Author: Stephanie Allen
Paper Title: "A Two-Stage Vehicle Routing Algorithm Applied to Disaster Relief Logistics after the 2015 Nepal Earthquake"
Institution: The State University of New York (SUNY) at Geneseo (USA)
Department: Mathematics
Faculty Advisor: Dr. Caroline Haddad
The finalists reflect the strength of the projects in applied or theoretical domains from the forefront of domestic and foreign undergraduate institutions and students. They also represent a selective cohort of tomorrow's generation of operations research theorists and practitioners. The excellent work by the finalists will be showcased in two designated sessions on Sunday, October 22 at the INFORMS Annual Meeting (SB 40, 11:00 AM - 12:30 PM, and SD 40, 4:30 PM – 6:00 PM).
Winner, runner-up and honorable mentions of the competition will be announced at the Awards Ceremony on October 22 at the INFORMS Annual Meeting. Please join us congratulating all finalists of the competition during the annual meeting. Regardless of the result of competition, all entrants should feel proud of their work. The committee takes this opportunity to thank the authors of all submissions and their faculty advisors for their innovative and outstanding work.
Summary of the submission pool: There were 27 paper submissions to the competition from 7 different countries. United States and Turkey led the number of submissions with 10 papers from each country. Other submissions were from Canada, Colombia, France, India, Spain and Singapore.
In addition to industrial engineering, operations research and management science disciplines, the competition also received submissions from undergraduate students that are enrolled in math/applied math and computer science departments. Submitted papers were rich in variety of methods from mixed-integer nonlinear programming to partially observed Markov decision processes. They also presented insights derived on a diverse set of subject areas from disaster relief and humanitarian logistics to marketing.