Julien Grand-Clément Wins Prestigious ROADEF Award for Research Grounded in Care

Julien Grand-Clément, Associate Professor in the Information Systems and Operations Management Department at HEC Paris, has received the Robert Faure Prize, one of the most selective distinctions in the French operations research community. Awarded by the French Association for Operations Research and Decision Support, or ROADEF, the prize is organized once every three years and is widely regarded as a leading recognition for an early-career researcher in the field.

The award was announced on February 25, 2026, during the gala dinner of the ROADEF conference in Tours. For HEC Paris, the distinction highlights a line of research that combines rigorous mathematical methods with concrete problems in healthcare, an area where Grand-Clément has built a profile at the intersection of sequential decision-making and data-driven optimization.

Grand-Clément joined HEC Paris after completing a PhD in the Industrial Engineering and Operations Research Department at Columbia University in 2021. Before that, he earned a master’s degree from École polytechnique in 2016. Since then, his work has focused broadly on how algorithms can support difficult decisions under uncertainty, with a particular interest in healthcare settings where resources are limited and choices must often be made quickly.

PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS

That combination of theory and application appears to have weighed heavily in the jury’s assessment. In information shared with HEC Paris, Grand-Clément said the jury emphasized both the practical impact of his research and its interdisciplinary scope, spanning mathematical programming and the allocation of scarce healthcare resources. That positioning is especially notable in a field where technical sophistication is essential, but where the value of a contribution is often measured by its ability to inform real decisions.

The Robert Faure Award itself is designed with that balance in mind. ROADEF presents it in honor of Robert Faure, a pioneer of operations research in France, and describes the award as encouraging original contributions in operations research and decision support, with particular attention to work that combines theoretical development with applications. In that respect, Grand-Clément’s recent research trajectory fits the spirit of the prize closely.

Among his latest collaborations are projects with hospitals in California on robust allocations of beds in intensive care units, and work with hospitals in New York City on interpretable ventilator allocation guidelines. This research addresses situations in which uncertainty, capacity constraints, and the need for usable guidance all matter at once. They also illustrate a broader feature of Grand-Clément’s work: the effort to produce methods that are not only mathematically sound, but also relevant to practitioners facing high-stakes operational choices.

His research interests more generally combines work on sequential decision-making for healthcare and data-driven optimization algorithms. That area has become increasingly important as hospitals and public systems seek ways to use data more effectively while remaining attentive to uncertainty, transparency, and implementation constraints. Grand-Clément’s contribution has been to work on those questions without losing sight of the operational setting in which the models may ultimately be used.