paper presentation competition rules

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• Student Awards & Competitions

Student Technical Presentation Competition

The first-place winners from each of the nine Regional Student Paper Competitions present their prize-winning papers during the AIChE Annual Meeting in the fall. See rules under instructions below.

Award winners

• Samietha Kummar University of Toledo, 2nd Place 2023
• Madeline Pasche Oregon State University, 1st Place 2023
• Katie Traynelis North Carolina State University, 3rd Place 2023
• Rachel Davis University of Tulsa, 1st Place 2022
• Rylee Marks Oregon State University, 3rd Place 2022
• Celeste Younger Brigham Young University, 2nd Place 2022
• Hannah Boyce Northeastern University, 2nd Place – Angelo J. Perna Award 2021
• Alexis Maria Camila Rodriguez Castano ICESI University, 3rd Place – Walter Walawender Award 2021
• Alexis Voulgaropolous North Carolina State University, 1st Place – Edwin O. Eisen Award 2021
• Benjamin Walls Rice University, 3rd Place – Walter Walawender Award 2021
• Brian Carrick University of Minnesota, 1st Place – Edwin O. Eisen Award 2020
• Landon Ebbert Brigham Young University, 1st Place – Edwin O. Eisen Award 2020
• Ronald Vogler University of Kentucky, 3rd Place – Walter Walawender Award 2020
• Jay Bender Honorable Mention 2019
• Lexy LeMar 3rd place - Walter Walawender Award 2019
• Chee Yang Ng 1st place - Edwin O. Eisen Award 2019
• Harrison Sarsito 2nd place - Angelo J. Perna Award 2019
• Connor Dugan University of Oklahoma, 2nd Place – Angelo J. Perna Award 2018
• Logan Melicon Rochester Institute of Technology, 3rd Place – Walter Walawender Award 2018
• Joshua Wilkerson Brigham Young University, 1st Place – Edwin O. Eisen Award 2018
• Anna Condacse Oklahoma State University, 1st Place – Edwin O. Eisen Award 2017
• Conner Earl Brigham Young University, 3rd Place – Walter Walawender Award 2017
• Katarina Maria Guzman California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, 2nd Place – Angelo J. Perna Award 2017
• Jennifer Ann Kaczmarek Auburn University, 2nd Place – Angelo J. Perna Award 2016
• Melissa Kreider Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Honorable Mention 2016
• Anirudh Nambiar Pennsylvania State University, 3rd Place – Walter Walawender Award 2016
• Andrew Ylitalo Stanford University, 1st Place – Edwin O. Eisen Award 2016
• Carol J Abraham Oklahoma State University, 3rd Place – Walter Walawender Award 2015
• Mark Steven Sharp Rowan University, 2nd Place – Angelo J. Perna Award 2015
• Julia Sun Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1st Place – Edwin O. Eisen Award 2015
• ... Purdue University, 2nd Place – Angelo J. Perna Award 2014
• Jonathon Horton 3rd Place – Walter Walawender Award 2014
• Michelle Teplensky Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1st Place – Edwin O. Eisen Award 2014
• Colin Forest Dickens Oregon State University,1st Prize 2013
• Lindsay Gray University of Kentucky, Lexington, 3rd Prize 2013
• Nicholas Kienzle University of Cincinnati, 2nd Prize 2013
• Ka Man Carmen Chan 2012
• Matthew Steven Curtis 2012
• Travis Lee Gaston 2012
• John Geil 2012
• Michel E Kahwaji Janho 2012
• Weston Kevin Kightlinger 2012
• Riya J Muckom 2012
• Eric Joseph Snider 2012
• Abel Cortinas 1st Prize 2011
• Sebastian Escotet 3rd Prize 2011
• Jean Fang 2nd Prize 2011
• Aaron Fluitt Honorable mention 2010
• Samantha Johnson 2nd Prize 2010
• Brandon Murphy 3rd Prize 2010
• Benjamin Woolston 1st Prize 2010
• Ryan Baker Honorable mention 2009
• Brandon Curtis 1st Prize 2009
• Barbara Ekerdt 3rd Prize 2009
• Le Li Honorable mention 2009
• Madeline Midgett 2nd Prize 2009
• Tyler Gunn 2nd Prize 2008
• Alexander Leonard 3rd Prize 2008
• Kyle Stephens Honorable mention 2008
• Jeney Zhang 1st Prize 2008
• Kenneth Overton  2nd Prize 2007
• Kristina Prachanaronarong  3rd Prize 2007
• Thomas Schwei 1st Prize 2007
• Dennis Callahan 3rd Prize 2006
• John Frostad 2nd Prize 2006
• Stephen Sizemore 1st Prize 2006
• David Van Wagener Honorable mention 2006
• Theresa LaFollette 1st Prize 2005
• Emily Levi 3rd Prize 2005
• Christian Vives 2nd Prize 2005
• Natalie G. Killmon 2nd Prize 2004
• Michael Lovette 3rd Prize 2004
• Matthew Tobelmann 1st Prize 2004
• Abimbola Balogun 2nd Prize (tied) 2003
• Stephanie Freeman 1st Prize 2003
• Ali Mushfeghia 2nd Prize (tied) 2003
• Daniel Connolly 2nd Prize 2002
• Micah Green 3rd Prize 2002
• Curtis Luke 1st Prize 2002
• Jose Otero 2nd Prize 2001
• Diane K. Wegl 1st Prize 2001
• P. Cielenski 3rd Prize 2000
• N. Hatch 1st Prize 2000
• J. Richardson 2nd Prize 2000
• T. Denison 2nd Prize 1999
• B. McNames 1st Prize 1999
• M. Oye 3rd Prize 1999
• S. Bhati 2nd Prize 1998
• S.A. Bhatia 1st Prize 1998
• M. Freimuth 3rd Prize 1998
• D. Olson 3rd Prize 1997
• A. Scurto 1st Prize 1997
• A. B. Stackpole 2nd Prize 1997
• M. C. Brincat 2nd Prize 1996
• K. A. Ellis 1st Prize 1996
• N. Vukmirovic 3rd Prize 1996
• S. E. Criss 2nd Prize 1995
• N. J. Nissin 3rd Prize 1995
• C. S. Russ 1st Prize 1995
• V. Chock 2nd Prize 1994
• S. E. Criss 3rd Prize 1994
• M. Gordon 1st Prize 1994
• E. Lee 2nd Prize 1993
• S. McAleer 3rd Prize 1993
• D. A. Scott 1st Prize 1993
• J. Schramm Hales 1st Prize 1992
• M. E. Johnson 3rd Prize 1992
• S. W. Pearson 2nd Prize 1992
• J. P. McLean 2nd Prize 1991
• G. Nyberg 1st Prize 1991
• M. Shaffer 3rd Prize 1991
• J. Clayton 1st Prize 1990
• F. A. Highsmith 3rd Prize 1990
• R. Peck 2nd Prize 1990

6–10 January 2025

Hyatt Regency Orlando Orlando, FL

Student Paper Competitions

Dates to remember.

