[President’s Lifetime Achievement Award] [Hans Daellenbach Prize] [Visiting Lecturers] [Young Practioner Prize] [John A. George Memorial Prize] [Older ORSNZ Prizes] [Other Prizes awarded to Members]

President’s Lifetime Achievement Award

In 2013 the first President’s Lifetime Achievement Award was presented to Prof David Ryan. The President’s Lifetime Achievement Award is in recognition of contributions made throughout the recipient’s career to both the ORSNZ and Operations Research in New Zealand and internationally.

Year	Prize Winner
2013 Inaugural Prize	Professor David Ryan Dept of Engineering Science University of Auckland View photos 1 2 3 4 5 6 (c) G Cabrera View more photos 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 (c) H Henderson

ORSNZ Hans Daellenbach Prize

To honour the considerable contributions of Emeritus Professor Hans Daellenbach to Operations Research/Management Science (OR/MS) in New Zealand, the ORSNZ established the ORSNZ Hans Daellenbach Prize in 2001. Professor Daellenbach’s contributions reflect his belief that the best work in OR/MS combines strong innovative methodology with practical impact. The Daellenbach Prize will be awarded for such a body of work that has made a significant contribution and received international recognition. More details… You can read more about Hans in the March 1999 Newsletter, and peruse one of his articles in the Jan 1996 Newsletter.

Emeritus Professor Hans Daellenbach

Year	Prize Winner
2001 Inaugural Prize	Professor David Ryan Dept Engineering Science University of Auckland University of Auckland Article…Read about David’s airline work (OR/MS Today, April 2000)View photos 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 of the presentation. (c) M Ehrgott
2003	Professor Les Foulds Department of Management Systems Waikato Management School The University of Waikato View photos 1 2 of the presentation. (c) M Ehrgott
2006	Professor Andy Philpott Dept Engineering Science University of Auckland Read the Prize Citation View the RSNZ presentation or the ORSNZ ceremony and talk. (c) A Mason, D McKinnon
2012	Professor Grant Read Canterbury University Read the Nomination View the award photo. Photo (c) M Ehrgott
2017	Professor Vicky Mabin Victoria University of Wellington Read the Prize Citation and Vicky’s CV View the award photo. Photo (c) A Downward
2023	A/P Andrew Mason University of Aucklabd Read the Prize Citation. View the award photo. Photo

ORSNZ Visiting Lecturers

Call for Nominations: The ORSNZ invites nominations for ORSNZ honorary visiting lecturers to visit New Zealand between September and June each year. Each visiting lecturer is invited to give a talk on some topic likely to be of general interest to ORSNZ members at three or more of Auckland, Hamilton, Wellington, and Christchurch. Each visiting lecturer will be invited to write a guest editorial for the society newsletter. The ORSNZ contributes to the costs up to a maximum of $1000 plus GST (if any) per visitor. Each candidate must be nominated by a current member of ORSNZ, “the champion”. The nomination must include the CV of the nominated visiting lecturer, the date and location of the hosts of the visit, the name of the champion and an undertaking by the champion to coordinate a visit by the nominee to three or more of the above named centres. Enquiries concerning, or nominations for, lectureships should be sent to president@orsnz… The closing date for nominations is the end of April.

Once nominations have been received, the President will consult Council before forming a subcommittee to review the nominations. The subcommittee is to determine the options that are to be presented to Council. Multiple visiting lecturers in any one year are permissible if the circumstances permit.

Year	Vistor
2007	Professor Michael Trick is Professor of Operations Research at the Tepper School of Business, Carnegie Mellon University. Mike is best known for his Web presence, including his OR blog, and as an ex-President of INFORMS. He has a personal blog of his NZ trip. Mike gave an excellent Hood lecture in Auckland. University of Auckland Article…
2008	Prof Anita Schobel is Professor of Optimization at the University of Gottingen, working in optimization and OpPPS. Prof Schobel gave a plenary address at the 2008 ORSNZ Conference.
2008	Associate Professor Ted Ralphs from Lehigh University is actively involved in the Open Source COIN-OR project as the author and developer of the Symphony optimisation package. He is currently developing CHivel Programming. Photos: exploring Auckland 1, 2, 3, and presenting in Auckland in January 2009.

