BALTIMORE, Nov. 12, 2025 – INFORMS, the world’s largest association for professionals and students in operations research, analytics, AI and data science, has awarded the 2025 Daniel H. Wagner Prize for Excellence in the Practice of Advanced Analytics and Operations Research to a team of researchers from George Washington University and the Meituan Group for the paper “Rebalancing and Pricing of Near-Expiry Inventory in Online Grocery Retail,” in which the Wagner Prize recipients developed and deployed a system for managing nearly-expired grocery store food.
Researchers partnered with Meituan, China’s largest on-demand service platform, to coordinate nighttime transshipment and dynamic pricing across thousands of micro fulfillment centers, reducing spoilage by 20% and improving profitability. Their research demonstrated how advanced analytics can transform perishable inventory from a loss driver to a source of profit and sustainability.
The team of researchers included Long He with Ziyuan Zhou and Zhengling Qi of George Washington University, alongside Guangrui Ma, Yuanbo Peng, Yushu Yao, Zhongyi Zha, Mingyong Zhao and Zhenyu Zhuo of the Meituan Group.
The prize winners were announced at the 2025 INFORMS Annual Meeting in Atlanta.
Additional finalists for the 2025 award included:
- Bo Lin, Madeleine Bonsma-Fisher, Shoshanna Saxe and Timothy Chan of the University of Toronto for “Analytics for Urban Bike Infrastructure Planning: A Multi-Year Collaboration with the City of Toronto.”
- Will Ma (Columbia Business School), Jiaxi Liu (Sichuan University), Yaqi Xie (University of Chicago), Linwei Xin (Cornell University), and Yidong Zhang, Lei Cao and Xinru Hao (Taobao & Tmall Group), for “DeepStock: Inventory Management with Policy Regularizations.”
- Sajjad Taghiyeh, Hao Yi Ong and Zeyad Kassem of Lyft, Inc. for “Optimizing Multimodal Rideshare Pricing via Quasi-Convex Efficiency Objectives.”
More information about the Daniel H. Wagner Prize and the 2025 winning team is available here.
About INFORMS:
INFORMS serves 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
Contact:
Rebecca Seel
(443) 757-3578
Subscribe and stay up to date on the latest from INFORMS.
###
Media Contact
Jeff Cohen
Chief Strategy Officer
INFORMS
Catonsville, MD
[email protected]
443-757-3565