Abstract Submission Begins: 26 March 2024

Abstract Submission Deadline: 23 May 2024, 8:00 p.m. ET

Author Notification: 26 August 2024

Manuscript Deadline: 2 December 2024, 8:00 p.m. ET

*Dates are subject to change.

 Abstract Submission Process & Requirements  Technical Presenter Resources    Submit an Abstract

Student Eligibility and Submission Requirements

Student Eligibility Requirements:

• Student author(s) must be members of AIAA in order to enter the competition.
• Student author(s) must be full-time students in good academic standing at their university/institution at the time of submission.
• Manuscript content represents the work of the author.
• Student(s) must be the primary author(s) of the paper and the work must have been performed while the author(s) was a student.
• Student author(s) must be able to attend the Forum to present their work should it be selected for presentation.

Student Submission Requirements:

• Student Paper Competition submissions must adhere to the overall Forum Abstract Submission Requirements.
• Students must select the “Student Paper Competition” presentation type during the electronic submission process. Do not submit the abstract more than once. Only submissions with Student Paper Competition” presentation type indicated will be eligible for the competition.
• All submissions must be made by the Forum abstract submission deadline of 23 May, 8:00 p.m. ET.
• For further requirements and instructions, please refer to the detailed descriptions of each Student Paper Competition as described in their call below.

Student Paper Competitions in the topics below are being held in conjunction with the Forum:

Please direct questions to: Eric Stewart , NASA Marshall Space Flight Center

To be considered for one of the student paper awards within the Aerospace Design and Structures Group, students must submit their abstract to one of the following areas:

• Adaptive Structures
• Complexity in Aerospace (CASE)
• Design Engineering
• Multidisciplinary Design Optimization
• Non-Deterministic Approaches
• Spacecraft Structures
• Structural Dynamics
• Survivability
• Systems Engineering

Authorship:  Student papers should report on work primarily conducted by students in collaboration with their faculty advisors; therefore, all primary/presenting authors of papers submitted for consideration in the Student Paper Competition must be students at the time of abstract submission. The first author of the paper must remain the same between the abstract, final paper, and presentation. Up to two non-student co-authors are allowed.

Presentation:  At conference, the presentation must be given by the primary author of the paper.

Extended Abstract:  Student abstracts must be extended abstracts that follow the rules outlined in this Call for Papers. When submitting to the abstract submission website, select “Student Paper Competition” as the paper type.  Semi-finalists will be chosen based on an evaluation of the extended abstracts.  The results of the semi-final round will not be made public.

Deadline:  Student manuscripts must be uploaded to the manuscript submission website by  the published regular conference paper deadline for the AIAA SciTech Forum .  Students should note that the latest version of their paper submitted prior to the deadline will be the version used for judging.

If for any of these reasons a paper is removed from student paper competition, authors still have the opportunity to submit their paper by the published regular conference paper deadline for the full AIAA SciTech Forum deadline as a regular conference paper.

The following awards will be presented to the winners where a single paper can only win one award:

Jefferson Goblet Student Paper Award:  The highest ranked Aerospace Design and Structures paper based on manuscript and presentation quality is recognized with the Jefferson Goblet Student Paper Award, which was established over twenty years ago and named to honor Thomas Jefferson. The recipient receives a monetary award ($500), a certificate, and a goblet modeled after a 1788 design by Thomas Jefferson.

American Society for Composites Student Paper Award:  The highest ranked composites-related paper based on manuscript and presentation quality is recognized with the American Society for Composites Student Paper Award. The recipient receives a monetary award ($500) and a certificate.

Lockheed Martin Student Paper Award in Structures:  The Lockheed Martin Student Paper Award in Structures recognizes an outstanding structures-related paper, based on manuscript and presentation quality. The recipient receives a monetary award ($500) and a certificate.  

Harry H. and Lois G. Hilton Student Paper Award in Structures:  The Harry H. and Lois G. Hilton Student Paper Award in Structures recognizes an outstanding graduate-level, structures related paper, based on manuscript and presentation quality. The recipient receives a monetary award ($500) and a certificate. 

SwRI Student Paper Award in Non-Deterministic Approaches:  The Southwest Research Institute Student Paper Award in Non-Deterministic Approaches recognizes an outstanding NDA-related paper, based on manuscript and presentation quality. The recipient receives a monetary award ($500) and a certificate.

The Aerospace Design and Structures Group Student Paper Competitions include submissions to the following topics:

Please direct questions to:  James Creel , Texas A&M University

The Walter R. Lempert Student Paper Award in Diagnostics for Fluid Mechanics, Plasma Physics, and Energy Transfer is sponsored by the Aerodynamic Measurement Technology (AMT), Plasmadynamics and Lasers (PDL), and Propellants and Combustion (PC) Technical Committees (TC).

The award is given on an annual basis in memory of Dr. Walter R. Lempert. Walter Lempert was an outstanding scientist and engineer who had a profound impact on AIAA and in particular these three TCs. The Walter R. Lempert Student Paper Award is given to the most outstanding student paper submitted to sessions organized by these TCs at the annual AIAA SciTech Forum.

The Award shall consist of $500 cash and a Certificate of Merit identifying the name of the Award, the Award winner, the title of the paper for which they won the award, and the date of the award. If required by the IRS, the winning student shall submit a W-9/W-8 to AIAA. The Award winner will be recognized during the AIAA Aviation and Aeronautics Forum and Exposition (AIAA AVIATION). The Walter Lempert Subcommittee Chair shall provide winner information to AIAA no later than 60 days prior to the Forum.

Any additional funds available through the endowment may be used to support the travel costs for the award winner to attend the conference to receive the award in person. Additional funds may also be used to facilitate honorable mention awards for other outstanding student papers eligible for The Walter R. Lempert Student Paper Award in Diagnostics for Fluid Mechanics, Plasma Physics, and Energy Transfer. Disbursements of funds is based upon the formal AIAA Foundation agreement.

Additional Technical Discipline Eligibility Requirements & Other Rules

Any graduate student in an engineering or related program that is the first author and presenter of a technical paper at an AMT, PDL or PC affiliated session at the AIAA SciTech. The winning students may one receive this award once.