ORSNZ Young Practitioner Prize
Effective from 2013.11.26

1. The Young Practitioner Prize (YPP) is open to all presenters at the annual ORSNZ conference who are within 5 years of graduation on the first day of presentations at the conference. YPP entrants must clearly identify themselves to the conference organisers by any deadline specified in the call for papers or on the conference website, when submitting their abstract and their paper, and when registering.
2. YPP entrants will present their work in a talk of typically 15 to 20 minutes duration, with approximately 5 minutes for questions. (The exact figures are determined by the conference organizer to fit the conference schedule.) The presentation length will be strictly enforced.
3. YPP entrants must submit a paper to the conference organisers that meets the requirements for inclusion in the conference proceedings. Except in exceptional circumstances, this paper will be published in the proceedings.
4. Supervisors of YPP entrants are normally expected to appear as an author if they have contributed to the ideas or implementation described in the paper. Supervisors may not take part in the presentation of the work.
5. In addition to the submitted paper, YPP entrants must submit a cover sheet (see YPPcoversheet.doc or YPPcoversheet.pdf) detailing:
   1. the starting point of the project (including existing software),
   2. the entrants’ contributions to the work (clearly distinguishing this from the supervisor’s contributions) and
   3. whether they are an industrial practitioner, or a PhD, Masters, or undergraduate student, and the time that they allocated to the project (e.g. 1/8th of an academic year, or 2 years of a PhD program, or 5 years working in industry).

   This completed signed form should be brought to the conference and submitted during registration. This cover sheet is to be signed by the YPP entrant’s academic or commercial supervisor(s) (or the entrant themselves if no such supervisor exists).

6. The ORSNZ will award up to four YPP prizes at each conference from a total prize pool of up to $1000 for the judges to distribute between winners as they see fit. Not all prizes will be awarded if there are insufficient entrants of a satisfactory standard.
7. The judges will take into consideration the quality of both the entry’s written paper and their oral presentation. Guidelines that will be used to assess entries include originality, initiative taken, difficulty of topic, the amount of time allocated to the project, and a broader recognition of the context of the project such as the assumptions made, limitations, alternative views, innovation, potential application, and future work.

Notes:

1. Typically three prizes of values $500, $300 and $200 have been awarded.
2. Multiple prizes have been awarded to the same person over several years.
3. In 2006, the judging committee explicitly distinguished entries by PhD students and industrial practitioners from entries by Masters/Honours and undergraduate students.
4. In past conferences, we have had talk lengths of: 2007:15+5; 2006:18 in total; 2005: 15+5; 2004: 20+2.5

Additional details for the format of the paper for 2018’s conference can be found here.

