The 2023 Distinguished Dissertation Award Winner

The Classification Society congratulates the 2023 Distinguished Dissertation award winner, Dr. Cristina Molero-Río (École Polytechnique). Dr. Molero-Rio received her Ph.D. from the Department of Statistics and Operations Research at the University of Seville in 2022. The title of Dr. Molero-Rio's thesis is "Enhancing Classification and Regression Tree-Based Models by Means of Mathematical Optimization’’.

Eligibility for the 2024 Distinguished Dissertation Award

The 2024 Award totals 500 USD in book vouchers from Springer, and the winner will be invited to present in a special session at the 2024 Classification Society Annual Meeting. The Classification Society will cover travel expenses to the 2024 Annual Meeting of at most 1,500 USD for a North American-based Award winner or at most 2,000 USD for an Award winner based elsewhere.

Criteria for nomination for the Award include:

  • The main topic of the dissertation is in classification, clustering, or a closely related area.
  • The dissertation contains innovative work in theory/methodology and/or innovative or well-developed application(s), and the literature review is thorough.

To be eligible for the 2024 Classification Society Distinguished Dissertation Award, a Ph.D. dissertation must have been completed – including a successful defense – within the calendar year 2023. Nominations may be made by the dissertation author, supervisor, or related person and must be sent by email. A nomination must include contact information for the nominator and nominee (if different), a URL where the members of the Award Committee can access an online copy of the dissertation, and an electronic (e.g., scanned) cover letter, written and signed by the nominator, stating the date of final completion of the Ph.D. dissertation and outlining why the dissertation merits the award. The nominator must also arrange for two external referee reports to be sent directly to the Award committee chair. If possible, the referees should be at arms-length from the dissertation author and their supervisor. Cover letters should include full bibliographic details for any published papers, proceedings, book chapters, or similar scholarly material that have arisen from the dissertation. For non-English language dissertations, nominators are requested to provide an extended abstract in English and, where relevant, to highlight any papers, proceedings, book chapters, or similar scholarly material associated with the dissertation published in English.

Deadline for Nominations

Nomination packages must be sent to the DDA Committee Chair, Stephen France <sfrance 'at' business 'dot' msstate 'dot' edu>, on or before February 1, 2024.

Award Committee

Volodmyr Melnekov Ph.D.

Stephen France (Chair)

Volodmyr Melnekov Ph.D.

Volodymyr Melnykov

Prof. Volodymyr Melnykov

Katrijn Van Deun

Winners

  • Cristina Molero-Rio École Polytechnique

  • Francesco Sanna Passino Imperial College London

  • Michael Gallaugher Baylor University

  • Keefe Murphy Maynooth University

  • Anjali Silva University Health Network

  • Yang Tang

  • Michael Fop University College Dublin

  • Paula Murray

  • Zsuzsa Bakk Universiteit Leiden

  • Irene Vrbik University of British Columbia - Okanagan

  • Kim de Roover Tilburg University

  • Jeffrey L. Andrews University of British Columbia - Okanagan

  • Theodore Damoulas University of Warwick

  • Frank Busing Universiteit Leiden

  • Daniel Aloise Polytechnique Montreal

Join Us

Become a member and contribute new ideas