ERIM Awards for research from patents to leadership and genetics

The 2016 Top Article Impact Award is granted for an article published by ERIM faculty having made the most impressive academic impact. This award was presented to Prof. Dirk van Dierendonck for his article Servant leadership: A review and synthesis published in the Journal of Management. Dirk van Dierendonck is Professor of Human Resource Management at RSM. The jury said: “This is a clear example of impactful research. Dirk’s work on leadership is definitely a must-read and must-cite paper in the field.”

The 2016 Book Award went to Han Smit for his book Playing at Acquisitions: Behavioral Option Games written with Thras Moraitis and published by Princeton University Press.
Han Smit is Professor of Corporate Finance at the Erasmus School of Economics. The jury said: “This book has a very strong balance between theoretical rigour and practical relevance. Bringing together the latest advances in behavioural finance, real option valuation, and game theory, the book enhances the ability of CEOs and their teams to derive value from their acquisition strategies.”

The 2016 Dissertation Award was presented to Ioannis Evangelidis from RSM for his dissertation entitled Preference Construction under Prominence. Promoters were Professors Stijn van Osselaer, Jonathan Levav and Bram van den Bergh. Ioannis Evangelidis is now an Assistant Professor in Marketing at Bocconi University. The jury said: “This is a truly impressive piece of work. Evangelidis’ findings have important theoretical, empirical as well as practical implications. All chapters are published in top journals in the field, or are in a very advanced stage. It is hard for the jury to imagine a thesis packed with more quality than this one.”

The 2016 ERIM Award for Outstanding Performance by a Young Researcher, for ERIM Members or ERIM Associate Members who received their PhD less than five years ago, went to Niels Rietveld, Assistant Professor at the Department of Applied Economics at ESE. The jury said: “Besides publishing in absolutely top journals like Nature and Science, Niels has contributed to many other publications. His field, the genetic underpinning of economic decisions, could definitely be considered as original. Moreover, he was awarded an NWO Veni grant, which is another signal of high quality.”

ERIM continues to honour the research support services of Erasmus University’s staff members. High-quality services play a vital role in enabling top academic research. This award aims to recognise that. The ERIM Management Team selected recipients of the 2016 ERIM Service Award; it was presented to the team of the Erasmus Data Service Centre, led by Paul Plaatsman and supported by Dyaran Bansraj, Ronald Brabers, Rob Grim, Rogier Hanselaar, and Arjan de Wit. The jury said: “Over the 10 years of its existence, the Erasmus Data Service Centre (EDSC) has provided invaluable service to empirical researchers at ERIM working with commercial, public and historical databases. It assists with the acquisition of new databases, facilitates the access to the many databases that this University has, and helps individual researchers (as well as students) to work with the various databases. Under the guidance of Paul Plaatsman, EDSC has proven itself to be very effective, professional, and customer-oriented.”

Rounding off this year’s award programme was the 2016 Award for the Impact on Management Practice going to Research on kidney exchange, a collaboration of Professor Albert Wagelmans, his former PhD student Kristiaan Glorie, Joris van de Klundert from The Institute of Health Policy & Management, in co-operation with Erasmus MC and the Dutch Transplantation Foundation NTS. The jury recognised their outstanding achievements, and said: “This is the perfect example of rigorous academic research with – literally – real-life impact. The winners of this award have developed a method that efficiently optimises the allocation of donors to patients for large, realistic patient–donor pools.  As a result, it is possible to carry out more kidney transplants, in particular for hard-to-match patients. It was recently decided that this method would be implemented in the Netherlands, while internationally there is also much interest.”