Technical Discipline Selection Criteria:

• The paper must be in the area of measurement techniques and related to the technical disciplines covered by the AMT, PDL and PC technical committees.
• The paper should be evaluated on the innovative nature of the diagnostic or its use. Applications of mature diagnostics are not eligible for this award.
• The papers will be scored according to the following formula:
• Technical Quality/Completeness (50 pts) - Some of the considerations which you may wish to apply here are: clearly stated purpose, a well-developed introduction, methods used, the inclusion of an uncertainty analysis if applicable, well supported conclusions, breadth of references, or other technically applicable criteria.
• Technical Relevance (25 pts) - Considerations here should be contribution to the state-of-the-art or knowledge, timeliness, innovation, etc. in diagnostics for fluid mechanics, plasma physics, and energy transfer
• Readability (25 pts) – Text, grammar, figures, tables, etc.

Please direct questions to:  Andrea Da Ronch , University of Southampton Yunjun Xu , University of Central Florida

The AFM Technical Committee, with the support of Calspan Corporation , is sponsoring the AFM Student Paper Competition. Eligible written papers and oral presentations will be judged by members of the AFM Technical Committee.The competition is within the AFM conference and not part of the larger SciTech Forum and Exhibition. The winner of the competition will be notified after the conference and receive both a certificate and a $500 award.

To be eligible for the competition, the entrant must be the primary author of the submitted paper and the work must have been performed while the author was a student. As such, recent graduates may still be eligible. Entrants will present their papers in the AFM technical sessions, where judges will also be in attendance. To enter the competition, the “Student Paper Competition” option must be selected instead of “Technical Manuscript” when submitting a manuscript via the conference website. Note that when entering the Student Paper Competition, the paper is still published and scheduled within the technical sessions, as normal. Papers are due by the regular final manuscript deadline. All papers with a student as primary author are encouraged to participate in the competition.

The scoring for the award will be equally based on the written paper and oral presentation. Judging of the written paper is based on the criteria:

• Relevance of the topic to atmospheric flight mechanics
• Organization and clarity
• Appreciation of relevant technical issues and sources of error
• Meaningful conclusions of the research.

Judging of the oral presentation is based on the criteria:

• Background and problem definition statement
• Explanation of technical approach
• Explanation of research results

Please direct questions to:  Charles E. Tinney ,  The University of Texas at Austin The Prof. Kirti "Karman" Ghia Memorial Award is presented by the AIAA FDTC to an international graduate student studying in the USA, for an innovative approach to computational fluid dynamics that leads to a greater understanding of the flow physics for a problem related to aeronautics or astronautics.  The winner must present at a paper at SciTech.

Instructions : Graduate student authors may self-nominate for the Professor Kirti "Karman" Ghia Memorial Award by selecting the “Student Paper Competition” option instead of “Technical Manuscript” during submission. Note that when entering the Student Paper Competition, the paper is still published and scheduled within the technical sessions, as normal.

Eligibility : AIAA membership is strongly encouraged but not required.  Nominees must be international graduate students, meaning they do not have USA citizenship or permanent residency, working toward a graduate degree in the USA and presenting a paper at SciTech.  The winner must show written proof, potentially from their departmental graduate office, of eligibility.  Nominees may only win this award once.  Only nominees who choose a topic area under Fluid Dynamics during abstract submission will be considered for the award, and further only those who have a substantial CFD component as part of their paper.

Cash Prize : $1,500 will be provided for the winner’s conference costs, including airfare, registration, lodging, food, and other transportation, to present a paper at SciTech.  This will be given as a check to the winner before the conference to help them plan and pay for their travel.  The winner is required to make their own travel and conference arrangements.

Selection Process and Timing : The award is judged by the FDTC based on the criteria given below.  The judging has 2 rounds.  First, submitted abstracts will be down-selected to a smaller group, and winners of round 1 will be notified at the time of SciTech abstract acceptance decisions (nominally end of August).  Next, round-1 winners will be asked to submit their full papers early, by Oct. 24, for round-2 judging.  One winner will be chosen around the 3rd week of Nov., to give time for travel planning.

Award Presentation Venue : This award is presented at the same SciTech that the paper is given, and the winner will be invited to the FDTC plenary meeting to be recognized and provided with a certificate.  The award will also be acknowledged at the Student Breakfast.

Technical Discipline Selection Criteria

The award is judged by the FDTC, and the evaluation criteria and weights are: 1) an innovative approach to CFD, e.g., a new methodology, speed increase, higher accuracy, new validation framework, post-processing strategy, etc. (weight: 35%); 2) a greater understanding of the flow physics of a given problem, as a result of the CFD innovation (weight: 35%); 3) clarity and prose (weight: 15%); 4) graphical content (weight: 15%).

Please direct questions to: Keiichi Okai , Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency Tarek Abdel-Salam , East Carolina University

Green Engineering Best Student Paper Award

This award will be presented to best student paper submitted under Green Engineering Integration Committee.

Please direct questions to: Raghvendra Cowlagi ,  Worcester Polytechnic Institute Xuerui Wang , Delft University of Technology

AIAA Guidance Navigation and Control Best Graduate Student Paper

The GN&C Technical Committee will host a Graduate Student Paper Competition at the AIAA SciTech Forum. In addition to appropriate recognition, all finalists in the GN&C Graduate Student Paper Competition will receive a monetary award of $500 and complimentary registration. The overall winner will receive an additional $1,000 award.

For this competition, full draft manuscript papers are sought from graduate students on GN&C technical research topics, from which up to six finalists will be selected by a panel of judges for inclusion in a special GN&C Graduate Student Paper Competition session. Author eligibility and manuscript submission requirements are described below.

• A student must be the first or sole author, enrolled at an institution of higher learning.
• Upon selection as a finalist the student must provide to the Competition Chairs a 'Statement of Contributions' that delineates the specific technical contributions of each co-author. Furthermore, the student must assert that they have provided the preponderant share of input to both the technical and written dimensions of the paper, and must also include the signatures of all co-authors.
• The student author must be a member of AIAA to become a finalist in the competition.
• The student author must be a full-time graduate student in good academic standing at his or her university/institution at the time of submission.
• Full draft manuscript not exceeding a total length of 25 pages.
• The student author is not the overall winner of the preceding year’s competition.
• Only one paper submission per primary author.

The finalists for the Graduate Student Paper Competition will be selected on the basis of three reviewer scores, with consideration to technical content (30%), originality (30%), practical application (20%) and style and form (20%). Reviewers will be members of the GNC Technical Committee. Each finalist will present their paper in a special session during the conference. The presentation will be evaluated by a panel of judges. The overall winner of the paper competition will be decided on the basis of scores granted to the paper as well as the presentation.

