Limited Submission – Blavatnik Family Foundation – 2021 Blavatnik National Awards for Young Scientists; October 28, 2020

 

Purpose: The New York Academy of Sciences and the Blavatnik Family Foundation will open nominations for the 2021 Blavatnik National Awards for Young Scientists on September 16, 2020. Now entering its eighth year, the Blavatnik National Awards recognize and celebrate America’s most innovative and promising faculty-rank scientists and engineers in three disciplinary categories: Chemistry, Physical Sciences and Engineering, and Life Sciences. Each year, one nominee in each category is awarded $250,000 in unrestricted funding and honored at the Blavatnik National Awards ceremony at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City as a Blavatnik National Awards Laureate.

 

Candidates for the 2021 Blavatnik National Awards must be nominated by their institutions. The nominator must be the institution’s President, Provost, or their official designee. Nominees and their work as independent investigators will be evaluated according to the following criteria:

 

• Quality: The extent to which the work is reliable, valid, credible, and scientifically rigorous.
• Impact: The extent to which the work addresses an important problem, advances scientific progress, and is influential in the nominee’s field, related fields, or beyond, and/or has the potential to benefit society.
• Novelty: The extent to which the work challenges existing paradigms, establishes a new field or considerably expands on an existing field, employs original methodologies or concepts, and/or pursues an original question.
• Promise: The nominee has potential for further significant contributions to science, and the research program will generate further impactful and novel discoveries.

 

Eligibility:

A nominee must:

·        Have been born in or after 1979*,

·        Hold a doctoral degree,

·        Currently hold a tenured or tenure-track academic faculty position at an invited institution in the United States. The University of Kentucky is an invited institution.

 

*Age limit exceptions will be considered by the Academy in exceptional circumstances upon a detailed written submission from the nominating institution received by the Academy at blavatnikawards@nyas.org no later than Wednesday, October 14, 2020.

 

Funding Amount/ Project Period: $250,000

 

Link to Funding Opportunity Announcement

 

Institutional Limit:  3– one in each of three categories (Life Sciences, Physical Sciences & Engineering, and Chemistry)

 

Internal Competition: To participate in the university’s selection process,please upload the following,assembled into a single PDF file, to the Office of the Vice President for Research via this portal with a copy to your Associate Dean for Research by September 8, 2020:

·        Candidate’s name, date of birth, primary department appointment

·        Category (Life Sciences; Physical Sciences& Engineering; Chemistry)

·        Rationale for nomination (200 words) – a statement detailing strong record of significant independent scientific contributions, early career success, and promise of sustained or accelerated progress

·        Brief project description (1000 words maximum) – a statement of the most significant scientific contributions and research

·        CV or biographical sketch (4 pages maximum)

 

A committee will be convened to review the material and make a recommendation.

 

For questions or issues with submission through the portal, email the limited submission mailbox (limitedsubmissions@uky.edu), or call 257-2861.

 

Agency Deadline: October 28, 2020