The INFORMS Section on Public Programs, Services and Needs is sponsoring an award for best paper presented at the INFORMS fall national conference in Phoenix, October 14 – 17, 2012. This award is intended to encourage journal-quality research in all of the disciplines and application areas represented within SPPSN, and to build a tradition of scholarly exchange of knowledge at our research meetings beyond attendance at sessions. Participation is open to all INFORMS members, whether students, academics or practitioners. Each submission must be associated with a presentation at the fall national conference. Subject to receiving qualified submissions, one first prize of $250, one second prize of $100 and an honorable mention will be awarded at the SPPSN business meeting, to take place at the INFORMS fall 2012 conference.

The submission process consists of the following:

• A nomination letter, not to exceed two pages, explaining the relevance of the paper to SPPSN’s mission and the paper’s significance to research and/or practice, as well as a paper abstract (not to exceed 250 words), are due by July 6, 2012.
• Eligible participants will be invited by July 20, 2012 to submit a full paper to the judging committee.
• Final drafts of papers are due on September 7, 2012.

Submission requirements are:

• Papers must be a maximum of 32 pages long, including title, abstract, all text, references, figures and tables.
• Papers must be formatted to one-inch margins on all sides, a font size of at least 10 point, and at least 1.5 line spacing.
• The paper under consideration for this prize shall not have not been published elsewhere.

Details of this award will be posted on the SPPSN website http://www.informs.org/Community/PPSN.

All inquiries about this award should be made to:

Michael P. Johnson
SPPSN Past President and chair, Best Paper committee
University of Massachusetts Boston
michael.johnson@umb.edu
617-287-6967

Julie L. Swann
SPPSN President
Georgia Institute of Technology
julie.swann@isye.gatech.edu
404-385-3054