The ISAR Award Sub-Committee invites nominations for the 2026 awards, with a deadline for receipt of applications on 15 December 2025. Nominations of individuals from underrepresented groups are strongly encouraged.
ISAR is expanding its awards to include graduate, early-, and mid-career scientists, as well as our flagship Distinguished Career Award. The call for nominations takes place annually, and unsuccessful nominations may be carried forward to a future round. Award presentations will occur through the ISAR Virtuaeolian Seminar Series or the subsequent ICAR conference.
Any paid member of ISAR may nominate one candidate per category annually. All nominations must include:
- A nomination letter explaining the significance of the nominee’s contribution to aeolian science (1 page max),
- At least one letter of support from someone other than the nominator (see table below for the number required per award category).
For all awards except the Outstanding Graduate Paper Award, a biographical sketch (2 pages max) is required. This should include a list of the nominee’s most significant publications, as well as the total number and types of publications and citations. For examples see our most recent Distinguished Career Award sketches on the ISAR Award website.
For each awardee, an edited version of the biographical sketch will be published in the ISAR newsletter and on the ISAR website.
Nominations must be submitted through the ISAR Awards page by the deadline (15th December 2025). The nominator is responsible for submitting all required documents (nomination letter, biographical sketch, letters of support, manuscript, etc.) on behalf of the nominee. The nominator must have an active ISAR membership. The submission page is only accessible when logged in with an active account. Those providing letters of support do not need to be active members. Please feel free to reach out with any questions via email to Dr. Jo Nield (J.Nield@soton.ac.uk), Chair of the ISAR Distinguished Career Award Sub-Committee.
Nomination Requirements
| Eligibility * | Nomination Letter (max 1 page) | Bibliographic Sketch (max 2 pages) | Support Letter (max 1 page per letter) | Other requirements/ documents | |
| Distinguished Career Award | 1 | 1 | 3 | ||
| Mid-Career Award | Nominees should be within 20 years of their PhD award at the time of nomination. | 1 | 1 | 2 | |
| Early-Career Award | Nominees should be within 7 years of their PhD award at the time of nomination. | 1 | 1 | 1 | |
| Outstanding Graduate Paper Award | Focus is on an accepted paper based on PhD/MSc research, where the nominee is expected to be the first author. Nominees should be within 2 years of completing their PhD at the time of nomination. | 1 | – | 1 (from someone not a co-author on the paper) | -draft of the manuscript -a letter of acceptance. |
| Service Award | All career stages | 1 | 1 | 2 |
*Eligible leaves or career interruptions include but are not limited to maternity or parental leave, personal or chronic illness (including disability-related reductions in research activity), leave taken for family-related illness or bereavement, international relocation, disaster management and recovery, unemployment, and periods of limited or no access to research facilities or resources. Such interruptions should be credited at twice the duration of the leave when calculating time since PhD. A brief explanation (maximum one page) should be submitted separately from nomination statements, letters, or biosketches.
Full award descriptions for each category are available on the website, along with some general guidance also listed below.
General guidance
- Nominator must be active ISAR members when their nomination is received. https://www.aeolianresearch.com/membership-join/
- If no suitable nominations are received, or if the awards Committee deems that the nominations are not of suitable quality for the award, then no award will be presented in that round.
- Awards will be decided by a sub-committee of the ISAR board of directors. All awards committee members will be required to declare any conflicts of interest. Committee members will be excluded from evaluating nominations where they have a conflict of interest. Any nominators or nominees may inform the awards committee, with reason, when they submit their nomination if there are specific assessors they wish to have excluded from the selection process, without penalty.
Prizes
- No cash prizes are provided for the awards. In-kind contributions for ICAR attendance is encouraged by the ISAR committee but left to the discretion of the ICAR committee. All winners will receive an award momento or certificate.
- Winners will be informed 3-4 months after the deadline. The annual winners will be announced via the ISAR website and newsletter. All winners selected between ICAR gatherings will be honored at the conference following their selection.
Bibliographic Sketch
The Bibliographic Sketch should be a maximum of 2 pages. It may be completed by the nominator, nominee, or additional colleague, but will be submitted by the primary nominator with the nomination letters. While there is no format required, we encourage you reference the NSF or Royal Society guidelines as good examples:
https://nsf-gov-resources.nsf.gov/files/commonform-biographicalsketch-r.pdf
Submit your nominations below:
Deadline: 15th December 2025
Please click one of the following buttons which will take you to the nomination page. To submit a nomination, you will need an active ISAR membership. Please Log In first, or if you do not have a membership, you can join us, or renew your membership if it has expired.