2025 Roger J. B. Wets Junior Researcher Best Paper Prize Finalists

Dear Stochastic Programming Society,


We are pleased to announce the finalists for the 2025 Roger J. B. Wets Junior Researcher Best Paper Prize. We have received excellent nominations this year and after careful deliberation the jury has chosen 2 finalists. 


Both finalists will present their work in a dedicated session on Wednesday 30/07 at ICSP 2025. In alphabetical order, the finalists are:


  • Rui Gao, for the paper : "Finite-Sample Guarantees for Wasserstein Distributionally Robust Optimization: Breaking the Curse of Dimensionality"
  • Bradley Sturt, for the paper : "A nonparametric algorithm for optimal stopping based on robust optimization" 


Congratulations to the finalists!


Sincerely,

The 2025 Roger J. B. Wets Junior Researcher Best Paper Prize Committee:


Andrzej Ruszczynski (Rutgers University)

Siqian Shen (University of Michigan at Ann Arbor),

Wim van Ackooij (EDF-Lab Paris-Saclay, Chair).

By SPS Wolfram August 26, 2026
We invite PhD students to participate in the Nordic Winter School on Advanced Stochastic Optimization at NTNU in Trondheim, Norway from 7-11 December 2026 . The course consists of (guest) lectures by experts in the field, teaching about their expertise. The list of speakers is: Daniel Kuhn (EPFL) Alois Pichler (TU Chemnitz) Ward Romeijnders (University of Groningen) Stein-Erik Fleten (NTNU) Ruben van Beesten (NTNU, Erasmus University Rotterdam) Participation is free of charge. Students can receive 5 EC upon completion of a short essay after the course. For more registration information, see the brochure .
August 25, 2026
The next joint European Conference on Stochastic Optimization (ECSO) and Computational Management Science (CMS) 2027 will be held at Lancaster University, UK, from 20–23 June 2027. The conference will bring together researchers and practitioners working on optimisation, and decision-making under uncertainty. We welcome contributions covering a broad range of topics, including (but not limited to): Stochastic programming Robust and distributionally robust optimisation Stochastic modelling and simulation–optimisation Combinatorial optimisation Exact and heuristic methods Machine learning for optimisation and decision-making Applications in transportation, finance, energy, healthcare, hospitality, marketing, and supply chain management The conference programme will include invited plenary lectures, invited and contributed sessions, tutorials, and a Best Student Paper Competition. A limited number of financial grants will be offered to support attendance of PhD Students, Early Career Researchers, and Delegates with Caring Responsibilities. Important dates Tutorial proposal deadline: 15 Dec 2026 Abstract submission deadline: 4 Feb 2027 Notification of acceptance: From date of submission to 11 Mar 2027 Travel grant application: 18 Mar 2027 Conference: 20–23 June 2027 Full details, including submission guidelines and registration information, are available on the conference website .