The Georgia Institute of Technology’s interdisciplinary Master of Science in Analytics, spanning engineering, computing and business, earns top honors for producing practice-ready analytics professionals at unprecedented scale.
BALTIMORE, April 13, 2026 — INFORMS, the world’s largest association for professionals and students in operations research (O.R.), AI, analytics and data science, 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.
Georgia Tech's Master of Science in Analytics (MSA) was built on a simple but powerful premise: the best analytics practitioners need more than technical depth. Launched in 2014 as a collaboration between three of Georgia Tech's top-ranked academic units, the H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering, the College of Computing, and the Scheller College of Business, the MSA bridges operations research, machine learning, statistics and applied business decision-making in a single, integrated degree.
Since expanding to an online format in 2017, Georgia Tech has scaled that vision further than any comparable program in the country. The MSA now graduates more than 1,000 students annually, and with more than 7,000 alumni since its inception, it is believed to be the largest analytics or data science degree program in the United States. Graduates enter the workforce equipped with the technical fluency and business acumen to turn data into decisions, exactly the kind of practitioner the UPS George D. Smith Prize was created to celebrate.
Named in honor of the late UPS Chief Executive Officer—a champion of operations researchers at a leading Fortune 500 corporation—the UPS George D. Smith Prize was created in the spirit of strengthening ties between industry and the schools of higher education that graduate young practitioners of O.R. The prize is awarded to an academic department or program for effective and innovative preparation of students to be good practitioners of O.R. or analytics.
Fourteen universities have previously won the UPS George D. Smith Prize, including the National University of Singapore (2025), the University of South Carolina (2024), Purdue University (2023) and Eindhoven University of Technology (2022). A full list of all past recipients can be found here.
The two other finalists for the 2026 UPS Smith Prize were Northwestern University and the U.S. Military Academy.
About INFORMS
INFORMS is the world’s largest association for professionals and students in operations research, AI, analytics, data science and related disciplines, serving as a global authority in advancing cutting-edge practices and fostering an interdisciplinary community of innovation. With a network of more than 12,000 members spanning academia, industry and government, INFORMS connects thought leaders, experts and emerging professionals who advance and apply AI, mathematics, analytics and other sciences and technologies to solve complex challenges and drive impactful decision-making.
Through its prestigious peer-reviewed journals, world-class conferences, industry-leading certification programs and a suite of professional resources, INFORMS empowers its community to enhance operational efficiency, elevate organizational performance and promote smarter decisions for a better world. Discover more at www.informs.org.
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