EURASIP Awards Selection Procedures

Introduction

The goal of the EURASIP Awards program is to pay tribute to those people who have made outstanding technical contributions and achievements, or those institutions that enabled the development of remarkable research and dissemination, leading to the advancement of the signal processing domain. EURASIP awards program promotes excellence in the different areas related to the signal processing community: education, research, industry and services.

Currently EURASIP Awards fall into the following categories:

Best Paper Awards;
Society Awards:

Technical Achievement Award;
Meritorious Service Award;
Group Technical Achievement Award;
Athanasios Papoulis Award.

The nominations for awards can be initiated by EURASIP members and by the public. These nominations are collected by the Awards Chairman and then submitted to the EURASIP BoD for the selection of the Award recipients. The nominations to the Athanasios Papoulis Award are carefully reviewed by a panel of experts and their recommendations are submitted to the EURASIP Awards Chairman prior to their final approval by the EURASIP BoD.

The EURASIP awards ceremony takes place during the annual EUSIPCO conference. The list of award-winners is published in the EURASIP Newsletter that is under distribution at that moment and in the EURASIP web site.

This document describes the procedures for determining the recipients of the EURASIP awards.

Best Paper Awards

Best Paper Awards are given annually to the most relevant contributions published in the Journals sponsored by EURASIP, according to the average number of papers published per year (this number should be calculated by averaging over a window of 4 years):

1–50: no award assigned;
51–100: 1 award every two years;
>100: 1 award per year.

In 2011, the journals that meet this requirement are:

Signal Processing (1 award annually);
Signal Processing: Image Communication (1 award every 2 years);
Speech Communication (1 award every 2 years);
EURASIP Journal on Advances in Signal Processing (1 award annually);
EURASIP Journal on Wireless Communications and Networking (1 award annually);
EURASIP Journal on Image and Video Processing (1 award every 2 years).

These awards are given to each of the authors of the selected papers by the EURASIP BoD at the annual EUSIPCO conference.

These awards consist in a certificate, one for each author, prepared by care of the Awards Chairman according to the current standard layout, and a monetary compensation of 1000 € per paper provided by the EURASIP Treasurer.

The papers considered for the awards are pre-selected by the Editors-in-Chief of the EURASIP journals according to the following criteria: i) the scores of the reviewers, ii) the number of downloads, iii) the number of citations; iv) the evaluations of members of the editorial boards, including the guest editors of the special issues.

The papers to be considered for the awards assigned in the year x should have been published within a 4-years time window that goes from x-5 to x-2, extremes included. Then a comparative evaluation is performed by specific subcommittees, one for each journal, according to the following criteria:

Relevance of the topic - The degree of contribution of the paper to the advancement of the state of the art is evaluated. Under this topic the evaluation committee will assess the value of the paper in terms of the significance of the problem addressed in the paper for the signal processing community.
Quality of the technical content - The degree of excellence of the work described is evaluated. Under this topic the evaluation committee will assess the techniques an skills used to achieve the reported results.
Style of the presentation - The degree to which the paper message is clearly and effectively expressed is evaluated. Under this topic the evaluation committee will assess the quality of the writing of the paper, namely completeness, conciseness, clarity, efficacy or balancing between the various sections of the paper.
Originality - The degree to which the paper is original is evaluated. Under this topic the evaluation committee will assess the novelty of the technical material presented, namely in terms of addressing new problems, presenting new results, or using new methodologies.

The nominations for best paper awards should be submitted by the Editor-in-Chief to the EURASIP Awards Chairman by July 31st of the preceding year, i.e. the year x-1. The decision about the award should be achieved by the subcommittee by January 1st of the year to which the award relates, i.e. the year x, and passed to the EURASIP BoD for the final approval.

The list of award-winners is published in the EURASIP Newsletter that will be available at the EUSIPCO of year x (where the awards ceremony will take place).

The EURASIP Awards Chairman contacts the Editors-in-Chief of the various journals at the beginning of the year x-1 asking for the list of selected papers.

The Award subcommittees are selected by the EURASIP Awards Chairman by proposal of the journal Editors-in-Chief and of the BoD members, being composed by at least four members. These members are typically selected among Special Issues guest editors, members of the journal Editorial Board, and reviewers of the journal. The subcommittees membership is renewed every three years.

As a compensation for the work performed in the quality of a journal's awards subcommittee member, these members are offered an annual subscription of one of the EURASIP sponsored journals.

Technical Achievement Award

The Technical Achievement Award is assigned on demand, annually, to individuals who have made distinguished contributions in the field of signal, speech, and image processing.

A Call for Nominations is included in the EURASIP Newsletter to be distributed at EUSIPCO of the preceding year and posted at the EURASIP web site. The nominations are submitted to the EURASIP Awards Chairman by members of the EURASIP BoD and/or Advisory Committee, or by the general public by the end of December of the preceding year. The final decision about the award is taken by the BoD in January/February of the year of the award attribution and it is published in the EURASIP web site and in the EURASIP Newsletter that is distributed at the next EUSIPCO, where the awards ceremony takes place.

