The inaugural IOS Balas Prize is awarded to Professor Santanu S. Dey for broad and significant contributions to the theory, methodology, and applications of Discrete Optimization. The award citation highlights that Dr. Dey has made strong and seminal contributions to the theory of maximal lattice-free convex sets, multi-row cuts, sparse cutting planes in integer programming, the structure of mixed-integer convex optimization, and along with co-authors, developed practical algorithms for power problems based on strong relaxations from a detailed analysis of the underlying systems.