Congratulations to ORSNZ conference prize winners

Kia ora koutou,

For those who were unable to attend the 2023 ORSNZ conference – please join me in congratulating the prize winners of the Young Practitioner Prize (YPP) and the JAG memorial prize for the best application of OR for improving lives.

YPP best paper award: Dominic Keehan – Multistage production planning and price modelling
YPP best presentation award: Mostafa Papen – Towards the development of a Virtual Safety Officer – Few-Shot-Learning prototype
JAG memorial prize: Shirekha Layangani – An Analysis of Oncology Drug Prescription Patterns using Hidden Markov Models

Andrew Mason was awarded the Hans Daellenbach Prize in 2022, and presented with the award after his 2023 ORSNZ plenary titled “From MacSimplex to OpenSolver: A 35 year Journey Applying Operations Research”.

Andrew Mason with Hans Daellenbach certificate and ORSNZ president Mike O'Sullivan.

All our prize winners are also listed on the ORSNZ Prizes page (here).

Ngā mihi,
Andrea (ORSNZ President)

ORSNZ Conference 2019 Recap & Prize Winners

This year’s ORSNZ conference was the first time we haven’t partnered with NZSA since 2012. Across the two days we had 56 people who attended, and 28 presentations. You can see the abstracts for all the presentations here.

There was also an Analytics Forum event on Well-being Analytics aligned with the first-day on the conference, attended by about 150 people.

The OSHA and ENR SIGs each hosted sessions at the conference, which helped to attract people from industry to a day or session of the conference.

YPP Prize Winners

Sponsored by Suez Smart Solutions

Best Paper: Comparison of objective functions for scheduling surgeries. Thomas Adams, Michael O’Sullivan & Cameron Walker. Engineering Science, University of Auckland, New Zealand

Best Presentation: Universal locker systems for urban metros. Parameshwaran Iyer, Ronald Veldman & Yao Zhang.

Highly Commended: The optimisation of milk collection. Snigdha Saha & Olivier Graffeuille.

JAG Prize Winners

Sponsored by Optimity

Winner: Developing a decision making tool for Housing New Zealand. Hrishi Kodthuguli, Michael O’Sullivan & Cameron Walker.

Highly Commended: Who will be covered and who will be left behind? Advising the Norwegian Air Ambulance Foundation on fairness. Maaike Vollebergh, Caroline Jagtenberg & Jo Røislien.

2018 ORSNZ Conference Prizes

Abstract Submission

The deadline for abstracts for the upcoming 2018 Joint NZSA + ORSNZ conference (27-29 November at Massey University, Palmerston North) must be submitted by Monday October 1, 2018. The submission details and formatting requirements can be found here.

NZSA is managing the submission process, and there will be no extension to this deadline.

Young Practitioners’ Prize

OR practitioners and students who are within 5 years of graduation on the first day of the conference (27 November) are invited to compete for $1000 of prizes in the ORSNZ Young Practitioners’ Prize competition. When registering for the conference, competitors should request that their paper be entered for the YPP. Note that a full paper, following these guidelines, must be submitted to ORSNZ by November 15 in order enter the YPP. For further details about the YPP, see here.

The 2018 Young Practitioners’ Prize is sponsored by Suez Smart Solutions. Anyone who enters the YPP is also eligible to attend the conference dinner free-of-charge (you do not need to purchase a dinner ticket). The conference dinner has been sponsored by Harmonic Analytics & Engineering Science.

John A. George Memorial Prize (JAG)

JAG PrizeYoung Practitioners may also optionally submit your paper / presentation for consideration for the JAG prize. This prize is awarded annually for the best application of OR for improving lives. Entries are particularly sought in areas such as health, education, social welfare, economic development, or environmental protection, but may be in any application area.

Entrants should explain how their work could contribute to improving the quality of people’s lives, particularly those who may otherwise be vulnerable or disadvantaged, now, or in the future?

Winners of the Inaugural John Andrew George Memorial Prize

At the 2017 ORSNZ the first John Andrew George Memorial Prizes were awarded. This prize was established by Grant Read, Vicky Mabin, Bob Cavana, and John Buchanan in memory of former ORSNZ Vice President John George, who passed away in November last year.

While most OR projects are expected to deliver “benefits” of various kinds, the emphasis here is not on purely economic, or even purely environmental, benefits, but on efforts to better the lives of others.  It is thus about the motivation, heart and soul of the project.  So the key consideration was be the following question:

“How will this work contribute to improving the quality of people’s lives, particularly those who may otherwise be vulnerable or disadvantaged, now, or in future?”

This prize was open to all papers presented for the YPP, and was awarded jointly to:

Samuel Ridler – Ambulance simulation and optimisation; and
Samin ArefComputing the frustration index in signed graphs using binary programming.

Left to right: Samuel Riddler (JAG Award Winner), Grant Read, Vicky Mabin, Bob Cavana (judges), and Michael O’Sullivan (ORSNZ President).