Call for Nominations - the McCharles Prize for Early Career Research Distinction

Call for Nominations
The Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering
2013 McCharles Prize for Early Career Research Distinction
Consisting of a commemorative medal and $25,000 award

The University of Toronto’s Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering is pleased to issue a call for nominations for the 2013 McCharles Prize for Early Career Research Distinction. The McCharles Prize was originally established in 1907 by Aeneas McCharles through a gift to the Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering at the University of Toronto. The Faculty and the University have re-established the McCharles Prize as an award for exceptional performance and distinction in early career research, typically on the part of a pre-tenure member of the Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering.
The McCharles Prize will be awarded at the Faculty’s annual Celebrating Engineering Excellence reception in April 2013.

Departments may nominate only one candidate in any given competition.

Self-nominations will not be accepted.

The deadline for submissions is Friday March 1, 2013.

Additional Information:

The Prize:

Commemorative medal and $25,000 - $5,000 of which is a personal award and $20,000 of which will go to the researcher as discretionary research funds. The awardee will also be named McCharles Fellow until the next prize is awarded.

Eligibility:

Pre-tenure tenure-stream faculty members are eligible for this award.

Criteria:

 Candidates must be Canadian citizens and must have been resident in Canada at the time the work cited was performed.
 Candidates must be proposed in writing by a qualified person and supported by a second such person familiar with the achievement for which the nomination is made. Sufficient evidence must be furnished to satisfy the Committee as to the importance of the achievement. Joint candidacy may be proposed and awards shared in the event of a shared accomplishment.
 Candidates must be pre-tenure faculty members. Pre-tenure faculty members may be nominated by their departments based on their third year pre-tenure research progress report.
 Candidates will normally come from within the Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering. However, in keeping with the intention of the donor, the competition will be advertised by the University and nominations from other Faculties will be considered.
 Since the McCharles Prize will be awarded triennially, candidates who had their third year progress review in the previous two years may be nominated, as well as those from the current year. Candidates who received early tenure within the preceding two years, in part as a result of exceptional early research, may also be nominated.
 The candidate’s research must be truly exceptional and ideally will have been recognized as such by sources outside the department and the University of Toronto, and have led toward or be leading toward practical application.
 Departments may submit one nomination in any given competition. Any candidate may be nominated more than once, provided all nominations refer to achievements in the pre-tenure/early stages of the candidate’s career.
 The Selection Committee may choose NOT to award the McCharles Prize if the calibre of the candidates is not of sufficient distinction.

Guidelines:

Nomination packages must include:
• The candidate’s CV
• A 3-5 page nomination letter from the Department Chair/Institute Director and one additional nominator outlining why the candidate should receive this award
• Three letters of support from peers who can comment objectively on the candidate’s research. At least one of these letters should be from outside the University of Toronto.
Previous Recipients

Wie Yu 2008
Craig Simmons 2010

Submissions:

Completed nominations should be submitted to the Office of the Dean, Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering, University of Toronto by Friday March 1, 2013. The award will be presented at the Celebrating Engineering Excellence event in April 2013.

The next call for nominations will be in November 2015. The next McCharles Prize will be awarded in 2016.

Please submit nominations to:

McCharles Prize Selection Committee
c/o Carolyn Farrell
Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering
35 St. George St., Room 154
or as a PDF to carolyn.farrell@utoronto.ca

For more information please contact Carolyn Farrell at 416-978-8666 or carolyn.farrell@utoronto.ca