INNS Award Nominations

Nominations are now open for the INNS Awards. The extended nomination deadline is 15 April 2024.

Submit your Nomination

 

During the open nomination period, INNS accepts nominations for the following INNS awards:

  • Donald O. Hebb Award. This award recognizes outstanding contributions to research in biological learning.
  • Hermann von Helmholtz Award. This award recognizes outstanding contributions to research in perception.
  • Dennis Gabor Award. This award recognizes outstanding contributions to engineering applications of neural networks.
  • Aharon Katzir Young Investigator Award: This award recognizes exceptionally promising young investigators in the field of neural networks.

Nominations must be submitted through the nomination form and the submitter must have received an email acknowledgment from the system.

All unsuccessful nominations in a given year will be automatically considered by the INNS Awards Committee for an additional two years from the original nomination submission date.

The nomination should include the following 5 parts:

1. Nomination basic details:

a. Nominator name, affiliation, address, email, INNS membership number, and specific type of award for which the nomination is submitted.
b. Nominee name, affiliation, address, and email. (Please note: the nominee is not required to be an INNS member.)

2. Nomination letter (1 page)

3. Brief CV of the nominator (max 2 pages).

4. Brief CV of the nominee (max 2 pages).

5. Justification of the nomination that describes the outstanding achievements of the nominee (2pp).

Items 2-5 must be compiled into ONE pdf document for upload to the INNS nomination form.

See a description of each of the awards at INNS Awards and a list of previous recipients at INNS Award Recipients. For any questions, please contact the INNS Executive Office at [email protected].


INNS Doctoral Dissertation Award

During the open nomination period, the INNS Educational Committee accepts nominations for the Doctoral Dissertation Award.

This award is presented annually to the author(s) of the best doctoral dissertation(s) in neural networks, machine learning, and related fields by INNS members in recognition of his/her high-quality, excellent, and outstanding research work.

Award Prize

The Doctoral Dissertation Award is presented at the IJCNN/WCCI Awards Banquet and is accompanied by a prize of $500 USD. Two runners-up will also be chosen; each runner-up will receive a price of $250 USD.

Eligibility 

  1. Only a Ph.D. student’s advisor may nominate a dissertation.
  2. For each year’s award cycle, a nominated dissertation must be a finalized version submitted to the Graduate School for the conferment of the doctoral degree between September 2022 through (and including) August 2023.
  3. Nominations are welcomed from any country, but only English language versions will be accepted.
  4. Only one nomination may be submitted per institution.

Deadline

Deadline for 2024 nominations: 1 May 2024

Selection Criteria

Dissertations will be reviewed for technical depth and significance of the research contribution, potential impact on theory and practice, and quality of presentation.

Submissions

  1. Nominations for the INNS Doctoral Dissertation Award should be submitted online during the open nomination period using the nomination form.
  2. Submitted materials should explain the contribution in terms understandable to a non-specialist. Each nomination involves several components: 
    1. Name, address, phone number, and email address of the nominator (the student’s thesis advisor)
    2. Name, address, and email address of the candidate (person being nominated). Affiliation should be the name of the school
    3. Suggested citation if the candidate is selected. This should be a concise statement (maximum of 25 words) describing the key technical or professional accomplishment for which the candidate merits this award. Note that the final wording for awardees will be at the discretion of the Award Committee.
    4. Nomination statement (200-300 words in length) addressing why the candidate should receive this award. This should address the significance of the dissertation, not simply repeat the information in the abstract.
    5. Copy of the dissertation
    6. Endorsement letters – The nomination must include an endorsement letter from the department head. In addition, at least 1, and not more than 3, supporting letters should be included from experts in the field who can provide additional insights or evidence of the dissertation’s impact. (The nominator/advisor my not write a letter of support.) Each letter should include the name, address, and telephone number of the endorser. The nominator should collect the letters and bundle them for submission. The endorsement letter and supporting letters can be combined in one file.

Evaluation of the nominations

  1. The Doctoral Dissertation Award Committee (DDAC) of the INNS Society will evaluate the nominations.
  2. Each dissertation will be reviewed by at least 2 committee members.
  3. The evaluation criteria may include, but not limited to
  • Relevance of the dissertation to topics in IJCNN
  • Originality of the main ideas in the dissertation
  • Significance of scientific contributions
  • Technical depth and soundness of dissertation (including experimental methodologies, theoretical results, etc.)
  • Overall presentation and readability of dissertation (including organization, writing style and exposition, etc.)
For questions on the above, please contact Zenglin Xu, [email protected].


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