Dear Stochastic Programming Society, We are pleased to announce the finalists for the 2025 Dupačová-Prékopa Best Student Paper Prize in Stochastic Programming. We received 27 excellent nominations this year, so the committee had a very difficult time choosing just 5 finalists. We appreciate and recognize the great work in all the nominations we received. The finalists will present their work in a dedicated session at ICSP 2025 (icsp2025.org) this summer, where also the winner and 2nd place will be announced. In alphabetical order, the finalists are: Maria Bazotte, for the paper “Solving Two-Stage Programs with Endogenous Uncertainty via Random Variable Transformation”, co-authored with Margarida Carvalho and Thibaut Vidal. Mengmeng Li, for the paper “Towards Optimal Offline Reinforcement Learning,” co-authored with Daniel Kuhn and Tobias Sutter. Haoming Shen, for the paper “Convex Chance-Constrained Programs with Wasserstein Ambiguity”, co-authored with Ruiwei Jiang. Tianyu Wang, for the paper “Optimizer’s Information Criterion: Dissecting and Correcting Bias in Data-Driven Optimization”, co-authored with Garud Iyengar and Henry Lam. Xian Yu, for the paper “Multistage distributionally robust mixed-integer programming with decision-dependent moment-based ambiguity sets”, co-authored with Siqian Shen. Sincerely, The 2025 Dupačová-Prékopa Best Student Paper Prize in Stochastic Programming Committee: Jim Luedtke (University of Wisconsin-Madison, chair)
Miloš Kopa (Charles University in Prague)
Karmel Shehadeh (USC)

The Committee on Stochastic Programming is pleased to announce the triennial Dupačová-Prékopa Best Student Paper Prize in Stochastic Programming, which will be given in recognition of the most outstanding student-authored paper(s) in stochastic programming. The prize will be awarded at the 17th International Conference on Stochastic Programming (ICSP) to be held in Paris, July 28-August 1, 2025. The prize committee consists of Jim Luedtke (University of Wisconsin-Madison, chair), MilošKopa (Charles University in Prague), and Karmel S. Shehadeh (Lehigh University). Each submission must satisfy the following eligibility criteria: The paper must present original research results. The entrant must have been a student on, or after, January 1, 2022. The research must have been conducted while the entrant was a student. The paper must have been published in, or submitted to, an English language journal. The paper must be written by the entrant with only minor assistance. One or more advisors may appear as co-authors, but the student must be the “first author.” If multiple students appear as co-authors of the winning paper, the prize will be shared among them. The entrant can be a (co-)author on at most one paper submitted to the competition. Entrants must submit the following material by March 25, 2025: An electronic copy (PDF file) of the paper. Publication information. If the paper is still under review, state the name of the journal and the point in the review process. An email address and phone number where the entrant can be contacted. A letter signed by both the faculty advisor and the entrant attesting that the eligibility conditions are met. In case the paper is co-authored by the advisor, the latter should include a statement about the contribution of the entrant. The submitted papers will be judged on the following criteria: Magnitude of the contribution to the advancement of the field of stochastic programming. Originality of ideas and methods. Clarity and excellence of exposition. Submissions must be sent to the committee chair at jim.luedtke@wisc.edu by March 25, 2025. If you do not receive a confirmation by March 30, please contact a committee member directly. The prize committee will select the finalists at least two months before ICSP 2025. Once the decision is made, the committee will inform the finalists; those students are expected to attend ICSP 2025 and present their papers at a special “award” session. During the SPS Business Meeting, the prize committee will announce the winners. For more information on the 17th International Conference on Stochastic Programming, please see: https://icsp2025.org/  Sincerely, Jim Luedtke (University of Wisconsin-Madison, chair) Miloš Kopa (Charles University in Prague) Karmel Shehadeh (Lehigh University)