Young Practitioner Prize Winners
Drumroll…

Year	Prize	Author	Association	Paper
2024 YPP Sponsored by	Best paper	Dominic Keehan	University of Auckland, PhD (Engineering Science and Bioengineering)	Dominic S.T. Keehan, Edward J. Anderson Estimation of Shifting Probability Distributions using the Wasserstein Distance
	Best presentation	Ahmed Abdelhadi	University of Auckland, PhD (Engineering Science and Bioengineering)	Ahmed Abdelhadi, Andrea Raith Simulation-optimization approach for charging setup for electric taxi adoption using dynamic charger swapping for optimal distribution and location
2023 YPP Sponsored by	Best paper	Dominic Keehan	University of Auckland, PhD (Engineering Science and Bioengineering)	Dominic Keehan, Andy Philpott, Andrew Mason Multistage production planning and price modelling
	Best presentation	Mostafa Papen	University of Auckland, PhD (Engineering Science and Bioengineering)	Mostafa Papen, Michael O’Sullivan, Yang Zou, Daniel Kulasingham Towards the development of a Virtual Safety Officer – Few-Shot-Learning prototype
2022 YPP		Christina Yin-Chieh Lin	University of Auckland, PhD (Engineering Science and Bioengineering)	Modelling housing feature impacts on sale price in newly developed suburbs relative to a standard house
		Karl Zhu	University of Auckland, PhD (Engineering Science and Bioengineering)	Finding the missing with integer programming
		Uwe Langenmayr	Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, PhD (Institute for Industrial Production)	Calculation of synthetic energy carrier production costs with high temporal and geographical resolution.
2019 YPP Sponsored by	Best paper	Thomas Adams	University of Auckland, PhD (Engineering Science)	Thomas Adams, Michael O’Sullivan, Cameron WalkerComparison of objective functions for scheduling surgeries
	Best presentation	Param Iyer	University of Auckland, PhD (Business School)	Parameshwaran Iyer, Ronald Veldman, Yao Zhang Universal locker systems for urban metros
	Highly commended	Snigdha Saha	University of Auckland, Undergraduate (Engineering Science)	Snigdha Saha, Olivier Graffeuille The optimisation of milk collection
2018 YPP Sponsored by Thanks to our judges:	First-place $500	Isaac D Cleland	University of Auckland, PhD (Engineering Science)	Isaac D. Cleland, Andrew Mason, and Michael O’Sullivan Improved Staff Rostering Algorithms
	Second-place $300	Haddon Smith	University of Auckland, BE(Hons) (Engineering Science)	Haddon Smith, Thomas Graham-Murdoch, Richard Clarke, Naresh Singhal, Alys Clarke, Vinod Suresh, Andrew Mason, and Stephen Waite. Determining effective placement strategies for denitrifying bioreactors in New Zealand river systems
	3rd-place $200	Jesse Prendergast	University of Auckland,  ME (Engineering Science)	Jesse Prendergast, Andrea Raith, and Andrew Mason Simulating First and Last Mile Transport in Auckland
2017 YPP Sponsored by	First-place $500	Oscar Dowson	University of Auckland, PhD (Engineering Science)	Oscar Dowson. SDDP.jl: a Julia package for Stochastic Dual Dynamic Programming
	Second-place $300	Thomas Adams	University of Auckland, PhD (Engineering Science)	Thomas Adams. Balancing Physician Workloads Under Uncertain Admissions
	Third-place $200	Isaac Cleland	University of Auckland, PhD (Engineering Science)	Isaac Cleland. Solving a Generalised Staff Rostering Problem
2016 YPP Sponsored by	First-place $450		University of Auckland, Undergraduate (Engineering Science)	Ryan Cory-Wright, Andy Philpott and Golbon Zakeri. Cost-recovering, revenue-adequate single settlement schemes for electricity markets
	Highly Commended $275		Victoria University of Wellington, PhD (School of Economics and Finance)	Melissa Welsh. Modelling traceability in the dairy industry
	Highly Commended $275		University of Auckland, Undergraduate (Engineering Science)	Danielle Gatland and Andrea Raith. Mapping electric vehicle range
