Held Prize call for nominations (+ call for postdocs)

Here at the National Academy of Sciences, it seems that my first job is to serve on the selection committee for the prestigious Michael and Sheila Held Prize in combinatorial and discrete optimization and related areas. The committee chair, my former MIT colleague Madhu Sudan (now at Harvard), invited me to share the following message here on Shtetl-Optimized. (I’d add: put in the effort to nominate someone, and you can actually influence how things go!) Dear Colleagues I am writing to seek nominations for the 2027 Michael and Sheila Held Prize. The scope of the prize and nomination needs are described below. If you intend to nominate someone I would appreciate a heads up by email to madhu@cs.harvard.edu one month before the deadline (so email by Sept 8, 2026) to let me know your nomination is coming. (We may also reach out to you in response to coordinate multiple/overlapping nominations.) The Held prize honors outstanding, innovative, creative, and influential research in the areas…