Innovative Applications in Analytics Award

The purpose of the Innovative Applications in Analytics Award, brought to you by the Analytics Society of INFORMS, Kinaxis and Adelphi University is to recognize the creative and unique application of a combination of analytical techniques. The prize promotes the awareness and value of the creative combination of analytics techniques in unusual applications to provide insights and/or business value.

Applicants can submit proposals that span applications of descriptive, predictive and/or prescriptive analytics, as well as data creation, collection and dissemination which support or enable original analytical methods.

Descriptive innovation could include novel measures, visualization methods, or creative approaches to the analytics process improvement, among others. Predictive innovation might be statistical applications, text analytics or simulation, among others. Prescriptive innovation might include game theory or optimization. New sources of data creation and collection, and new avenues for dissemination of analytical approaches can also help demonstrate the innovativeness of the submission. The lists above are not meant to be exhaustive, but rather illustrative examples of areas of innovation.

2020 IAAA Results

The 2020 IAAA award had 33 participants from across the globe that applied a diverse set of analytical tools and techniques that provided significant improvements to profit and nonprofit organizations. After a rigorous and difficult process, due to the high-quality level of the applications, a judging committee chaired by Pallav Chhaochhria (Citigroup) and Juan R. Jaramillo (Adelphi University), and composed of Duncan Klett (Kinaxis), Ali Megahed (IBM), Catalina M. Jaramillo (NYU), Nitish Ghoshal (Discover Financial Services), Rodrigo Estrada (Corona Organization), Juan G. Lalinde (EAFIT University), Patricia Neri (Bayer) and Zahra Maman (Adelphi University) selected six finalists. Since the 2020 INFORMS Analytics Conference was cancelled due to the Covid pandemic, the six finalists presented their innovative applications to the judging committee remotely through video-conference. The finalists represented a diverse set of industries, organizations and nationalities, showing the richness of analytics applications today.

The 2020 winners were as follows:

• First place: Integrated Analytics for Sustainable Agriculture in Latin America presented by Ricardo Curiel, Centro Internacional de Mejoramiento de Maíz y Trigo and Andrea Gardeazabal, Centro Internacional de Mejoramiento de Maíz y Trigo (CIMMYT), Daniel Jimenez and Hugo Durado, Centro Internacional de Agricultura Tropical (CIAT), Steffen Fritz and Juan Carlos Laso, International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA)
• Second place: Timing it Right: Development and Implementation of a Discharge Decision Tool for Readmission Reduction presented by Jonathan Helm (Indiana University), Pengyi Shi (Purdue University), Julian Pan and Jivan Deglise-Hawkinson (Lean Care Solutions, Pte., Ltd.)
• Third place:  Cognitive B2B Pricing Analytics Platform presented by Zhengliang (Zack) Xue, Huijing Jiang, Naoki Abe, Markus Ettl (IBM T.J. Watson Research Center), Donald Keefer, Liyang Song and Elizabeth Bourgoin (IBM Chief Analytics Office)

The other three finalists, listed in alphabetical order by title, were as follows:

Detecting Customer Trends from Transaction Data for Optimal Promotion Targeting in Retail presented by Setareh Borjian Boroujeni and Kiran Panchamgam (Oracle), Lennart Baardman (University of Michigan), Tamar Cohen-Hillel and Georgia Perakis (MIT)

Optimized Execution of Dispatch presented by Janina Zittel, Felix Hennings, Kai Hoppmann, Milena Petkovic, Thorsten Koch (Zuse Institute Berlin and TU Berlin), Frank Klimek, Mladen Terzic, Julian Steinmeyer, Klaus Spreckelsen, Uwe Gotzes (Open Grid Europe GmbH), Steffen Weider, Christof Schulz (LBW Optimization GmbH), all other members of the Research Campus MODAL GasLab

The Driver Guidance System for Taxi Drivers presented by Shih-Fen Cheng, Rishikeshan, Meghna Lowalekar, Pradeep Varakantham (Singapore Management University), Shashi Shekhar Ja (IIT Ropar), Prabod Rathnayaka (La Trobe University)