The College of Supply Chain Management of the Production and Operations Management Society (POMS) announces its 2012 Best Student Paper Competition. Each submitted paper will be judged based on its contribution towards the advancement of theory and practice of supply chain management. The first prize is accompanied by a $500 honorarium and the second prize is accompanied by a $250 honorarium. Between three and six finalists will be chosen, and they will be invited to present their paper in a special session at the 2012 Annual POMS conference in Chicago. Presentation quality will also be taken into account to decide the first and second prize winners. Each finalist will be awarded up to $500 of travel support and complementary conference registration for the 2012 Annual POMS conference. All prizes will be awarded during the conference, at the POMS SCM College Meeting.

There are four conditions for eligibility:

• Entrant must have been a student on or after June 1, 2011, and the research must have been conducted while the entrant was a student.
• Only one paper can be submitted by an entrant.
• The submitted paper must present original research conducted primarily by the entrant. Some assistance by other individuals (such as the student’s faculty advisor) is permitted as long as the student is the “first author” on the paper in principle. Research advisor must certify that the student's contribution to the paper exceeds 50%.
• The topic of the paper should fall within the scope of supply chain management. For a more detailed description of the supply chain area within the POM Journal, please see the list of topics below, or go to http://www.poms.org/journal/departments/.

A complete entry includes:

• A cover document in Word including
  • the entrant’s name, current affiliation, address, e-mail address, telephone number;
  • the name and email address of the entrant’s advisor;
  • the title of the paper, its topic, and the methodologies used.
  
  The entrant should select a topic from the following list: Inventory management; Supply chain coordination; Integrated supply chain planning; Sourcing relationships and strategy; Supply chain design and facility location; Organization of the supply chain function; Managing product variety in supply chains; Coordination of product and supply chain design; The role of information technology in supply chain coordination; Logistics, order fulfillment and distribution; Supply chain risk management; Channel management; Other (please specify).
  The entrant should also select appropriate methodologies from the list: Auctions, Combinatorial optimization, Control theory, Cooperative games, Discrete optimization, Dynamic programming, Empirical models, Inventory models, Linear programming, Noncooperative games, Nonlinear programming, Probabilistic models, Simulation, Stochastic Processes, Other (please specify).
• The paper in PDF, with at most 32 pages (including all references and appendices) in standard format (1” margins, double-spaced, 11-12 point font). Author names should not appear on the paper. Papers exceeding the page limit will be returned without review. The file name should be the short title of the paper.


• A cover letter from the advisor in PDF that includes the student’s name, the title of the student’s paper, advisor’s name, and a statement that indicates:
  
  
  
  • what percentage of the work has been conducted by the student in the areas of problem definition, research/analysis, and actual writing of the paper;
  
  
  • that the eligibility requirements have been met.
  
  
  
  The three items above should be emailed to galraz@virginia.edu with a subject heading “POM SCM Student Paper Competition”: items 1 and 2 should be sent by the student, while item 3 should be sent by the advisor.
  
  
  Deadline for Submission: January 20, 2012
  

  
  Any question(s) related to the competition should be sent by email to: galraz@virginia.edu.
  
  
  Gal Raz
  Chair, POMS College of Supply Chain Management 2012 Best Student Paper Competition
  The Darden School of Business
  University of Virginia
  

  Winners of our student paper
  
  
  Prof Sosic (Chair) presents the First Prize award to Robert Bray (Stanford). Winning paper: “Information Transmission and the Bullwhip Effect, An Empirical Investigation” by Robert Bray and Haim Mendelson.
  
  

  
  
  Prof Sosic (Chair) presents the Second Prize award to Mazhar Arikan (Purdue). Winning paper: “Building Reliable Air-Travel Infrastructure Using Empirical Data and Stochastic Models of Airline Networks” by Mazhar Arikan and Vinayak Deshpande.