2015 YPP	Best doctoral paper $250	Faisal Wahid (3rd from left)	University of Auckland, PhD (Engineering Science)	Faisal Wahid, Andy Philpott and Frédéric Bonnans. MIDAS touch: Solving hydro-bidding problems using mixed integer programs
	Best presentation $250	Michael Lindahl (2nd from left)	Technical University of Denmark (DTU), PhD (Management Engineering)	Michael Lindahl and Niels-Christian Fink Bagger. Optimizing the Cable Collection Grid in Offshore Wind Farms
	Best undergraduate presentation $250	Joshua Dawes (centre)	University of Auckland, BE(Hons) (Engineering Science)	Joshua Dawes, Golbon Zakeri and Geoffrey Pritchard. Efficient electric vehicle charging
	Most promising conceptual development $125	Regan Baucke (2nd from right)	University of Auckland, PhD (Engineering Science)	Regan Baucke, Golbon Zakeri and Tony Downward. Exploring state dependent risk aversion in multistage programming problems
	Innovative technical development prize $125	Keith Ruddell (3rd from right)	University of Auckland, PhD (Engineering Science)	Keith Ruddell, Andy Philpott and Anthony Downward. Transmission-constraned supply-function equilibria with price-taking players
2014 YPP Sponsored by YPP Presentation	1st Postgraduate $250	Lin Chen	University of Auckland PhD ( Civil & Environmental Engineering)	Lin Chen, Andrea Raith and Theunis F. Henning. Multi-objective optimisation in decision making of road maintenance Judges’ comment “Great overview and testing of alternative methods, with some serious application in mind.”
	1st Equal Undergraduate $250	James Waugh	University of Auckland, BE(Hons) (Engineering Science)	James Waugh and Andrew Mason. Columnwise Search – A heuristic for the Vehicle Routing Problem applied to Waste Collection Judges’ comment “Another nice balanced applied OR project, using optimisation to deliver significant efficiency gains on a real problem, in a comprehensible manner.”
	1st Equal Undergraduate $250	Ben Goodger	University of Auckland, BE(Hons) (Engineering Science)	Ben Goodger, Cameron Walker and Anthony Downward. Developing online heuristics and a near optimal benchmark for apple packing Judges’ comment “A nice balanced applied OR project, using optimisation to set upper bound on possible gains, then developing implementable heuristics to deliver measurable gains on a potentially large scale.”
	Special Prize for initiative and “good old fashioned” effectiveness $250	Michael Fairley and Oscar Dowson	University of Auckland, BE(Hons) (Engineering Science)	Michael Fairley and Oscar Dowson. Partitioning students into equitable groups using SolverStudio Judges’ comment “Quick, and not actually all that dirty.”
2013 YPP Sponsored by YPP Presentation	1st Postgraduate $400	Antony Phillips	Auckland PhD (EngSci)	Antony Phillips, Matthias Ehrgott and David Ryan. Solving the Classroom Assignment Problem Using Integer Programming
	1st Equal $300 Undergraduate	Jack Dunn	Auckland, BE (EngSci)	Jack Dunn, Golbon Zakeri and Anthony Downward: Binary Interruptible Load Optimisation
	1st Equal $300 Undergraduate	Max Biggs	Auckland, BE (EngSci)	Max Biggs and Tony Downward. 2D Shape Optimization Applied to Diamond Cutting
2012 YPP Sponsored by YPP Presentation	1st PhD $400	Olga Perederieieva	Auckland PhD (EngSci)	Olga Perederieieva. Solving Bi-objective Traffic Assignment Based on Time Surplus Maximisation
	1st Masters $300	Simon Bull	Auckland, BE (EngSci), ME (EngSci)	Simon Bull, Andrew Mason and Andrea Raith: Scheduling Families of Jobs on Multiple Identical Machines to Minimize Total Tardiness
	1st Equal $150 Undergraduate	Rosemary Read	Canterbury, BA(Hist), BCom Hons (MSci)	Rosemary Read, Shane Dye, Grant Read: Generalized CDDP for Reservoir Management
	1st Equal $150 Undergraduate	Jingze (Emily) Du	Auckland, BE (EngSci)	Jingze Du, Matthias Ehrgott and Andrea Raith. Optimal Delivery of Arc Modulated Radiation Therapy in Cancer Treatment
2010 YPP Sponsored by	1st Postgraduate	Anthony Downward	Auckland, BE (EngSci) PhD (EngSci)	Risk Aversion and Retail Electricity Markets
