EURO Excellence in Practice Award (EEPA)

Policy

Each EURO conference is marked by the competition for the EURO Excellence in Practice Award (EEPA). If there is a suitable recipient, the award is conferred to the best submission and presentation describing an application of Operations Research in practice.

The purposes of the competition are:

• to recognise outstanding accomplishments in the practice of Operational Research,
• to attract more application-oriented works to EURO Conferences,
• to promote the practice of Operational Research in general.

Eligibility

All interested authors are invited to submit a detailed description of an application of Operational Research which has original features, whether in methodology, application or implementation. This may be in the form of a paper written for publication (although not necessarily published at the time of submission), a client report, or other appropriate documentation. The documentation must describe the work in a way which illustrates how it meets the criteria outlined below. The age limit for published papers is four years. The work must not have been submitted concurrently to another competition.

Awards

The jury selects a short-list of finalists who will present their work in a special session of the EURO Conference. There is no registration fee for one author of each of the finalist presentations. A certificate of excellence in OR practice is given to each author and the organization associated with the work selected as the winner of the competition. Furthermore an amount of 3.000 EUR is equally shared between the authors.

Selection jury

The selection jury consists of five members of recognized stature in the OR community. The jury making process starts with a core of three members who serve normally a three prizes period, staggered so that one member is added at each prize. The new member is nominated by the members of the old jury core subject to approval of the EURO Executive Committee and EURO Council. The chairperson is normally the member who is in the final year of service. The EURO EC then selects additionally two members serving only for the current prize in question. These are to be approved by the EURO Council.

Care should be taken to make sure that the selection committee includes members from both industry and academia, and is representative of the various areas of operational research. In particular, it is important that no two or more members come from the same major area in the OR. The jury members must be members of one of the EURO member societies.

If any member of the award jury has a past or current relationship with a nominee that might influence the selection process for reasons other than the merits of the case relative to the award, it is the responsibility of each jury member to bring to the attention of the jury chair such a conflict of interest. The jury chair should propose a response that ensures that the final decision of the jury is exempt from any apparent conflict.

Selection Process

In the year prior to each EURO conference the EURO Excellence in Practice Award jury will place a call for applications on the EURO Web site. EURO Office will hand the information over to the EURO member societies and the EURO Working Groups. Four months prior to the EURO conference, the jury selects a short-list of finalists(typically three) s who are invited to present their work in a special session of the EURO Conference. The winner is determined by the jury at the end of the special session (only one award can be made) and is announced by the chairman of the jury during the EURO-Conference.

The criteria for the evaluation of the submissions are:

• the scientific quality of the paper,
• the relevance to Operations Research
• the originality in methodology, implementations and/or field of application,
• the real impact to practice,
• the appreciation by the organisation involved with the application.

Letters of appreciation are important.

Time line for the EURO Excellence in Practice Award