Please direct questions to: Friedolin T. Strauss , German Aerospace Center (DLR) Suo Yang , University of Minnesota - Twin Cities

High-Speed Air-Breathing Propulsion Student Paper Competition

High-speed air-breathing propulsion technical committee solicits student papers which address the design, analysis, optimization, testing, and evaluation of technologies and systems that enable supersonic and hypersonic air vehicle propulsion. The key technology areas include but are not limited to ramjet, scramjet and combined cycle engines, inlets, isolators, combustion chambers, nozzles and other enabler components, the design methods and optimization, thermodynamic analysis, the measurement techniques and numerical methods facilitating the interpretation of the physics observed within High-Speed propulsion systems as well as materials, structures and manufacturing methods aiming at construction of the engines.

Focus on high-speed flight regime above or equal Mach 5 or topic related to this flight regime. Topic range includes the same topics as in the general HSABP Call for Papers.

Focus on high-speed flight regime above or equal Mach 5, technical excellence, conciseness, technical approach, technical creativity, compliance with AIAA SciTech style guide and AIAA requirements.

Please direct questions to:  B. Danette Allen ,  NASA

Human Machine Teaming Best Student Paper

Papers are sought that address theoretical, analytical, simulated, experimental, or implementation results related to aerospace applications for advances in human machine teaming where the paper can focus on one of three general elements: the human, the machine, and interactions and interdependencies between them. Concepts regarding human physiology, psychology, human factors, cognitive models, and human performance that support aspects of human machine teaming are of interest. Additionally, concepts regarding artificial intelligence, explainable AI (xAI), machine learning, modeling, feature engineering (e.g., biosignal processing), and human-machine interfaces, which support the mapping of the human to the machine, the interaction with the machine, elucidates trust, and other facets of the human machine system are all topic areas of focus.

Technical Discipline Eligibility Requirements & Other Rules

Submissions will be evaluated by a team which is comprised of:

• Members of the conference program committee
• Representatives from the Human Machine Teaming TC
• Participation is limited to current graduate and undergraduate students from any accredited, degree-program educational institution.
• The teams should be composed of at least one AIAA student member and at least one advisor who is an AIAA member.
• Submissions by individuals or teams are acceptable
• Required submission format: PowerPoint charts + short abstract
• Optional submission material: videos, system mock-ups, demonstrations

The criteria for which each idea will be evaluated on:

• Compliance: is the idea submission complete and does it comply with the rules of the challenge?
• Novelty: does the idea describe a novel approach to providing a solution?
• Originality: how original is the proposed technology or use of existing technology?
• Relevance: How well does the idea relate to the topic and provide a solution aligned with the goals of this challenge?
• Feasibility: how likely can the idea be prototyped?
• Value Proposition: if successful, how well does the idea solve a stakeholder’s need and how likely would the solution be transitioned to a stakeholder?

Please direct questions to:  Andrew Lacher , NASA

Intelligent Systems Best Student Paper

Students are invited to submit extended abstracts by the abstract submission deadline in any broad area of Intelligent Systems to the Intelligent Systems Student Paper Competition. Systems of interest include both military and commercial aerospace systems and those ground systems that are part of test, development, or operations of aerospace systems. Technologies that enable autonomy (i.e. safe and reliable operation with minimal or no human intervention) as well as collaborative human-machine teaming in complex aerospace systems/subsystems are of interest. These include but are not limited to: autonomous and expert systems; discrete planning/scheduling algorithms; intelligent data/image processing, learning, and adaptation techniques; data fusion and reasoning; and knowledge engineering. The application of such technologies to problems that highlight advanced air mobility, certification, carbon emissions/sustainability, space traffic management, and cislunar operations are of particular interest.

• A student paper competition session will be held on Monday evening of January 6th, 2025 at the SciTech Forum; finalists will present during this session.
• Papers will also be included in the conference proceedings, and you will also be required to present as a regular paper in the AIAA SciTech (Two presentations will occur, one on Monday and one in the regular conference schedule).
• Please follow the abstract submission requirements in the Intelligent Systems Technical Discipline Call for Papers.

Technical Discipline Selection Criteria A student competition paper subcommittee and the chair will review the full draft manuscripts submitted as IS student paper competition papers based upon:

• Originality
• Practical Applications or Theoretical Foundations
• Long-Term relevance to IS Technologies
• Technically New, Innovative, or Constructive Review
• Professional Integrity (Credits prior work, claims are supported by results, is objective)
• Clear Presentation (writing, organizing, and graphics)

All papers that are not selected will be forwarded to the area chairs for possible inclusion as regular conference papers. Directly after this session, the subcommittee will decide the winner based on both the paper and the presentation, and the student will be notified by email. The winner will be presented with an award, “Best Student Paper.”

Please direct questions to:  Prof. Carl Ollivier-Gooch , University of British Columbia

MVCE Best Student Paper

The Meshing, Visualization, and Computational Environments (MVCE) Technical Committee is holding a student paper competition for the AIAA SciTech Forum . The student who writes the best extended abstract will receive a $500 award, which will be paid in advance of the conference, to defray the cost of attending the AIAA SciTech Forum .

The extended abstracts will be judged by a subcommittee of the MVCE based upon the importance of the work, originality, quality, and completeness. To be eligible, the student needs to be full-time at either the graduate or undergraduate level. Students are encouraged to submit extended abstracts that are as close as possible to the anticipated final paper.

Please direct questions to: Andrew Dahir , MIT Lincoln Lab Scott Palo , University of Colorado Boulder

Small Satellite Best Student Paper Award

The AIAA Small Satellite Technical Committee is proud to announce the Best Student Paper Competition at the AIAA SciTech Forum. Entrants will be judged by technical committee members and the judging will include both the written manuscript and the oral presentation.  Full-time students at any academic level are encouraged to participate and eligibility requirements are defined by the AIAA and outlined at the top of this page.  More details about the evaluation process can be obtained by contacting [email protected] .

Abstract: Students are encouraged to submit extended abstracts (70% complete papers) which demonstrate the maturity of the work. When submitting to the abstract submission website, select “Student Paper Competition” as the presentation type. Semi-finalists will be chosen based on an evaluation of the extended abstracts. The results of the semi-final round will not be made public.  Deadline: Final student manuscripts must be uploaded to the conference manuscript submission website by 11:59 p.m. Eastern Time USA on 11 November 2024 (this is earlier than the deadline for regular technical papers). Students who miss this November deadline will be removed from the student paper competition but may still be allowed to present in the oral session.