	Honourable Mention Postgraduate	Oddo Zhang	Auckland, BE (EngSci), PhD (EngSci)	Optimisation of Small-Scale Ambulance Move-Up
	1st Equal Undergraduate	Jason Drake	Auckland, BE (EngSci)	Design of Road Networks
	1st Equal Undergraduate	Jason Undan	Auckland, BE (EngSci)	Optimisation of Demand-Side Bidding
	Honourable Mention Undergraduate	Thomas Liddle	Victoria, BSc (Hons)	Kick Strength and Online Sampling for Iterated Local Search
	Honourable Mention Undergraduate	Uttara Nataraj	Auckland, BE (EngSci)	Selecting a Portfolio of Cycling Projects
2009 YPP Judges Comments	1st Postgraduate	Faram Engineer	Auckland, BE ME (EngSci) PhD (Georgia Tech)	Catch-up Scheduling for Childhood Vaccination [pdf]
	1st Undergraduate	Qi-Shan Lim	Auckland, BE (EngSci)	Trim Loss and Inventory Optimisation in Paper Mills
	2nd Undergraduate	Antony Phillips	Auckland, BE (EngSci)	Optimisation Models and Methods for the Container Positioning Problem in Port Terminals
2008 DY Strategy Consulting YPP Winners [certificate pdf]	1st	Brendan Kite (& Kevin Lao)	Canterbury	Evaluation of Clean Development Mechanism and Joint Implementation Projects [pdf]
	2nd	Anders Dohn (& Esben Kolind)	DTU (Technical University of Denmark), Denmark	Optimizing Manpower Allocation for Ground Handling Tasks in Airports using Column Generation [pdf]
	3rd=	Antony DePont	Auckland, BE (EngSci)	Order Picking in Warehouses [pdf]
	3rd=	Gemma Clark	Victoria	Elder Care in NZ: A Multi-framing Approach [pdf]
	3rd=	Andrea Raith	Auckland, PhD (EngSci)	Traffic Assignment with Travel Time and Toll Cost Objectives [pdf]
2007	1st	Lei (Oddo) Zhang	Auckland, BE (EngSci)	Optimization of well placement and flow [certificate]
	2nd	Martin Peat	Auckland, BE (EngSci)	Loading congestion at New Zealand aluminium smelters
	3rd	Bassy Tam	Auckland, PhD (EngSci)	Unit crewing in the airline tour of duty planning problem
2006	1st PhD	Richard Lusby	Auckland, PhD (EngSci)	Routing Trains Through Railway Junctions: A New Set Packing Approach [pdf]
	1st ME/Hons	Stuart Donovan	Anckland, ME (EngSci)	An improved mixed integer programming model for wind farm layout optimization [pdf]
	2nd ME/Hons	David Richards	Anckland, ME (EngSci)	A Study of Optimised Ambulance Redeployment Strategies [pdf]
2005	1st	Oliver Tompkins	Auckland, BE (EngSci)	Strategic Production Plan Model for the Hunua Quarry [pdf]
	2nd	David Craigie	Auckland, BE (EngSci)	Portfolio Optimization via Stochastic Dominance of Benchmarks [pdf]
	3rd=	Tim Steer & Richard Bramley	Canterbury, BSc (Hons)	Capacity modelling of the South Island chicken operation at Tegel Foods Ltd [pdf]
	3rd=	Stuart Donovan	Auckland, BE (EngSci)	Wind Farm Optimization [pdf]
2004	1st	Kavinesh Singh	Auckland, PhD (EngSci)	Column Generation for Capacity-Expansion Planning of Electricity Distribution Network
	2nd	Sanjay Patel	Auckland, BE (EngSci)	Locomotive Allocation for Toll NZ
	3rd	Sarah Kirkpatrick	Auckland, BE (EngSci)	Better Base Locations for the Melbourne Ambulance Service
2003	1st=	Jarrad Wallace Martin Young	Auckland, ME (EngSci) Auckland, ME (EngSci)	Optimal Yacht Rig Design using Mathematical Programming Roster Construction for Tranz Rail
2002	1st	Ambili Viswambharan	Auckland, BE (EngSci)	Optimisation in Diamond Cutting
	2nd	James Tipping	Canterbury, BScHons	Scheduling and Routing Grass Mowers Around Christchurch
	3rd	Lenrick Johnston	Auckland, BE/BCom, ME	Optimisation of Irradiation Directions in IMRT Treatment
2001	1st	Hamish Dean	Canterbury, PhD	Compaction Algorithms for the Garment Manufacturing Industry
	2nd	Stephanie Pegg	Beca Carter (ex Auckland, BE EngSci)	An Online Optimised Pump Scheduling System
	3rd	Michael Clist	Auckland, BE/BCom	Plant Location Modelling for the Concrete and Asphalt Industries
2000	1st	Thorsten Piehl	Auckland, ME EngSci	Cell Batching Optimisation for the New Zealand Aluminium Smelter
	2nd	Mark Stewart	Canterbury, PhD	Operational Decision Making for Internet Service Provision
	3rd	Rochelle Meehan	Auckland, BE EngSci	Flight Schedule Optimisation for Air New Zealand’s International Fleet

