CIB Best doctoral dissertation award 2023 now open

CIB has issued a call for emerging researchers to participate in the Best Doctoral Dissertation Award 2023.

CIB, through the Future Leaders Committee, works to advance built environment research by recognizing and rewarding the outstanding work of emerging researchers. Now in it’s third year, the Best doctoral dissertation award 2023 will be awarded in recognition of researchers whose PhD is considered worthy by an Awards committee appointed by the CIB Board. In selecting the award recipients, the Awards Committee considers the following: importance of the built environment issue; writing style, readability, and flow; methodology; and the contribution of the research.

Award

The Best Doctoral Research Award carries with it a €1,500 cash prize for the winner and a €500 cash prize each for the 2 top runners-up.

Rules and Submission Procedures

The completed dissertation must have been confirmed by the faculty advisor no earlier than 18 months before the application deadline. The award eligibility period of 18 months will allow for students who might confirm the PhD at the end of the cycle to submit in the following year’s competition; however, students can only submit once. Those who submitted in 2022 are not eligible in 2023 and the author of the dissertation must be a member of the CIB Student Chapter. 

Doctoral researchers wishing to be considered for the award should submit the following materials to their University CIB Student Chapter Faculty Liaison:

1. A detailed dissertation abstract in PDF format, not to exceed 4 pages. The abstract should explain the research question addressed in the doctoral thesis/dissertation, the importance of the research, how the dissertation builds on prior work, samples, hypotheses, methodologies, and research results.
2. A letter from the researcher’s committee chair (in PDF format), not to exceed 2 pages, attesting that the completed dissertation was confirmed during the period 1 April 2022 and 30 September 2023. This letter may be in the form of a nomination and may include an assessment of the importance and quality of the work.
3. The completed dissertation submitted in PDF format.

Each University with an active Student Chapter may select only 1 doctoral thesis/dissertations to submit to CIB for consideration. Therefore, individual Universities and CIB Student Chapters are responsible for deciding their process for selecting the lone nominee.  The University’s CIB Student Chapter Faculty Liaison should submit the required materials for the nominee as an email attachment no later than 2 October 2023 to [email protected].

Shortlist Selection

An Awards Committee selected by the CIB Board will evaluate all applications. The top 3 doctoral researchers will be notified by 31 October of their selection and will be invited to deliver a presentation to the panel at an event open to all CIB members in November 2023, to compete for the CIB Best Doctoral Dissertation Award assessment. The short presentations will be followed by a question and answer session. A winner’s webinar will be held in early 2024.

The application deadline is 2nd October 2023