ORNSZ conference – prize winners

Kia ora koutou,

For those who were unable to attend the 2024 ORSNZ conference held 5/12/2024 – 6/12/2024 – 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 – Estimation of Shifting Probability Distributions using the Wasserstein Distance

YPP best presentation award: Ahmed Abdelhadi – Simulation-optimization approach for charging setup for electric taxi adoption using dynamic charger swapping for optimal distribution and location

JAG memorial prize: Zainab Rizvi – Towards Multi Scale Analysis of Energy Systems with Microgrids

JAG memorial prize: Juliette Foley – Minimisation of Cost and Emissions for Supermarket Product Purchases Across Recipes

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

We also thank our sponsors for support: Suez for support of the YPP prize, Gurobi Optimization for support of the JAG prize, and Supply Chain Company for support of student attendance at the conference.

Ngā mihi,
Andrea (ORSNZ President)

ORSNZ Annual Conference registrations open

The ORSNZ Annual Conference will be held Thursday 5/12/2024 and Friday 6/12/2024 at the University of Auckland.

Some of the key dates are (full list here):
– abstracts are due Friday 8/11/2024
– Paper deadline (optional) and YPP paper deadline Friday 15/11/2024
– early bird registrations are available until Friday 15/11/2024

Thanks to some very generous sponsorship the registration fees are low this year, so hopefully many of you can join us. Registration details and the Humanitix registration page are linked here.

There are two prizes available, the ORSNZ Young Practitioners’ Prize (YPP) and the John A. George Memorial Prize (JAG). Details can be found on the conference website.

Please note that there may be travel support for students out of Auckland, as well as some free registrations for students and recent graduates participating in the Young Practitioner Prize (YPP). Please get in touch by emailing [email protected] to find out more.

I would also like to draw everyone’s attention to the Optimization Community Event, connected by Gurobi, which will be held on Thursday 5/12/2024 from 3:30pm at Old Government House (University of Auckland). The event is free-of-charge but ORSNZ attendees need to register for this event in addition to ORSNZ conference registration (registrations are also available on the same Humanitix ticket page).

We look forward to many interesting talks and discussions. The abstract submission form is linked here.

Andrea Raith (ORSNZ President)
on behalf of the conference organising committee (Sarah Marshall, Lisa Hillas, Mike O’Sullivan).

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)

Deadline approaching for abstract submissions for ORSNZ Conference

The final deadline for abstracts for the upcoming ORSNZ conference is Monday 7 November. We welcome presentations on any aspect of operations research, analytics or management science, especially practical applications.

You can find the details about how to submit, here.

Note that we have prizes for students, including prizes for papers and presentations. You can find the eligibility criteria and submission details, here.

This year the YPP will be jointly sponsored by Optimity and Supply Chain Company.

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.

ORSNZ Conference 2019: Call for Papers

This year’s ORSNZ conference will be held at the University of Auckland on Monday December 2 and Tuesday December 3, 2019.

The theme of this year’s conference is influencing policy-making with evidence-based modelling and we will have a plenary address from Prof. Vicky Mabin.

Call for Papers

We welcome presentations on any aspect of operations research, analytics or management science, especially practical applications. We plan to run sessions on climate / emissions policy as well as healthcare.

Submissions from students and practitioners are greatly encouraged. Abstracts should be 200 words or fewer and are to be submitted as plain text (not a PDF file) through EasyChair.

Oral presentations will be 20 minutes in length (15 + 5 for questions). All abstracts will be considered by the conference committee, and the authors notified of their acceptance (or otherwise).

Abstracts can be submitted via EasyChair here. The deadline is Friday November 1.
The deadline for (optional) full papers is Friday November 15.

Registration

Early-bird registration is now available here:

  • a standard registration is $300 including the conference dinner;
  • a standard registration is $250, without the dinner ticket;
  • a student registration is $150, including the conference dinner;
  • a single-day registration is $150 for either day.

Early-bird registration will Close on November 1.

The conference dinner will be held on Monday December 2.

Student Prizes

Young Practitioners’ Prize

OR practitioners and students who are within 5 years of graduation on the first day of the conference (December 2) 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, and also include YPP as a keyword when submitting the abstract. Note that a full paper must be submitted in order enter the YPP. For further details about the YPP, see here.

John A. George Memorial Prize

Young Practitioners may also optionally have their presentations considered 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 (immediately, or in the future), particularly those who may otherwise be vulnerable or disadvantaged.

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?

Young Practitioner’s Prize Winners 2017

At the 51st ORSNZ Conference held in December 2017, we had 14 entries into the Young Practitioner’s Prize, which was sponsored by Trustpower. There were three prizes awarded:

  • 1st Place: Oscar Dowson – SDDP.jl: a Julia package for Stochastic Dual Dynamic Programming
  • 2nd Place: Thomas Adams – Balancing Physician Workloads Under Uncertain Admissions
  • 3rd Place: Isaac Cleland – Solving a Generalised Staff Rostering Problem

Dr Michael J O’Sullivan (ORSNZ President) and Mr Danny Tsai (Trustpower) present YPP certificates to Oscar Dowson (left), Thomas Adams (middle), and Isaac Cleland (right)

2016 Young Practitioner Prize Winners

At the 2016 Joint NZSA+ORSNZ Conference we had 7 high-quality papers submitted for the YPP, sponsored by Orbit Systems. Three prizes were awarded:

  • First-place: Ryan Cory-Wright, University of Auckland. Cost-recovering, revenue-adequate single settlement schemes for electricity markets.
  • Highly commended: Melissa Welsh, Victoria University of Wellington. Modelling traceability in the dairy industry.
  • Highly commended: Danielle Gatland, University of Auckland. Mapping electric vehicle range.

YPP Winners with Prof. Andy Philpott. From right: Melissa Welsh, Ryan Cory-Wright, and Danielle Gatland. Credit: Howard Henderson.

Copies of their papers can be found on the proceedings page of the conference website, here.