The award evaluation will be based on both the written manuscript (75%) and oral presentation (25%).

Please direct questions to: Lulin Jiang , Baylor University Tarek Abdel-Salam , East Carolina University

Terrestrial Energy Systems Best Student Paper Award

This award will be presented to best student paper submitted under Terrestrial Energy Systems Technical Committee.

Please direct questions to: Andrew Lacher , NASA Langley Keith Hoffler , Adaptive Aerospace

Unmanned Systems Student Best Paper Award

Single paper awarded based on technical discipline selection criteria below.

Must be submitted/presented under any of the Unmanned Systems topics.

Selection will be done by a panel of 4-5 judges made up of the student paper competition chairs and 2-3 other committee members who do not have a conflict of interest with the candidates.

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Open Access

Ten simple rules for effective presentation slides

* E-mail: [email protected]

Affiliation Biomedical Engineering and the Center for Public Health Genomics, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Virginia, United States of America

• Kristen M. Naegle

Published: December 2, 2021

• https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1009554
• Reader Comments

Citation: Naegle KM (2021) Ten simple rules for effective presentation slides. PLoS Comput Biol 17(12): e1009554. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1009554

Copyright: © 2021 Kristen M. Naegle. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Funding: The author received no specific funding for this work.

Competing interests: The author has declared no competing interests exist.

Introduction

The “presentation slide” is the building block of all academic presentations, whether they are journal clubs, thesis committee meetings, short conference talks, or hour-long seminars. A slide is a single page projected on a screen, usually built on the premise of a title, body, and figures or tables and includes both what is shown and what is spoken about that slide. Multiple slides are strung together to tell the larger story of the presentation. While there have been excellent 10 simple rules on giving entire presentations [ 1 , 2 ], there was an absence in the fine details of how to design a slide for optimal effect—such as the design elements that allow slides to convey meaningful information, to keep the audience engaged and informed, and to deliver the information intended and in the time frame allowed. As all research presentations seek to teach, effective slide design borrows from the same principles as effective teaching, including the consideration of cognitive processing your audience is relying on to organize, process, and retain information. This is written for anyone who needs to prepare slides from any length scale and for most purposes of conveying research to broad audiences. The rules are broken into 3 primary areas. Rules 1 to 5 are about optimizing the scope of each slide. Rules 6 to 8 are about principles around designing elements of the slide. Rules 9 to 10 are about preparing for your presentation, with the slides as the central focus of that preparation.

Rule 1: Include only one idea per slide

Each slide should have one central objective to deliver—the main idea or question [ 3 – 5 ]. Often, this means breaking complex ideas down into manageable pieces (see Fig 1 , where “background” information has been split into 2 key concepts). In another example, if you are presenting a complex computational approach in a large flow diagram, introduce it in smaller units, building it up until you finish with the entire diagram. The progressive buildup of complex information means that audiences are prepared to understand the whole picture, once you have dedicated time to each of the parts. You can accomplish the buildup of components in several ways—for example, using presentation software to cover/uncover information. Personally, I choose to create separate slides for each piece of information content I introduce—where the final slide has the entire diagram, and I use cropping or a cover on duplicated slides that come before to hide what I’m not yet ready to include. I use this method in order to ensure that each slide in my deck truly presents one specific idea (the new content) and the amount of the new information on that slide can be described in 1 minute (Rule 2), but it comes with the trade-off—a change to the format of one of the slides in the series often means changes to all slides.

• PPT PowerPoint slide
• PNG larger image
• TIFF original image

Top left: A background slide that describes the background material on a project from my lab. The slide was created using a PowerPoint Design Template, which had to be modified to increase default text sizes for this figure (i.e., the default text sizes are even worse than shown here). Bottom row: The 2 new slides that break up the content into 2 explicit ideas about the background, using a central graphic. In the first slide, the graphic is an explicit example of the SH2 domain of PI3-kinase interacting with a phosphorylation site (Y754) on the PDGFR to describe the important details of what an SH2 domain and phosphotyrosine ligand are and how they interact. I use that same graphic in the second slide to generalize all binding events and include redundant text to drive home the central message (a lot of possible interactions might occur in the human proteome, more than we can currently measure). Top right highlights which rules were used to move from the original slide to the new slide. Specific changes as highlighted by Rule 7 include increasing contrast by changing the background color, increasing font size, changing to sans serif fonts, and removing all capital text and underlining (using bold to draw attention). PDGFR, platelet-derived growth factor receptor.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1009554.g001

Rule 2: Spend only 1 minute per slide

When you present your slide in the talk, it should take 1 minute or less to discuss. This rule is really helpful for planning purposes—a 20-minute presentation should have somewhere around 20 slides. Also, frequently giving your audience new information to feast on helps keep them engaged. During practice, if you find yourself spending more than a minute on a slide, there’s too much for that one slide—it’s time to break up the content into multiple slides or even remove information that is not wholly central to the story you are trying to tell. Reduce, reduce, reduce, until you get to a single message, clearly described, which takes less than 1 minute to present.

Rule 3: Make use of your heading

When each slide conveys only one message, use the heading of that slide to write exactly the message you are trying to deliver. Instead of titling the slide “Results,” try “CTNND1 is central to metastasis” or “False-positive rates are highly sample specific.” Use this landmark signpost to ensure that all the content on that slide is related exactly to the heading and only the heading. Think of the slide heading as the introductory or concluding sentence of a paragraph and the slide content the rest of the paragraph that supports the main point of the paragraph. An audience member should be able to follow along with you in the “paragraph” and come to the same conclusion sentence as your header at the end of the slide.

Rule 4: Include only essential points

While you are speaking, audience members’ eyes and minds will be wandering over your slide. If you have a comment, detail, or figure on a slide, have a plan to explicitly identify and talk about it. If you don’t think it’s important enough to spend time on, then don’t have it on your slide. This is especially important when faculty are present. I often tell students that thesis committee members are like cats: If you put a shiny bauble in front of them, they’ll go after it. Be sure to only put the shiny baubles on slides that you want them to focus on. Putting together a thesis meeting for only faculty is really an exercise in herding cats (if you have cats, you know this is no easy feat). Clear and concise slide design will go a long way in helping you corral those easily distracted faculty members.

Rule 5: Give credit, where credit is due

An exception to Rule 4 is to include proper citations or references to work on your slide. When adding citations, names of other researchers, or other types of credit, use a consistent style and method for adding this information to your slides. Your audience will then be able to easily partition this information from the other content. A common mistake people make is to think “I’ll add that reference later,” but I highly recommend you put the proper reference on the slide at the time you make it, before you forget where it came from. Finally, in certain kinds of presentations, credits can make it clear who did the work. For the faculty members heading labs, it is an effective way to connect your audience with the personnel in the lab who did the work, which is a great career booster for that person. For graduate students, it is an effective way to delineate your contribution to the work, especially in meetings where the goal is to establish your credentials for meeting the rigors of a PhD checkpoint.

