The Academic Funding for Students and Early-career Scientists (AFSES), hereby established by IAWA, is provided for IAWA member graduate students and early-career scientists (up to five years after a Ph.D. is awarded), and recognizes outstanding individual academic and scholarly scientific achievements, to encourage further work within the fields of research related to wood anatomy.

The AFSES shall only support the most economical common carrier (e.g. air, rail, etc.) travel, local transportation, lodging, and registration fees to attend an IAWA symposium or conference.

Applications shall be evaluated by the IAWA Council to determine relative merit, and any awardee(s) will be officially informed by the IAWA Secretary Office.  

The award winner(s) will make an officially invited presentation at the IAWA symposium or conference, and shall acknowledge the financial support from AFSES in their presentation. Within one month of the conference, each awardee will submit a report to the IAWA Secretary Office for inclusion in the IAWA Newsletter.

Details

Number of Awards
 
Up to two awards for graduate students and one award for early-career scientists per calendar year may be made, subject to the availability of funding and of candidates of outstanding merit; there may be years in which no awards are made, either for financial reasons, or applications of insufficient merit. For each award, the maximum amount is 2000 Euro or equivalent.

Eligibility

The funding is open only to IAWA members in good standing who meet the above-noted graduate student or early-career criteria. Furthermore, potential applicants should apply for funding only in years in which the symposium or conference of interest is taking place in a different country or at least 1500km from their research institution – local scholars should allow colleagues more distant the option to apply for AFSES funding.

Criteria for ranking applications  

Awards shall be made for outstanding individual scientific achievements during university graduate study, or within five years of the conferral of a Ph.D. In order to be judged as outstanding, the work should meet the following requirements:

- research topic relevant to wood anatomy (e.g. within the purview of IAWA Journal)
- demonstrates innovative thinking/tackles an important open or emerging question
- appropriate/advanced/novel methodology
- anticipated impact of results

Application document  

The following documentation must be submitted before the deadline:

- IAWA AFSES application form (.doc,117kb)
- full CV with list of publications, awards, presentations, and other relevant scientific accomplishments
- one letter of recommendation
- each of the above items merged into a single PDF document for submission to Dr. Alex C. Wiedenhoeft (acwieden@wisc.edu).

Language  

All relevant application documents must be submitted in English, and the symposium/conference presentation and report must be delivered in English.  

Selection  

The IAWA Council shall evaluate the nominations for merit within the deadline, based on the above-noted criteria.