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INFORMS has awarded Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) its 2026 Franz Edelman Award for Achievement in Advanced Analytics, Operations Research and Management Science, for reengineering how global cloud infrastructure is planned and delivered, applying advanced analytics and AI to orchestrate complex fulfillment decisions across its rapidly expanding data center network.

INFORMS has awarded Microsoft, a global leader in cloud computing and technology solutions, the 2026 INFORMS Prize. This prestigious award recognizes Microsoft’s use of advanced analytics and O.R. to optimize its end-to-end cloud infrastructure and capacity management to deliver best-in-class efficiency, scalability and reliability.

INFORMS has awarded the 2026 UPS George D. Smith Prize to the Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech). The award recognizes excellence in preparing students to become practitioners of O.R. and analytics.

INFORMS has awarded the INFORMS Early Career Practitioner Award to Athanasios (Thanos) Lolos, principal data scientist at Navy Federal Credit Union (NFCU), for his outstanding contributions in applying operations research and advanced analytics to real-world financial challenges. 

As artificial intelligence and data-driven analytics rapidly transform online retail, a surprising dynamic is emerging: some e-commerce platforms deliberately allow third-party analytics tools to scrape or access marketplace data, even though doing so could weaken the platform’s competitive advantage.