Starting with the 2025 conference, SCAS has developed two new awards to recognize outstanding student presenters.

Best Oral Presentation Award (Ph.D. students)

Objective

The Best Oral Presentation Award recognizes the excellence in aquatic scientific research and communication by Ph.D. students and is given for the best talk at the Annual Conference of the Society of Canadian Aquatic Sciences.

Award

The award is administered and supported by SCAS and Canadian Science Publishing (CSP). The winner receives free registration at the following Annual SCAS conference and CSP will provide an open-access article processing charge (APC) waiver. Both the winner and runner-up receive recognition on the SCAS website and through social media.

Frequency of Availability

Once per year. SCAS reserves the right not to make this award if either the quantity or quality of applications is deemed insufficient.

Eligibility

To be eligible for the award, all candidates must be a Ph.D. student at the time of the competition and must present work completed towards their degree program. The award is not restricted to students with Canadian citizenship but students must be registered at a Canadian institution. The applicant must be a current member of SCAS; if they are not, they can join at the time of applying for the award. The Best Oral Presentation Award focuses on completed work of a high caliber.

A winner can only win once. There is no restriction for runners-up or other candidates to reapply.

Application Procedures

1. During conference registration, candidates will indicate their intention to enter the SCAS Best Student Oral Presentation Award and will submit a regular abstract for their presentation following the guidelines and deadlines established on the SCAS website for the annual conference.
2. Candidates will email a written presentation summary to the SCAS Vice-President (André St-Hilaire: Andre.St-Hilaire@inrs.ca) no later than 11:59 pm EST on the day of the SCAS conference abstract submission deadline (this year: October 31, 2024). Note that extensions to abstract submission deadline do not apply to the award application deadline.
3. The written summary must not exceed two pages, including title and authors. The summary should be formatted in Times New Roman, 12 pt font with margins set at a minimum of 2 cm. Please convert the application to a pdf for submission and name the file with your last name followed by an underscore and SCASPresentationYear (i.e. YourLastName_SCASPresentation2025). The summary should include the objectives of the study, brief materials and methods, the results, conclusions, and a section on the significance of their research to aquatic sciences. A single figure of the most relevant results must be included on a third page with a caption to demonstrate completion of the work.

Obligations of Awardee

The winner will be asked to provide the Communication Committee with a photo of themselves and caption for social media and the webpage.

Scoring rubrics will be posted at a later date.