Researchers from Amazon awarded INFORMS 2026 Daniel H. Wagner Prize

BALTIMORE, Nov. 1, 2026 – INFORMS, the world’s largest association for professionals and students in operations research, analytics, AI and data science, has awarded the 2026 Daniel H. Wagner Prize for Excellence in the Practice of Advanced Analytics and Operations Research to a team of researchers from Amazon. 

The Daniel H. Wagner Prize recognizes outstanding achievements in the practical application of operations research and advanced analytics, honoring innovative solutions that deliver measurable results and demonstrate the value of these disciplines in addressing real-world challenges. 

In the winning paper, “Amazon Optimizes Charging and Routing in Last-Mile Electric Delivery,” the Wagner Prize recipients built a planning system that accounts for how temperature and terrain change an electric delivery vehicle’s energy needs. 

Researchers made energy, rather than driving range, the core planning variable for Amazon’s fleet of more than 50,000 electric vehicles, balancing energy demand and charging supply under uncertainty to keep vehicles from being assigned routes they cannot finish. Their research cut charging costs by 30%, reduced the rate of vehicles stranded on their routes to nearly zero and has helped avoid more than 900,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions since 2022. 

The team of researchers included Julian Pachon, André Snoeck, Arun Akkinepally, Alexander Svozil, Harry Birnbaum, Marc Anderson and Daniel Merchan. 

The prize winners were announced at the 2026 INFORMS Annual Meeting in San Francisco. 

Additional finalists for the 2026 award included: 

• Abdelhakim Abdellaoui and Issmail El Hallaoui of Polytechnique Montréal, Loubna Benabbou of the Université du Québec à Rimouski (UQAR) and François Aubé and Mouloud Amazouz of Natural Resources Canada (NRCan) for "NRCan Bridges the Practicability Gap in Log Transportation Optimization." 

• Yixiao Huang, Yiwen Liao, Kai Zhang, Fei Gao, Chengneng Jin, Jiaxin Lin, Ziheng Liu, Xiang Song, Yankun Geng, Junhao Shi, Xiangtan Lv, Canxin Lin, Yufeng Chu, Hong Luo, Zhimin Lin, Ying He, Zhongli Sun, Yixia Zhou, Weiqiang Tan, Jianjun Tian, Tingrui Yin, Yan Lin, Jiaze Zheng, Xiaoxiao Sun, Shuaijie Cai, Wei Qi and Xuejun Zhang of SF Express for “From Diagnostics to Prescription: SF’s Explainable Network Recalibration Agent.” 

• Gultekin Kuyzu, Simon Cong Guo, Aman Sharma, Xu Yang, Cai Gao, Fereydoun Adbesh, Rohan Prakash, Sunil Singh, Rakesh Manoharan, Tanwir Khan, Jasmine Xiao, Shivam Vashistha, Ranjith Moola, Eric Helvie, Amritayan Nayak, Mingang Fu, Juan Gomez, Chad Harris, Todd Trivett, Timothy L. Jacobs, Pritam Aher, Parvez Musani, Rajiv Bhuta and Indira Uppuluri of Walmart Inc. for “Solving Large-Scale Shipment Consolidation: Walmart’s Deployment for Inbound Logistics." 

More information about the Daniel H. Wagner Prize and the 2026 winning team is available here. 

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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