HMEI AWARD GUIDELINES
For Granting HMEI Award for Young Engineers

1. Purpose

The purpose of the HMEI Award for Young Engineers is to encourage young engineers/scientists working in the field of hydrometeorological and other environmental systems and services development in HMEI member companies.

2. Criteria for Granting Awards

(i) Each award shall be made for distinguished work carried out in the field of hydrometeorological or other environmental systems and services design developed by HMEI member companies, preferably in support of WMO Programmes or WMO member NMHS Programmes, published in a scientific paper, patent application, or other publicly available technical works; (ii) Only entries which have been published in scientific journals will normally be eligible for consideration, however, a patent award, a significant technical report, a project report, a summary of a successfully defended PhD thesis, or other publicly available technical works would also be acceptable;

(iii) The length of the scientific paper, patent application, or other publication shall not exceed 25 pages. Longer papers will not be accepted;

(iv) Awards shall be made to young engineers and/or scientists not exceeding the age of 35 at the time of nomination;

(v) Only one nominee and one publication will be permitted for each submission from a Nominator;

(vi) If a particular nominee and publication is nominated multiple times by different Nominators, it will be considered as one single nomination.

(vii) If a nominee is nominated by different Nominators with different publications for different work, all publications will be included in the evaluation.

(viii) The first author of the publication is considered the nominee for the Award.

(ix) Engineers and scientists in all fields of HMEI member’s activities will be eligible, but members of the HMEI Council may not submit entries authored by themselves for the Award;

(x) The Award is awarded to the nominee only. The nominee is encouraged and free to share the award with any co-authors of the publication, however HMEI is unable to assess the individual contributions of the co-authors to the published work or divide the award;

(xi) Entries published in languages other than English (which is the working language of the Association) will be eligible for consideration if accompanied by full translations in English including an extended summary;

(xii) Only entries published during the four-year period immediately preceding the year in which the nomination is made will be eligible for consideration;

(xiii) Entries that have previously won international prizes within the period mentioned in (viii) above are also eligible.

3. Method of Selection

(i) The HMEI Council will nominate three individuals to act as assessors and form the Selection Committee. The Selection Committee make up will include at least one representative from a member of HMEI. The other two members may be from HMEI or an invited engineer or scientist outside the organization. Members of the Selection Committee shall not be eligible for the award.

(ii) The Executive Secretary will obtain the list of the Selection Committee to facilitate this procedure. The nominations, together with the original submissions, will be provided to each member of the Selection Committee by the Executive Secretary at least two months before the designated Award ceremony;

(iii) Each Assessor shall score each submission in the range 0.0 (lowest) to 5.0 (highest). The evaluation will be based on the following factors, with equal weight being assigned to each factor:

• Significance of Topic
• Novelty of Ideas
• Validity of the Methods
• Value of the Results
• Quality of Presentation

(iv) The independent results from each Assessor shall be submitted simultaneously to the Chair of the HMEI Council and the HMEI Executive Secretary, at least one month before the designated Award ceremony. The Council Chair and Executive Secretary shall calculate the average score for each submission, and notify the HMEI Council of the individual results from all Assessors and Average scores for all submissions.

(v) The award winner shall be the candidate obtaining the highest average score from all marks of the assessors on the Selection Committee. If multiple candidates tie for top place, the award shall be split equally between all such candidates.

(vi) If the Selection Committee assesses all submissions to have an average score lower than 4.0, none of the submissions will be judged to be of sufficiently high standard and no award will be made.

(vii) The Chair of the HMEI Council will announce the name of the nominee receiving the highest average marks and winning the award. Arrangements will be made to present the award at the designated Award ceremony.

4. Nature of the Award

The award will consist of a citation certificate, medal and an amount of CHF 3,000 (three thousand Swiss francs) for the awarded nominee, in accordance with criteria 2(x).

5. Awarding Ceremony

The presentation of the Award normally should take place during the session of the HMEI General Assembly. However, arrangements for the presentation may depend in each case upon the prevailing circumstances and will be decided by consultation between the Nominator of the HMEI member company who submitted the nomination and the chair of HMEI Council in coordination with the executive secretary. HMEI shall not be responsible for travel or other costs of the awarded nominee to attend the Award ceremony.