels that shared and discussed the latest research, developments and groundbreaking discoveries in analytics and showcased it’s continuing impact on the world around us. 

In addition, the 2019 Edelman Gala invited attendees to recognize and celebrate the winners of several INFORMS awards, the competitions for which took place during the Conference.

Franz Edelman Award for Achievement in Advanced Analytics, Operations Research, and Management Science 

As the most prestigious award for achievement in the practice of analytics and operations research, finalists for the Franz Edelman Award have made incredible contributions to nearly every industry around the world, for a cumulative impact of more than $292 billion since the award’s inception. And this year’s finalists were no exception, with projects that have contributed significantly to wind energy production, environmental protection, consumer fraud deterrent, school bus scheduling, airline safety and contract pipeline management. 

The 2019 Franz Edelman Award was presented to Louisville Metropolitan Sewer District and Tetra Tech for their project that utilized operations research (O.R.) to maximize all aspects of its wastewater collection and treatment facilities to better protect the environment and realize hundreds of millions in savings. 

To combat increasingly frequent and intense rainfall that can overwhelm urban wastewater collection and treatment systems and threaten local water environments, Louisville Metropolitan Sewer District (MSD) partnered with engineering services firm Tetra Tech to implement Csoft^®. Csoft^® is a software solution that enables MSD to respond to rainfall and actual system conditions by maximizing all available storage, conveyance and treatment capacities. Excess wastewater is diverted and temporarily stored until it can be redirected toward the appropriate treatment plant. The system has saved Louisville MSD more than $200 million in infrastructure costs, improved community waterways, and decreased the risk to water environments and public health from sewage contamination. 

In addition to Louisville Metropolitan Sewer District and Tetra Tech, the 2019 finalist teams also included:

• Boston Public Schools for “Optimized School Bus Routing Helps School Districts Design Better Policies”
• IBM for “Analytics and O.R. for IBM’s IT Service Deals”
• Microsoft for “Prospective Dynamic Fraud Control for Optimal Profitability in E-commerce”
• Spanish Aviation Safety and Security Agency (AESA) for “RIMAS–Safer Skies in Spain” 
• Vattenfall for “Operational Research Optimizes Offshore Wind Farm Design and Enables a Fossil-Free Future”

To learn more about the 2019 Franz Edelman Award competition, click here.

UPS George D. Smith Prize

In addition to the Edelman Award, INFORMS awarded its 2019 UPS George D. Smith Prize to the Department of Operations, Business Analytics and Information Systems at the University of Cincinnati’s (UC) Carl H. Lindner College of Business for an innovative curriculum, taught in the context of a true business environment, that prepares students to become effective practitioners. 

UC’s Department of Operations, Business Analytics and Information Systems is home to the UC Center for Business Analytics, which brings business organizations together with world-class, multidisciplinary groups of faculty and students, to educate and exchange ideas and best practices on how to apply analytics methods for enhancing business and organizational performance.

More than 25 leading organizations are members of the center, including Cincinnati Children’s Hospital, GE Aviation, the Cincinnati Reds and Macy’s. 

In addition to the University of Cincinnati, the 2019 Smith Prize finalists included:

• University of Maryland Department of Decision, Operations & Information Technologies 
• University of South Carolina Operations and Supply Chain Program - Management Science Department

To learn more about this year’s Smith Prize competition, click here. 

INFORMS Prize

Also recognized at the 2019 Edelman Gala was the winner of the INFORMS Prize, Booz Allen Hamilton, for their pioneering and enduring integration of operations research (O.R.) and analytics programs into their organization.   

Recognizing the increasing role that O.R. and analytics was playing in the future of their clients’ missions, Booz Allen consolidated their firm-wide O.R. talent into a single, centralized organization to enhance cross-disciplinary exchanges as well as accelerate internal research and development projects. This new practice, Booz Allen’s Analytics Practice, integrated traditional O.R. practitioners from its Defense business with experts in high-performance computing from its National Security business and solution architects from its Civil and Commercial businesses. 

Together, Booz Allen’s team of O.R. practitioners have pioneered the application of data science to minimize vaccine production variability, detect pharmaceutical safety issues, prevent entitlement fraud, and disrupt threat networks. 

Booz Allen has also repeatedly incorporated O.R. into its internal culture to achieve efficiencies and enhance employee and customer experiences. Some of the firm’s notable programs include the Data Science Bowl, one of the largest data science-for-social-good competitions in the world. Booz Allen also established the Data Science 5K, an internal workforce development program that has rapidly grown Booz Allen’s data science talent by more than 1,600 data scientists in just the past three years.

Daniel H. Wagner Prize for Excellence in Practice of Advanced Analytics and Operations Research

The winner of the 2018 INFORMS Daniel H. Wagner Prize, which was presented last fall at the 2018 INFORMS Annual Meeting in Phoenix, AZ, was also recognized at this year’s Edelman Gala. 

A team of researchers from Cornell University, Daniel Freund, Shane G. Henderson, David B. Shmoys and Eoin O'Mahony, were presented with the Wagner Prize for their work to increase the efficiency of bike-sharing programs.

Their work applied analytics and O.R. to improve the placement of bike docking stations and create an inventive approach to replenish and rebalance these docking stations. The researchers worked with Motivate, the operator of the largest bike sharing system found in New York, Chicago and San Francisco, to develop an initiative to improve the allocation of docks to stations, and then create an incentive scheme to crowdsource rebalancing called Bike Angels. 

Both of these projects have been fully implemented to improve the performance of Motivate’s systems across the country: Motivate has moved hundreds of docks in its systems nationwide and the Bike Angels program now aids rebalancing in San Francisco and NYC. In NYC, Bike Angels yields improvement comparable to that obtained through Motivate’s traditional rebalancing efforts, at far less financial and environmental cost.

To learn more about the 2018 Wagner Prize competition, click here.