The candidates should:

be actively involved with the international signal processing community, having a recognised leadership in their field of action and a significant impact on the European research activities;
have a significant list of achievements, reflected by their curriculum vitae, namely in terms of relevant publications, original contributions, or inventive value (patents);
publish regularly in EURASIP journals;
participate regularly in conferences sponsored by EURASIP, and in particular in EUSIPCO conferences.

The nominations should be well supported, namely in terms of:

providing complete name of the candidate, education degrees, business titles, contact information, professional curriculum, EURASIP involvement;
documenting the major technical achievements of the candidate, namely by referencing books, papers, reports, standards contributions, patents, development of products, systems, facilities or services, technical presentations and courses developed;
justification why the candidate is worthy to receive this award, namely in terms of innovation, originality, creativity and relevance of contributions;
including support endorsement letters.

Nomination and endorsements should be as specific, accurate and complete as possible.

The technical achievements award consists of a gold medal, crafted according to the current standard layout, and a certificate presented to the award-winner.

Meritorious Service Award

The EURASIP Meritorious Service Award is given on demand, annually, to individuals who have made distinguished services to the Society.

A Call for Nominations is included in the EURASIP Newsletter to be distributed at EUSIPCO of the preceding year and at the EURASIP web site. The nominations are submitted to the EURASIP Awards Chairman by members of the EURASIP BoD and/or Advisory Committee, or by the general public by the end of December of the preceding year. The final decision about the award is taken by the BoD in January/February of the year of the award attribution and it is published in the EURASIP web site and in the EURASIP Newsletter that is distributed at the next EUSIPCO, where the awards ceremony takes place.

The candidates should:

have provided significant contributions to the development of EURASIP;
have furnished distinguished service to the advancement and pursuit of the technical objectives of EURASIP;
cooperate actively in actions supported or sponsored by EURASIP.

This award, in the form of a gold medal, crafted according to the current standard layout, is decided by the EURASIP BoD at the annual EUSIPCO conference.

The nominations should be well supported, namely in terms of:

providing complete name of the candidate, education degrees, business titles, contact information, professional curriculum, EURASIP involvement;
justification why the candidate is worthy to receive this award, namely in terms of the major contributions to the development of EURASIP.

Nomination should be as specific, accurate and complete as possible.

Group Technical Achievement Award

The Group Technical Achievement Award is given on demand, annually, to leaders of research groups that have made relevant contributions in the field of signal, speech, or image processing.

The nominations can also be open to the general public.

The award-candidate and his/her research group should:

be actively involved with the international signal processing community, having a recognised leadership in their field of action and a significant impact on the European research activities;
have a significant list of achievements, namely in terms of relevant publications, original contributions, or inventive value (patents),
publish regularly in EURASIP journals;
participate regularly in conferences sponsored by EURASIP, and in particular in EUSIPCO conferences.

These awards, in the form of a plaque, crafted according to the current standard layout, presented to the leader of the selected research group, are given by the EURASIP BoD at the annual EUSIPCO conference.

The nominations should be well supported, namely in terms of:

providing complete name of the candidate who represents the research group, his/her education degrees, business titles, contact information, professional curriculum, EURASIP involvement;
documenting the major technical achievements of the research group, namely by referencing books, papers, reports, standards contributions, patents, development of products, systems, facilities or services, technical presentations and courses developed,
justification why the candidate research group is worthy to receive this award, namely in terms of innovation, originality, creativity and relevance of contributions;
including support endorsement letters.

Nomination and endorsements should be as specific, accurate and complete as much as possible.

Athanasios Papoulis Award

The Athanasios Papoulis Award is given to honor scientists whose work had a major impact in various aspects on signal processing education. The award is offered only on demand, every time there is an exceptional candidate and not on a regular period of time.

A Call for Nominations is included in the EURASIP Newsletter to be distributed at EUSIPCO of the preceding year and at the EURASIP web site. The nominations are submitted to the EURASIP Awards Chairman by members of the EURASIP BoD and/or Advisory Committee, or by the general public by the end of December of the preceding year. The nominations to the Athanasios Papoulis Award are reviewed by a panel of experts and their recommendations are submitted to the EURASIP Awards chairman prior to their final approval by the EURASIP BoD. The final decision on this award is taken by the BoD in February of the year of the award attribution and is published in the EURASIP web site and in the EURASIP Newsletter that is distributed at the next EUSIPCO, where the awards ceremony will take place.

Awards Voting Procedure

The Technical Achievement Award, the EURASIP Meritorious Service Award, and the Group Technical Achievement Award, are decided by the BoD according to the following guidelines:

All the votes are expressed by e-mail on request of the Awards Chairman.
The voting members are the elected members to the EURASIP BoD and the Past President.
In case of more than three candidates to an award the voting procedure is split in two parts.

In the first round each voting member casts two votes.
The two candidates who receive the highest number of votes pass to the second round. In the second round each voting member votes only for one candidate. The award is given to the candidate who receives the highest number of votes.
In case of two or more candidates who receive the same number of votes in any of the two rounds, it will be care of the BoD to decide how to proceed.

In case of a number of candidates up to three only the second part of the vote will take place.

Fulvio Gini

Director, Awards Chairman