First introduced in 1992, IFHTSE’s Young Author Award was renamed in 2008 in honour of Prof Tom Bell (University of Birmingham England and Xi’an Jiao Tong University China).

The IFHTSE Young Author Award is intended to encourage the full participation of younger and promising engineers and scientists in IFHTSE Congresses and other conferences.

The Award is made for a paper presented by a young author in a main oral session of an IFHTSE Congress and deemed by the judges at the time to be the best of the papers fulfilling the Award criteria.

The objective of the Award, in addition to publicly acknowledging an excellent contribution, is to reward the winner by supporting his or her attendance at the next IFHTSE Congress or other conference by means of free registration and, subject to the availability of external funding, assistance with travel and accommodation costs.

General conditions

1. The award shall be known as the Tom Bell Young Author Award
2. The award shall be competed for at each IFHTSE Congress provided appropriate funding is available and the necessary administrative procedures can be put in place
3. The sponsor providing funding will be fully acknowledged in promotional material and in reporting

The value of the Award

4. IFHTSE will invite and encourage the organisers of the Congress / conference to waive the registration fee for the recipient of the Award
5. The cash part of the Award shall be calculated on the basis of covering economy air fare or equivalent surface travel and reasonable accommodation costs enabling the winner to attend the Congress following that at which the award was given, or by agreement another IFHTSE event, up to the value of the available funding
6. The Treasurer of the IFHTSE shall be the sole judge of the amount of cash available for award.

Eligibility

7. Eligible papers must be presented in person by the candidate author. In the case of a paper with multiple authorship, therefore, an author who is a candidate for the Award must be the author named in the programme as the presenter (though not necessarily the first-named author of the paper)
8. The candidate must be aged 35 or less on the first working day of the Congress
9. The candidate must register for the award when submitting the paper to the Congress organisers (or apply in writing to the Secretary of the IFHTSE as soon as practical after submitting the paper to the Congress)
10. The candidate must submit a copy of the paper (in the form required by the Congress specifications) to the award Chairperson not later the paper submission date set by the Congress Organising Committee or two weeks before the first working day of the Congress whichever is the earlier
11. Authors employed directly or indirectly by the sponsoring company or who are a close relative of a sponsoring individual are not eligible to compete for the Award

Award procedure

12. The detailed procedure for identification of candidates and selection of the winner is a matter for the Executive Committee of the IFHTSE in consultation with the organising committee of the Congress, provided clause 13 below is observed
13. The IFHTSE Executive Committee shall appoint a Chairperson to oversee the award process at least 6 months prior to the Congress.
14. The Chairperson may co-opt as many people to assist him in advance of the Congress and as many additional judges during the Congress as considered necessary
15. The decision of the Chairperson is final and no appeal will be considered.
16. If possible, the award will be announced before the end of the conference or in any closing ceremony.

The judgment criteria

17. The judging team award shall take into account the following in making the award:

The structure of the paper (50%)

The content of the paper (20%)

Presentation of the paper (30%)

RBW 10 NOV 08