Assisted Places


The OR Society's annual conference is an important event in delivering its charitable aims as it has the potential to reach a large number of both members and non-members.

Whilst the Society does not aim to make vast profits from the conference, the price of registration and accommodation taken together with travel costs can soon mount up. Practitioners from larger organisations tend to get conference places paid for by their employers, whilst many academics have conference budgets to cover their attendance at events such as this. There are, however, a number of potential attendees for whom the conference costs represent a significant barrier. These potential attendees would not only benefit personally from attendance, but the conference itself and the wider OR community could gain value.

Your co-chairs and the OR Society board have been active to try to find a way of assisting where funding is generally not available to support conference attendance and where the fees would have to come from individuals' own finances. We are pleased to be able to provide funding covering conference registration and accommodation* for to up to five candidates.

For this scheme to succeed, we need a healthy number of deserving applications to be sent to The OR Society; these will then be passed to the awards committee who will select the most 'worthy' claims. Successful applicants will gain the opportunity to present their work and circulate with experts in the field. In turn, the OR community will gain from additional presented papers. 

Applicants are invited to submit a proposal for funding via email to Seb Hargreaves, Executive Director ([email protected]) before the deadline of 30 June. Successful candidates will be informed of the awards in July.

Entries will be judged using the following criteria:

  • The quality of the case statement
  • The benefits the candidate will receive from attending the conference
  • The benefits to other delegates and the OR community as a whole of the candidate attending the conference
  • The availability of alternative sources of funding to the candidate
  • Candidates are strongly encouraged to give a paper at the conference

*Successful applicants are liable for their own travel and incidental expenses.