EFCE Excellence Award in Recognition of Outstanding PhD Thesis on CAPE

 
This document describes how this award series will operate and the rules & procedures governing nomination and selection of candidates.

The award will comprise

• A certificate
• A travel grant (not exceeding 500 Euros) to attend the ESCAPE event where the award will be presented

The award will be presented

• At an ESCAPE-event during an even-numbered year (ie. 2006, 2008, etc), in plenary session
• The EFCE Excellence Award in Recognition of an Outstanding PhD Thesis on CAPE 2026 will be presented at ESCAPE'36 which will be held in Sheffield, United Kingdom, on 21-24 June 2026.

The closing date for nominations is

31 January 2026.

Eligibility

• Any PhD supervisor at a PhD-awarding institution in an EFCE member country may make one nomination (any subsequent nominations from the same supervisor will be rejected ) on behalf of a PhD student.
• The nominated PhD Thesis must address a topic relevant to the field of CAPE - computer aided process engineering, or process systems engineering (PSE) the general scope of which is defined on the EFCE CAPE WP website (https://cape-wp.com/).
• The nominated thesis must have been defended after 1 January 2023.
   

Nomination procedure, supporting documentation & closing date

Supporting documentation: nominations should be submitted via the online submission tool and must contain the following information:

• Name, address and CV of nominee (PhD-student)
• Name and address of nominator/supervisor
• PhD Thesis title
• Date work commenced and date PhD awarded and Thesis published (note that the Thesis must have been completed and published and the PhD degree examined and awarded)
• Three letters of recommendation (no more than two pages each), from the supervisor/nominator and two independent referees from different institutions (one of whom could be the national delegate to the EFCE CAPE WP), outlining the key contribution to CAPE research and/or practice and stating clearly why the Thesis is considered to be truly outstanding and thus deserving the Excellence Award.
• An extended abstract in English (maximum 10 pages) containing the following information: summary, problem addressed, state of the art, key innovations, applications/implementations/results, references.
• At least one (but no more than two) refereed publication(s) in English (in either a journal or the proceedings of a well-established conference series), with the candidate as first-named and primary author.
• Upon request: A copy of the Thesis, as published (this will be returned after the evaluation is completed, on request)

Submission Form

 

• Deadline : nominations must be submitted by the supervisor to reach the PhD Award Committee, without fail, no later than 31 January 2026.
  Late nominations will be not be considered.

• The winning candidate, if any, will be informed no later than March 31st of the year in which the award will be presented.
  
  

Publication of selected work

• Furthermore, the successful candidate will be invited to make a presentation at the ESCAPE’36 conference and to prepare a paper for publication as a "guest paper" in Computers & Chemical Engineering.