Three CORMSIS Students Win Prestigious Operational Research Awards

Each year, the Operational Research Society awards students for the best dissertation projects UK-wide in the field of OR. The May Hicks Award celebrates projects undertaken for a client organisation, while the Ruth Davies Award celebrates those which were undertaken without involvement from a sponsor. This year, both the 2025 May Hicks winner and May Hicks runner up, as well as the Ruth Davies runner up, are all from Southampton: Nafeesa Yousuf (MSc Data and Decision Analytics, School of Mathematics), Praveen Binoy and Maria Polymnia Kafaridou (both MSc Business Analytics and Management Science, University of Southampton Business School).

May Hicks winner Nafeesa Yousuf was recognised for the project “Early Identification of Mental Health Issues in Young People,” undertaken for Hampshire and Isle of Wight Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust. The project evaluated different methods to identify undetected needs for intervention and its findings enables the trust to roll our targeted screening, community outreach and early help services, facilitating a more proactive, preventative and equitable approach to youth mental health planning. On learning she had won the award, Nafeesa said: "I am truly honoured and delighted to have won the May Hicks Award.

This project gave me a valuable opportunity to use data analytics to explore how mental health needs among young people could be identified and supported more effectively. I am especially grateful to my supervisor, Professor Selin Ahipasaoglu, and to my sponsor, Helen, and the trust’s wider team for their guidance, encouragement and support throughout the project."

Helen Hudson, Head of Population Health Intelligence at Hampshire and Isle of Wight Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust, said: "We wanted students to apply their skills to a project that could make a real difference to people's lives. Nafeesa embraced that challenge and developed an innovative model that helps us understand where young people may be struggling with their mental health and not getting the support they need. Importantly, it can help us identify communities that may benefit from earlier support and prevention before problems become more serious. Her work has the potential to inform future planning and improve outcomes for our communities, making this recognition thoroughly deserved."

Praveen Binoy’s project was undertaken for Roke Manor Research, looking into “Anomaly Behaviour Identification in the Maritime Domain Using AIS and Multiobjective Optimisation.” Dr. Wissam Albukhanajer, Senior Consultant Engineer in AI & Analytics, commented: “Praveen’s project was well-aligned with Roke’s innovation and research activities. He demonstrated a high level of professionalism, technical competence, and intellectual curiosity. His work addressed a complex and highly relevant problem in maritime analytics. His methodology was well-structured and thoughtfully implemented, resulting in meaningful findings, delivering tangible value beyond academia with potential international impact.”

Ruth Davies runner-up Maria Kafaridou was investigating “The Impact of Digital Nudges and Choice Architecture on Consumer Subscription Decisions in Digital Platforms.” Maria’s supervisor, Konstantinos Katsikopoulos, Professor of Behavioural Science, said about the project: „This dissertation is remarkable in applying a wide range of OR methods, from behavioural surveys to exploratory statistics to optimization, to improve the subscription models underlying retail apps. I was struck by the coherence of the thread connection theory, hypothesis development and empirical testing.”

In December, the three students’ work had already been recognised by the annual CORMSIS awards sponsored by BOEING, with Nafeesa coming top in the School of Mathematics. The students will receive prizes of £1000 and £250 respectively for their May Hicks and Ruth Davies awards.

These three successes set a new record for CORMSIS. Last year it was also two CORMSIS students,  Lei Zhou (MSc Logistics and Supply Chain Analytics) and Mouri Hoque Nadia (MSc Data and Decision Analytics), who secured the winner and runner up position for the May Hicks award, making this the second consecutive year of both positions being occupied by a Southampton student, and the third time in the history of the May Hicks Award that two Southampton students have taken both a winning and runner-up position, with the addition of a Ruth Davies runner-up. CORMSIS is one of the largest Operational Research centres in the UK. Each summer around one third of the MSc students from the six CORMSIS MSc programmes work with businesses, charities and government organisations as part of their 3-month dissertation projects, addressing practical challenges using advanced mathematical and optimisation methods.