Founders Award

The 2025 Global Awards are open. Submit your nomination by 31 January 2025!

 

The Founders Award is the most prestigious SETAC award, and the recipient must have made outstanding contributions to the developement of science, consistent with SETAC’s values and goals.

  • Promote research, education, communication, and training in the environmental sciences. 
  • Promote application of interdisciplinary environmental sciences in managing environmental stressors. 
  • Participate in scientific interpretation and communication of exposure to and effects of environmental stressors, ecological risk assessment and/or management, and solutions for global environmental problems. 
  • Provide forums for communication and interactions among professionals on a multi-sector, interdisciplinary, and multinational basis on environmental issues. 
  • Develop principles and practices for sustainable environments, considering appropriate ecological, economic, and social aspects. 

Eligibility

Membership in SETAC is not a prerequisite for the Founders Award. Individuals with an acknowledged career in any aspect of the environmental sciences, such as research, technical or regulatory contributions, and who have contributed to the development of our understanding of the influence of human activity on the environment, are eligible for the Founders Award.

Nominees many not self-nominate. Unsuccessfull nominees will have the opportunity to update their package and reapply for up to two subsequent years.

Application Instructions

The application package must contain all the material requested to be considered for the award. Applicants are responsible for submitting seven items that should complement one another:

  • One nomination letter. The following must be addressed in the nomination letter or attachments to the nomination package:​
    • The relative degree to which the nominee has promoted research, education, communication, and training in the environmental sciences. You may consider the nominee's impact on graduate students, other scientists, and academic, government, and/or industrial institutions.
    • The demonstrated participation in scientific interpretation and communication of exposure to and effects of environmental stressors, ecological risk assessment and management, and solutions for global environmental problems.
    • The demonstrated application of interdisciplinary environmental sciences in managing environmental stressors, and provision of forums for communication and interactions among professionals on a multi-sector, interdisciplinary, and multinational basis addressing environmental issues.
  • Three additional letters of support.
  • One list of the ten most important publications AND indicate the value of each to the field and provide detail about the nominee's specific contribution to each. You can use CRediT taxonomy to define the nominee's contributions. Defining value to the field will vary, but may include metrics with context; for example, an altmetric score may accompany broad coverage in the press; citation information may include references to the nominee's publication in policy reports and/or other academic journals.
  • One description of two or three lifetime contributions and/or a description of seven or eight significant career achievements. Please do not highlight any more than ten items and keep this document to no more than 5 pages.
  • One CV of no more than 5 pages.

Nominees will be asked to return a disclosure form before the nomination package is sent for review.

Review Process

Nominations will be evaluated independently by a Global Awards Committee(GAC)-appointed review panel using a weighted rubric on a scale of 1–9, with one indicating that the nominee does not reflect the criteria and nine indicating that the nominee strongly reflects the criteria. The reviewers will be asked to review the merit of the application against the criteria and not against other applicants. The GAC will then discuss the panel’s determination to select a sole candidate to be recommended to the SWC. A summary of the award nominees and the highest scoring applicant will be presented to the SWC for approval. If an agreement is not reached by the GAC, a resolution will be made by the SWC.

The chair of the GAC will communicate the recommended winner’s name and a brief outline of their attributes to the SWC. The SWC confers the award, not the GAC; therefore, the winner’s name must remain confidential until SWC has conferred the award. Staff will inform the award evaluators of the successful nominee(s) after the winner(s) have been notified. After the successful nominee(s) are notified by the SETAC Executive Director or the SWC President, staff will also infom unsuccessful nominees and nominators.

Award Procedure

The Founders Award will be announced at each geographic unit's (GU) annual meeting in the given year. The awardees may choose at which meeting they wish to receive the award in person. The award includes a plaque, the cost of travel and related expenses up to US $1,500, and registration associated with attending the meeting of the winner’s choice.

 

Awards Disclosure

SETAC has implemented a self-disclosure step as part of the award process consistent with SETAC’s code of conduct and code of ethics. We ask each award candidate to consider whether they have any past or current transgressions that should be disclosed.

  • For candidates that are nominated by someone else, SETAC will reach out to the candidate directly, ask them to accept the nomination and provide the awards disclosure information.
  • For self-nominations, applicants will be ask to provide the disclosure during the application process.
Awards Disclosure and Policies
 

 

For further information, contact us at [email protected].