Rule 6: Use graphics effectively

As a rule, you should almost never have slides that only contain text. Build your slides around good visualizations. It is a visual presentation after all, and as they say, a picture is worth a thousand words. However, on the flip side, don’t muddy the point of the slide by putting too many complex graphics on a single slide. A multipanel figure that you might include in a manuscript should often be broken into 1 panel per slide (see Rule 1 ). One way to ensure that you use the graphics effectively is to make a point to introduce the figure and its elements to the audience verbally, especially for data figures. For example, you might say the following: “This graph here shows the measured false-positive rate for an experiment and each point is a replicate of the experiment, the graph demonstrates …” If you have put too much on one slide to present in 1 minute (see Rule 2 ), then the complexity or number of the visualizations is too much for just one slide.

Rule 7: Design to avoid cognitive overload

The type of slide elements, the number of them, and how you present them all impact the ability for the audience to intake, organize, and remember the content. For example, a frequent mistake in slide design is to include full sentences, but reading and verbal processing use the same cognitive channels—therefore, an audience member can either read the slide, listen to you, or do some part of both (each poorly), as a result of cognitive overload [ 4 ]. The visual channel is separate, allowing images/videos to be processed with auditory information without cognitive overload [ 6 ] (Rule 6). As presentations are an exercise in listening, and not reading, do what you can to optimize the ability of the audience to listen. Use words sparingly as “guide posts” to you and the audience about major points of the slide. In fact, you can add short text fragments, redundant with the verbal component of the presentation, which has been shown to improve retention [ 7 ] (see Fig 1 for an example of redundant text that avoids cognitive overload). Be careful in the selection of a slide template to minimize accidentally adding elements that the audience must process, but are unimportant. David JP Phillips argues (and effectively demonstrates in his TEDx talk [ 5 ]) that the human brain can easily interpret 6 elements and more than that requires a 500% increase in human cognition load—so keep the total number of elements on the slide to 6 or less. Finally, in addition to the use of short text, white space, and the effective use of graphics/images, you can improve ease of cognitive processing further by considering color choices and font type and size. Here are a few suggestions for improving the experience for your audience, highlighting the importance of these elements for some specific groups:

• Use high contrast colors and simple backgrounds with low to no color—for persons with dyslexia or visual impairment.
• Use sans serif fonts and large font sizes (including figure legends), avoid italics, underlining (use bold font instead for emphasis), and all capital letters—for persons with dyslexia or visual impairment [ 8 ].
• Use color combinations and palettes that can be understood by those with different forms of color blindness [ 9 ]. There are excellent tools available to identify colors to use and ways to simulate your presentation or figures as they might be seen by a person with color blindness (easily found by a web search).
• In this increasing world of virtual presentation tools, consider practicing your talk with a closed captioning system capture your words. Use this to identify how to improve your speaking pace, volume, and annunciation to improve understanding by all members of your audience, but especially those with a hearing impairment.

Rule 8: Design the slide so that a distracted person gets the main takeaway

It is very difficult to stay focused on a presentation, especially if it is long or if it is part of a longer series of talks at a conference. Audience members may get distracted by an important email, or they may start dreaming of lunch. So, it’s important to look at your slide and ask “If they heard nothing I said, will they understand the key concept of this slide?” The other rules are set up to help with this, including clarity of the single point of the slide (Rule 1), titling it with a major conclusion (Rule 3), and the use of figures (Rule 6) and short text redundant to your verbal description (Rule 7). However, with each slide, step back and ask whether its main conclusion is conveyed, even if someone didn’t hear your accompanying dialog. Importantly, ask if the information on the slide is at the right level of abstraction. For example, do you have too many details about the experiment, which hides the conclusion of the experiment (i.e., breaking Rule 1)? If you are worried about not having enough details, keep a slide at the end of your slide deck (after your conclusions and acknowledgments) with the more detailed information that you can refer to during a question and answer period.

Rule 9: Iteratively improve slide design through practice

Well-designed slides that follow the first 8 rules are intended to help you deliver the message you intend and in the amount of time you intend to deliver it in. The best way to ensure that you nailed slide design for your presentation is to practice, typically a lot. The most important aspects of practicing a new presentation, with an eye toward slide design, are the following 2 key points: (1) practice to ensure that you hit, each time through, the most important points (for example, the text guide posts you left yourself and the title of the slide); and (2) practice to ensure that as you conclude the end of one slide, it leads directly to the next slide. Slide transitions, what you say as you end one slide and begin the next, are important to keeping the flow of the “story.” Practice is when I discover that the order of my presentation is poor or that I left myself too few guideposts to remember what was coming next. Additionally, during practice, the most frequent things I have to improve relate to Rule 2 (the slide takes too long to present, usually because I broke Rule 1, and I’m delivering too much information for one slide), Rule 4 (I have a nonessential detail on the slide), and Rule 5 (I forgot to give a key reference). The very best type of practice is in front of an audience (for example, your lab or peers), where, with fresh perspectives, they can help you identify places for improving slide content, design, and connections across the entirety of your talk.

Rule 10: Design to mitigate the impact of technical disasters

The real presentation almost never goes as we planned in our heads or during our practice. Maybe the speaker before you went over time and now you need to adjust. Maybe the computer the organizer is having you use won’t show your video. Maybe your internet is poor on the day you are giving a virtual presentation at a conference. Technical problems are routinely part of the practice of sharing your work through presentations. Hence, you can design your slides to limit the impact certain kinds of technical disasters create and also prepare alternate approaches. Here are just a few examples of the preparation you can do that will take you a long way toward avoiding a complete fiasco:

• Save your presentation as a PDF—if the version of Keynote or PowerPoint on a host computer cause issues, you still have a functional copy that has a higher guarantee of compatibility.
• In using videos, create a backup slide with screen shots of key results. For example, if I have a video of cell migration, I’ll be sure to have a copy of the start and end of the video, in case the video doesn’t play. Even if the video worked, you can pause on this backup slide and take the time to highlight the key results in words if someone could not see or understand the video.
• Avoid animations, such as figures or text that flash/fly-in/etc. Surveys suggest that no one likes movement in presentations [ 3 , 4 ]. There is likely a cognitive underpinning to the almost universal distaste of pointless animations that relates to the idea proposed by Kosslyn and colleagues that animations are salient perceptual units that captures direct attention [ 4 ]. Although perceptual salience can be used to draw attention to and improve retention of specific points, if you use this approach for unnecessary/unimportant things (like animation of your bullet point text, fly-ins of figures, etc.), then you will distract your audience from the important content. Finally, animations cause additional processing burdens for people with visual impairments [ 10 ] and create opportunities for technical disasters if the software on the host system is not compatible with your planned animation.