The table below details older winners of the Young Practitioner Prize. Drumroll…

Notes: Papers authored by two or more Young Practitioners were first formally permitted in 2005; previous entries had (generally) been single authored. In 2005, the maximum permitted age was increased from 25 to 30 effective for 2006 onwards.

John A. George (JAG) Memorial Prize

This prize is awarded annually for the best application of OR for improving lives.
“How does the project contribute to improving the quality of people’s lives, particularly those who may otherwise be vulnerable or disadvantaged, now, or in the future?”

Year	Winners
2024 Sponsored by	Zainab Rizvi Juliette Foley (certificate accepted by Andrea Raith in picture)
2023	Winner: Shirekha Layangan
2019 Sponsored by	Winner: Hrishi KodthuguliHighly Commended: Maaike Vollebergh
2018	Haddon Smith, Thomas Graham-Murdoch, Richard Clarke, Naresh Singhal, Alys Clarke, Vinod Suresh, Andrew Mason, and Stephen Waite (1st place) Determining effective placement strategies for denitrifying bioreactors in New Zealand river systems Jesse Prendergast, Andrea Raith, and Andrew Mason (2nd place) Simulating First and Last Mile Transport in Auckland “The John George Memorial prize was established to encourage researchers to think about the implications of their work in terms of improving the lives of people, particularly those who might otherwise be disadvantaged or excluded.   It was always intended that the award could apply to cases where benefits were delivered directly to individuals, or indirectly by improving the environment within which communities  must live.The paper delivered by Haddon Smith (with due acknowledgement to student co-author Thomas Graham-Murdoch and various supervisors) on Determining effective placement strategies for denitrifying bioreactors in New Zealand river systems, aligned perfectly with those objectives.  We loved the way this project  brought researchers from different disciplines together to address  a major public issue of the day.  And we were impressed by the way the authors applied several alternative OR techniques to real-life large scale catchments, and the broadly applicable insights they were able to infer from their detailed analysis.We also very much liked Jesse Prendergast’s paper on Simulating Transport-as-a-Service for First- and Last-Mile Transport in Auckland.  This kind of service will be of increasing relevance,  in terms of reducing energy consumption, greenhouse gas emissions and congestion, but also as a means of making realistically priced transport options more accessible to those unable to drive cars.We would like to commend all three contestants, and their supervisors, who all made  positive contributions in their own way, and to specially thank Orbit Systems for sponsoring this year’s awards.”Grant Read, Vicky Mabin and Bob Cavana, JA George Judges, 2018
2017	Samuel Ridler – Ambulance simulation and optimisation (1st equal) Samin Aref – Computing the frustration index in signed graphs using binary programming (1st equal)