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EFFS Award for the best PhD Dissertation in Freshwater Sciences - Call 2021-2022
 1. The European Federation for Freshwater Sciences (EFFS) is launching a new call of the EFFS Award for the best PhD Dissertation in Freshwater Sciences, which will recognize outstanding scientific and intellectual work in the field of Freshwater Sciences performed by Early Career Researchers in Europe.
2. Possible applicants to this Award must be authors of doctoral theses presented in Europe dealing with Freshwater Sciences during the biennium 2021-2022. For candidates that have presented their theses in European countries where the EFFS-affiliated societies are based, the applicant should be member of an Association affiliated to the European Federation for Freshwater Sciences (EFFS). For candidates that have developed and presented their PhD thesis in European countries other than those where the EFFS-affiliated societies are based, please refer to ANNEX 1 below to check their eligibility and submission rules. The PhD dissertation can be written in any European language.
3. Applicants should submit their application to the EFFS-Federated Society of the European country where they have defended the PhD thesis, even if they are affiliated to a different EFFS-Federated Society. Anyhow, the affiliation to a EFFS federated society must be confirmed by a written certificate issued by the secretary of the EFFS-Federated Society she/he is affiliated, that has to be provided with the rest of the documents of the application. Further, in the application, a complete copy of the PhD dissertation in pdf format MUST be accompanied by an extended abstract in English (max 6 printed pages, Arial 11pt, single spaced, and containing a maximum of 4 figures). The extended abstract must be signed by the supervisor(s) and the candidate, and should be complemented, in a separated document, by a list of publications resulting from the PhD work including their doi. Candidacies submitted without these documents will be not considered for further evaluation, since the evaluation will be mainly based on the extended abstract and publication list as both are written in English.
4. Each EFFS-Federated Society will perform a pre-selection among the pre-candidate PhD dissertations according to the common rules, time schedule and evaluation criteria of this call. These evaluation criteria will be: their scientific/technological quality (score 0-25), originality (0-25), methodological approach (0-25), relevance and potential scientific impact of the work carried out (0-25).
5. For this call, the PhD thesis must have been defended between January 1st 2021 and December 31st 2022.
6. Each EFFS-Federated Society can submit up to two selected PhD dissertations for the final evaluation, not later than February 10 th, 2023. This number can be increased proportionally for those Associations officially representing more than one European country at EFFS (e.g. AIL collects both Spanish and Portuguese theses and the number of dissertations can be 4, a maximum of 2 per country). In any case, no more than four dissertations can be presented by each association. Once selected by the EFFS-federated Society, the required documents for each of the selected PhD dissertations must be submitted before the deadline, by the corresponding national representative, to the EFFS Chairperson, in a single message attaching all documents for the society’s candidates.
7. The final evaluation will be carried out by an international Jury with the final decision delivered around the second half of March 2023. Members of the Jury are identified among the members of the Board of Representatives at EFFS or scientists designated by the EFFS-federated associations. The evaluation is based on the criteria and scores specified in point 4 (above), given by this jury to the extended abstract in English and the publications collected in the accompanying list (point 3).
8. There will be one main and two subsidiary prizes. The main prize will consist in the invitation to give a plenary lecture at the next Symposium for European Freshwater Sciences (SEFS-13) to be held in Newcastle-upon-Tyne (UK), plus a Diploma, and a grant covering the registration fee to attend SEFS-13, which could be additionally complemented with items of scientific interest. During this meeting, the awarded author, who do not need to register in SEFS-13 but instead confirming directly with the organizers his/her attendance, will give the invited dedicated Plenary Lecture on
his/her PhD dissertation topic. The winners of the subsidiary prizes will receive a Diploma and a grant covering the registration fee to SEFS-13, though they have to register in any case.
9. Recipients of the Awards will be informed around three months before the opening session of SEFS-13.
10. An awards ceremony will be held just before the dedicated Plenary Lecture. In addition to the Plenary Lecture, given by the main prize winner, the 6 page summary of the three awarded theses will be published at the EFFS webpage (http://www.freshwatersciences.eu ) as well as at the SEFS-13 webpage (https://www.sefs13.com/ ). Additional to the summaries, a poster explaining the content of each of the three awarded theses can be exhibited at the poster sessions of the SEFS-13. Posters must be provided by the authors themselves.
ANNEX 1.
Rules of annex 1 apply specifically to candidates who are not members of any EFFS-federated society and have developed and presented their PhD theses in European countries other than those where the EFFS-affiliated societies are based. EFFS-affiliated societies are based in the following European countries: Austria, Croatia, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Spain, Switzerland, Turkey, and United Kingdom.
The first, and easiest possibility, is that the candidate joins any of the existing EFFS-federated societies (see https://www.freshwatersciences.eu/effs/index.asp?page=MEMBERS&Id=6 & https://www.freshwatersciences.eu/effs/index.asp?page=MEMBERS&Id=6&p=2&lastID=10 ). Thus, these candidates can directly apply to the selection procedure directly established by these societies as for the PhD dissertations developed in the country where this EFFS-federated society is based, thus being considered as a “home” candidate regardless she/he presented the PhD thesis in European countries other than those where the EFFS-affiliated societies.
Applications of candidates that have developed and presented their PhD theses in European countries other than those where the EFFS-affiliated societies, but that have not joined any EFFS-federated society, would be treated in a special category of ‘individual application’. For these, the same rules and type of documents to be included in the application apply, but these should be submitted directly to EFFS chairperson by e-mail (antonio.camacho@uv.es) and will be pre-assessed by independent persons appointed by EFFS. An individual application would not be available to candidates that developed their theses in a country with an affiliated organisation, as they would still have to go through the normal procedure. The independent judges would choose up to two such (non-affiliated) theses to go forward into the main competition - thus mimicking the present situation for member organisations who are able to put forward two theses.
For countries where a EFFS-federated society is based, the country in which the thesis was registered at a University will be considered as the ‘home’ country of the applicant – and not the personal nationality of the candidate-, who should join the national EFFS-federated society prior to present the candidacy. For example, a Bulgarian candidate registered at a German University would necessarily need to apply through the German association (DGL) once have joined DGL, whereas a Bulgarian candidate that has develop the thesis at a Bulgarian University would be eligible for the individual application mechanism, unless he/she joins a EFFS-federated society, when this will then be considered as a “home” candidate.
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