Conclusions

These rules are just a start in creating more engaging presentations that increase audience retention of your material. However, there are wonderful resources on continuing on the journey of becoming an amazing public speaker, which includes understanding the psychology and neuroscience behind human perception and learning. For example, as highlighted in Rule 7, David JP Phillips has a wonderful TEDx talk on the subject [ 5 ], and “PowerPoint presentation flaws and failures: A psychological analysis,” by Kosslyn and colleagues is deeply detailed about a number of aspects of human cognition and presentation style [ 4 ]. There are many books on the topic, including the popular “Presentation Zen” by Garr Reynolds [ 11 ]. Finally, although briefly touched on here, the visualization of data is an entire topic of its own that is worth perfecting for both written and oral presentations of work, with fantastic resources like Edward Tufte’s “The Visual Display of Quantitative Information” [ 12 ] or the article “Visualization of Biomedical Data” by O’Donoghue and colleagues [ 13 ].

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank the countless presenters, colleagues, students, and mentors from which I have learned a great deal from on effective presentations. Also, a thank you to the wonderful resources published by organizations on how to increase inclusivity. A special thanks to Dr. Jason Papin and Dr. Michael Guertin on early feedback of this editorial.

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• PubMed/NCBI
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• 3. Teaching VUC for Making Better PowerPoint Presentations. n.d. Available from: https://cft.vanderbilt.edu/guides-sub-pages/making-better-powerpoint-presentations/#baddeley .
• 8. Creating a dyslexia friendly workplace. Dyslexia friendly style guide. nd. Available from: https://www.bdadyslexia.org.uk/advice/employers/creating-a-dyslexia-friendly-workplace/dyslexia-friendly-style-guide .
• 9. Cravit R. How to Use Color Blind Friendly Palettes to Make Your Charts Accessible. 2019. Available from: https://venngage.com/blog/color-blind-friendly-palette/ .
• 10. Making your conference presentation more accessible to blind and partially sighted people. n.d. Available from: https://vocaleyes.co.uk/services/resources/guidelines-for-making-your-conference-presentation-more-accessible-to-blind-and-partially-sighted-people/ .
• 11. Reynolds G. Presentation Zen: Simple Ideas on Presentation Design and Delivery. 2nd ed. New Riders Pub; 2011.
• 12. Tufte ER. The Visual Display of Quantitative Information. 2nd ed. Graphics Press; 2001.

IEEE AP-S Student Paper Competition Rules and Guidelines

Last Updated: December 26, 2023

• Only one SPC submission per student is allowed.
• The student does NOT have to be a member of IEEE.
• must be the first author on the paper,
• must be the only student author,
• must be a student at the time of the paper submission deadline, and
• does not need to be a student at the time of conference presentation. However, the submission must cover work performed while the student author was enrolled at an academic institution.
• The student’s primary advisor must respond to an email that will be sent to the advisor’s educational institution address after the paper is submitted. The response will certify that the student meets the conditions in A.3 and that all coauthors’ contributions to the paper are primarily advisory or editorial. Response to the advisor attestation must be received by January 23, 2024 (23h 59m UTC-12 hours). If a response is not received by the attestation deadline, the paper will not be eligible for the SPC but will be eligible for the conference. The student’s primary advisor must be from a degree-granting institution. Students are encouraged to notify their advisors in advance so that replies are received prior to the attestation deadline.
• The student’s advisor and coauthors cannot be members of the IEEE AP-S SPC Committee.
• All SPC papers will be judged using a double-blind review process. In double-blind reviews, the identities of the authors are withheld from the reviewers in addition to the usual practice of having the identities of the reviewers withheld from the authors. Therefore, a student must submit two versions of the SPC paper to the website — one without any identifying information, including authors' names, affiliations, funding sources, etc., and one intended for publication in the Symposium proceedings that includes authors' names and affiliations, etc. Other than the identifying information, the two versions of the paper should be identical. For more information and guidelines regarding the preparation of an SPC paper, please see the following instructions.
• All SPC entries are automatically considered for placement in regular symposium sessions, depending on acceptance or rejection as determined in the review process. In other words, a second submission of the same paper is NOT needed to be considered for regular or special session placement. SPC finalists will, in addition to a regular/special symposium session, present their papers in a special SPC session as described below.

Please read the following instructions carefully before preparing a paper for submission. Failure to follow all instructions below will result in the removal of the paper from the competition and its placement in the regular submission paper pool.

• A PDF version of the paper for double-blind review - no authors, institutions, funding sources, etc., in the text and no identifying attributes in the PDF file information (available by selecting "Properties..." in the File menu in Acrobat Reader). If the paper includes an Acknowledgements section, the text in that section must be removed to satisfy this requirement; the section title may remain to preserve paper formatting. This text must be deleted and removed from the paper; text color changes or other redaction methods to obscure text will not be permitted.
• A PDF version of the paper for inclusion for publication in the Symposium proceedings (exactly the same paper as in (a), but with authors, affiliations, funding sources, acknowledgements, etc., included).
• Authors must not use more than two (2) self-citations in the reference list. Note that self-citations include any references authored by any of the coauthors. Authors must cite work only available in the open literature with an official publication date at least 15 days prior to the submission deadline. Work in review or on schedule to be published does not qualify as being in the open literature.

Authors must avoid referring to their own work in the first person context in the submission text. As one example, authors should NOT describe their prior work with phrases like:

"Previously [3], we presented an antenna that..."

Instead , authors should refer to their work in the third person, for example:

"Previously, Chen [3] presented an antenna that..."

In this way, the full citation to Chen [3] can still be given, for example:

[3] Chen, J., "Analysis of antenna with ...

