Awards Committee & Guidelines

2022 CHAIR

Roki Fukuzawa, 2nd VP

2022 Awards committee

Chris Pickles, Queen’s University
Dogan Paktunc, CanmetMINING
Erin Bobicki, University of Alberta
Indje Mihaylov, Vale
Joel Kapusta, BBA
Lukas Bichler, University of British Columbia

At the Board of Directors Meeting in December 1998, it was unanimously approved by the Board to set up a MetSoc Awards Committee. The current Terms of Reference of the Committee were modified at the April 2008 BOD meeting.

Awards Impacted by the New Procedure

All MetSoc Awards, except the Best Paper Awards and Section Scholarships, will be scrutinized by the MetSoc Awards Committee.

No member of the Executive Board shall be nominated for a MetSoc administered award (Airey, Research Excellence, Brimacombe, Environment, Innovation, Distinguished Materials Scientist, Engineer in Materials Innovation) while in office. The nomination will be held until the term on the executive board is expired.

MetSoc empowers the Awards Committee Chair to assess the general suitability of a nominee for an award. (May 2018)

MetSoc Awards nominations must be received via the online submission process.

MetSoc Section Awards will be selected first by the individual MetSoc Sections and submitted to the MetSoc Awards Committee Chair for review. MetSoc Sections must have their selection completed by March 1st and will need to submit to the MetSoc Awards Chair documentation for their candidate for the Section Award.

Nominations for CIM Awards (including CIM Fellowship Nominations) are reviewed by the CIM Awards Committee Chair. Please refer to the CIM website for more information.

Timing of Awards Selection

All nominations for MetSoc Awards must be submitted to the Awards Committee by the deadline date as stipulated on the submission website.

The Awards Committee Chair will submit the committee’s report to the Board for ratification. It is the MetSoc Executive’s responsibility to ensure that the Awards committee has followed the proper procedures.

Committee Membership

The Chair of the Awards Committee shall be the 2nd Vice President of MetSoc. The Chair’s responsibilities will be to submit the nominations to the members of the Awards Committee, to supervise the ballot vote, present the results to the Board and to MC the Awards Ceremony at the COM.

Membership of the Awards Committee shall total six (6) excluding the Chair. The term of members of the committee will be 3 years with two members turning over each year.

If a Committee member is a nominee for one of the Awards, they will abstain from voting on that nomination. The MetSoc Conflict of Interest Policy shall be in effect.

Members of the Awards Committee shall be nominated by the current Past President of the Society and ratified by the Board at its 1st Meeting at the COM and shall be appointed by the President.

Criteria for Membership on Awards Committee to be used by the Past President in selecting nominees for the Awards Committee.

The Awards Committee must be MetSoc Members in good standing well aware of MetSoc basic operations and functions.
Have a well recognized international reputation in the profession for their accomplishments.
The membership of the Awards Committee must reflect the technical and geographical diversity of MetSoc membership.

METSOC AWARDS CONFLICT OF INTEREST GUIDELINES

Definition: An Awards Committee member or a member of the MetSoc Board of Directors is considered to be in a conflict of interest when one of the following situations arises:

The member is from the same organization as the nominee.
There is a family link between the member and the nominee.
The member is a former research supervisor or has been a student of the nominee within the past 5 years.
The member has had a research grant or contractual relationship with the nominee within the past 5 years.
The member is uncomfortable with participating in the deliberations of the Board due to previous conflicts or any other reason.
The member is a nominee.

Guidelines: When an Awards Committee Member is in a Conflict of Interest situation, he or she shall refrain from voting for that particular MetSoc Award(s). When a member of the MetSoc Board of Directors is in a Conflict of Interest situation, he or she shall refrain from any votes brought forward to the BOD by the Awards Chair for that particular award. Such a Board member may, however, present a Section nomination to the Board when representing that Section. However, he or she shall be absent from any discussions of the nomination, unless the Board requests information from the member in Conflict, which is deemed necessary for full consideration of the nomination.

Voting Process

The Awards Chair, after ensuring that all conditions of the award have been satisfied and that the procedures were followed, in turn, forwards the nomination and its supporting documentation to the MetSoc Awards Committee.

Steps

The awards committee will review the submissions and the CVs or papers and prepare a short-list of candidates for each Award.
Hold a teleconference and, if required, prepare a list of questions to be sent back to the original nominators via the selected person from the secretariat. Ie. a person must fill out further endorsements or letters attached.
Before voting takes place the awards committee discusses the various short-listed nominees and answers to any questions.
The nominations are then put to a vote by ballot will of the committee. The ballot must include a “no award” option.

Ballot

The ballot will consist of the names of the candidates for each award. Provisions will be made for a “no award” option on the ballot. Each committee member will rank the candidates from 1 to N, where N is the number of candidates. For example, if there are four (4) candidates for a particular award, the committee members will rank the names from 1 to 5 (with no number being used more than once, and a score of 1 designates the committee members’ first choice). The respective nominations will be circulated prior to the ballot voting. The voting shall take place by a secret ballot process.

Following the vote, the Awards Committee Chair shall announce the results at a suitable conference call meeting of the committee for final discussion and approval. The candidate with the lowest score for each award will be declared the winner.

If there are two or more names that receive the same lowest score, then only those names will be resubmitted to the Awards Committee by the Chair of the Awards Committee for the second round of voting. The second round of voting, if necessary will take place by a secret ballot process. The Chair of the Awards Committee will only vote to break a tie, for example, when there are only two or more people left and they each have the same number of votes.