Best Paper Competition

About the Competition: The 2026 INFORMS Conference on Quality, Statistics, and Reliability (ICQSR) is proud to announce the Best Paper Award Competition. This award recognizes excellence among high-quality papers submitted to ICQSR and brings prestige to both the QSR Section and the recipients.

Publication Opportunity: Finalists of the competition are encouraged to submit their work to IISE Transactions on Data Science, Quality, and Reliability. The editorial board will work closely with the competition committee to shorten the review cycle for these submissions.

To be eligible for the competition, submissions must meet the following criteria:

• QSR Membership: At least one author must be a member of the INFORMS QSR Section. (Link to join QSR).

• Originality: The paper must be unpublished work at the time of the submission deadline.

• Exclusivity: The paper must not have won past competitions at other conferences.

• Presentation Commitment: The primary author or a co-author must commit to presenting the paper at the special Best Paper session during the 2026 ICQSR.

• Note on Dual Submission: Papers submitted to this competition MAY be simultaneously submitted to other regular sessions of ICQSR. If a finalist is scheduled to present in another session, they must present the paper twice: once in the Best Paper session, and once in their previously scheduled session.

• The ICQSR Section does NOT own the copyright of the paper.

• Required Format for Submission: 

  1. Please keep articles as brief as possible. 

  2. The maximum length is onecolumn 12 pages. 

  3. Use 11 point and Times New Roman font with 1 inch margins, and single-spacing for the manuscript including references, tables, figures and appendices. 

  4. The paper must begin with an abstract of at most 250 words. 

  5. The paper must follow the required format, or it will be returned without review.

• The finalists of the best paper award competition will be encouraged to submit to IISE Transactions on Data Science, Quality and Reliability. The editorial board of IISE Transactions on Data Science, Quality and Reliability will work closely with the committee of the ICQSR Best Paper Competition to shorten the review cycle.

To participate, please email your submission to ALL members of the Best Paper Competition Committee listed below.

1. Required Files: You must attach two versions of your paper in MS Word or PDF format:

   • A blinded version (no author names/affiliations).

   • An unblinded version (with author details).

2. Email Subject Line: You must use the following exact subject line format: 

Name+University+2026 ICQSR best paper competition.

3. Submission Deadline: May 8, 2026.

Please send your submission to all committee members below:

Heeyoung Kim, PhD (Chair) 

Associate Professor, KAIST 

Email: heeyoungkim@kaist.ac.kr

Hui Wang, PhD 

Associate Professor, 

Florida A&M University-Florida State University 

Email: hwang10@eng.famu.fsu.edu

Xiao Liu, PhD 

Associate Professor, 

Georgia Institute of Technology 

Email: xiao.liu@isye.gatech.edu

Zhisheng Ye, PhD 

Associate Professor, 

National University of Singapore 

Email: yez@nus.edu.sg