• Authors must NOT remove the entire reference list;
• Authors must NOT leave out any references;
• Authors must NOT replace the text of reference listings with anything that could indicate the reference refers to their prior work
• All author names must appear for papers in the reference list. Shortening a reference citation with "et al." is not permitted in the reference list, as noted in the AP-S paper template.
• Authors must prepare their submissions (both blinded and regular versions of the paper) as required by the Paper Submission Guidelines . Consistent with IEEE and AP-S Policies for conference and journal papers, the submission must be in the standard 2-page, 2-column AP-S Summary format and can only be submitted to AP-S topics (URSI one-page Abstracts or submission to URSI topics are not permitted).
• Authors must be careful to avoid self-plagiarism. Consistent with IEEE and AP-S Policies for conference and journal papers the submission must present substantially new work when compared with any other material submitted to, presented at, or published in other conferences or journals by any of the coauthors. Self-plagiarism will result in the removal of the paper from the SPC.
• I verify that none of the coauthors on this paper are students.
• I verify that my advisor’s educational institution email address is entered correctly in order to receive the attestation message.
• I have notified my advisor in advance that they will be receiving an email once my paper has been submitted. My advisor is aware that they must respond to this email by January 23, 2024 (23h 59m UTC-12 hours).
• I verify that I have removed the author listing, author affiliations, and funding acknowledgments and any other author or institution-identifying information from the blind version of the paper.
• I verify that all references to all prior work (including my own and that of other coauthors) are made in the third person.
• I verify that no more than two self-citations are included in the reference list and understand that self-references include any of my coauthors.
• I verify that all references cited have been published officially in the public domain/open literature at least 15 days prior to the submission deadline.
• Failure to follow all instructions will result in the removal of the paper from the competition and its placement in the regular submission paper pool. Due to the timeline of the review process, no resubmissions or corrections are permitted

A sample paper has been provided in its two versions. The first paper shows the paper submitted for the regular program, while the second paper shows the paper submitted for the double blind review evaluation.

• Regular Paper
• Double Blind Paper

Questions regarding the preparation and submission of papers for the competition should be directed to the APS Student Paper Competition Committee at [email protected] .

• A panel of reviewers from the Society’s membership including researchers from industry, laboratories, and universities is assembled to evaluate all qualifying SPC submissions.
• Three independent double-blind reviews for each submission are obtained from a selected panel of reviewers who are experts in the student's field of study and who are not associated with the student in any way. A double-blind review process is used as described above. At least two of the reviewers must indicate the submission is acceptable for a paper to be accepted into the competition. Note that faculty advisors and other collaborators with students in the competition are not permitted to serve as reviewers or SPC committee members in the competition. Students and coauthors are permitted to serve as reviewers for non-SPC paper submissions.
• Quality of written paper (e.g., clarity, organization, figure size, style, etc.)
• Sufficient depth and breadth of research work
• Innovation and impact of research work
• Verification and/or validation of results reported in paper
• Upon completion of all of the reviews, the SPC Committee assembles a list of the top papers based solely on the numerical scores obtained in the reviews. Student authors of the top-scoring papers will be invited as Finalists to the presentation phase of the contest. Also designated by this process is a list of student authors recognized as Honorable Mentions. Students designated as Finalists and Honorable Mentions will be provided with a monetary award to help defray expenses associated with Symposium attendance, which is collected at or after the Symposium upon successful completion of their presentation. Finalist and Honorable Mention student competitors who are unable to attend the Symposium for any reason are not eligible to receive this monetary award. Awardees are still eligible to receive the award even if they have graduated since their paper was submitted. The awards are also not awardable to any substitute presenters of the student papers, as the sole purpose of the award is to offset student travel costs. All applicable taxes are the responsibility of the award recipient. All recipients will be required to complete a United States Internal Revenue Service Form W-8 or W-9 before award funds will be disbursed. Instructions for how to complete this step will be provided in the announcement message for Finalist and Honorable Mention award winners.
• Each selected Finalist and Honorable Mention awardee must be registered as a student for the Symposium AND must attend and present their paper for award consideration. If the Symposium allows online participation, all awardees must present their work live, to include question and answer periods after the presentation, in person, in order to receive their monetary award. Finalists are required to attend the Finalist session and present their work to the judges as described below.
• All student finalists will present their papers at a poster session held during the Symposium. Student authors must present their own paper at this poster session; substitute presenters will not be eligible for consideration as finalists in the competition.
• The SPC Committee assembles a panel of several individuals from the Society's membership who will judge the presentations during SPC final session. The SPC Committee will determine the exact composition of the judging panel before the presentation session, and will ensure that the expertise of the judging panel reflects the wide range of technical topics across the field of interest of the Society.
• Quality of presentation (e.g., clarity, organization, figure size/arrangements, style, etc.)
• Verification and/or validation of results reported
• Clarity and depth in addressing the judges’ questions
• The SPC Committee tallies the scores submitted by the judges and determines the total score for each competitor. The top five scored competitors will be the five winners in the SPC competition.
• In the event of a tie for any of the placements, the SPC Committee, in consultation with the final judging panel, will meet and make the tie-breaking decisions.
• The SPC Committee Chair or their designate will announce the five winners at the Symposium's Annual Awards Ceremony.
• A monetary award and a certificate/plaque will be given to each student paper competition winner. The monetary awards are $1250 for first place, $1000 for second place, $750 for third place, $500 for 4th place, and $250 for the fifth place.
• All applicable taxes are the responsibility of the award recipient. All recipients will be required to complete a United States Internal Revenue Service Form W-8 or W-9 before award funds will be disbursed.
• The primary distribution method for all monetary awards is intended to be by check, available for pickup at the Symposium. Wire transfers can also be arranged, but awardees should anticipate at least 6 weeks of processing time after the conclusion of the Symposium.

• Student Scientific Paper Competition

The ISSRT Annual Conference is proud to host the ISSRT Student Scientific Paper & Presentation Competition. The competition finals will be held at the Annual Conference where cash prizes and ISSRT memberships will be awarded to the winners!

Contestants must be ISSRT members in good standing and registered for the ISSRT Annual Conference.

Use the form below to enter the ISSRT Student Scientific Paper Competition and upload your paper. Your submission and paper must be received by Feb 23, 2024. A confirmation of receipt will be emailed. Submissions received after the deadline will not be accepted.

Student Scientific Paper & Presentation Competition Rules

If you have questions regarding the ISSRT Student Scientific Paper Competition, please email them to [email protected] .

Student Scientific Paper & Presentation Submission Form

Mail To: ISSRT Executive Secretary

2515 Gecko Dr. Maryville, IL 62062

Toll Free 844-392-3850

Telephone 618-855-9263

Fax 202-228-0400

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Want to prove how good your presentation skills are?!! The paper presentation competition provides a platform for students and researchers to gain exposure, receive feedback on their work, and network with other professionals in the field. od idea has the potential of changing the world. But without the proper direction it is an otiose idea, hence research is important because it gives direction to deal with a specific problem. We at Mechanica give an opportunity to the young minds to sharpen their imagery and come up with authentic solutions to academic problems.