Gilbert Laporte Student Paper Award 2025 by the Transportation and Logistics Special Interest Group of the Canadian Operational Research Society

This prestigious award acknowledges exceptional scientific contributions to the theory, methodology, and practice of Operational Research (OR) in Transportation and Logistics by an undergraduate, graduate student, or postdoctoral fellow. The award was named in honour of Professor Gilbert Laporte for his outstanding contributions to the development and applications of OR in Transportation and Logistics in Canada and beyond.

Entry Requirements

1. The competition is for the best student paper submitted, published, or accepted for publication in a peer-reviewed journal written on the broad topic of Transportation and Logistics. If the paper is published, the publication date must be in the year 2024 or after.

2. Supervisors and industry partners may appear as coauthors on the paper, but the first author must be the applicant. The applicant must have made substantial contributions to the paper.

3. Each applicant can apply with one paper only.

4. At the time the paper was written, the applicant should have been an undergraduate student, a graduate student, or a postdoctoral fellow at a Canadian university, or a Canadian citizen studying in a university outside of Canada.

5. Papers selected as finalists must be presented in a special session at the annual CORS conference.

6. The same paper can be submitted to multiple CORS paper competitions in the same year. However, it cannot be selected as a finalist in multiple CORS paper competitions in the same academic year (either SIGs, Undergraduate Category, or Open Category). If a paper is selected as a finalist by multiple competition committees, then the student has to decide in which competition the paper remains as a finalist.

7. Once a paper has been awarded as Winner or Runner Up in any CORS paper competition (either SIGs, Undergraduate Category, or Open Category), the same paper cannot be submitted again to a CORS paper competition.

Submission

A cover letter (at most two pages) along with a pdf copy of the paper must be submitted by the application deadline on March 10, 2025, to the committee chair Sibel Alumur Alev (sibel.alumur@uwaterloo.ca) with the subject “Gilbert Laporte Student Paper Award Application”. The cover letter should at minimum discuss the motivation, the contribution and potential impact of the paper to the fields of transportation, logistics and operations research, and the role of the student in writing the paper. All co-authors must be CC’d in this email.

The jury is composed of Sibel Alumur Alev, Okan Arslan, and Gilbert Laporte.

Selection Criteria

1. Contribution of the paper to the field of transportation and logistics and operations research,

2. The scale of its impact on the transportation and logistics community and the public,

3. The originality of the problem and the methods, and

4. Style, clarity, and organization of the paper.

Awards

• The winners will be announced at the banquet of the Society by one of the jury members.

• The first prize will be awarded $200 and the honourable mention will receive $50.

• All papers selected as finalists will receive a certificate.