To determine the most appropriate prize for your nominee please review the criteria and guidance which is detailed for each prize. If you need further assistance, please email governance@physoc.org.

Two of our prize lectures currently have eligibility criteria based on career stage:

• The Bayliss-Starling Prize Lecture for Mid-Career Physiologists
• R Jean Banister Prize Lecture for Early-Career Physiologists

To assist the Prize Lecture Award Panel, nominators and nominees, where relevant we have included the general parameters for professional experience anticipated from nominees for specific prizes.

All nominators for our early- and mid-career prizes will be asked to provide details of their nominee’s professional experience/career stage as part of the nomination process.

Any relevant details on the nominee’s career path to support their status (for example, as an early-career researcher) should be included in this statement. This might include part-time working, career breaks or caring responsibilities. This information is passed on and taken into consideration by the Prize Lecture Award Panel.

It is important to note that the suggested number of years of full-time equivalent professional experience is a guideline. If you need further assistance, please email governance@physoc.org.

We welcome nominations from everyone. You do not need to be a member of The Physiological Society to nominate. However, Trustees of The Physiological Society are not eligible to be nominated.

Nominating for our prize lectures is important. The more nominations we receive the better able we are to represent the breadth and diversity of the physiology community. Making a nomination is your opportunity to influence who or what The Society is recognising.

There are many reasons why you might consider making a prize nomination, either for an individual, or a team:

• Spotlight something novel or exceptional happening in your field – this may be teaching, inclusion & diversity, widening participation, scientific research, innovation, etc.
• Support someone else’s professional development
• Celebrate and recognise positive contributions of people working in the physiological sciences
• Inspire physiologists of the future
• Improve the diversity of our nominee pool

We encourage nominations for individuals from underrepresented groups to ensure the winners represent our diverse community.

However, when submitting your nomination, it is important to be thorough and make sure that you clearly highlight their relevant key qualities and achievement in your nomination.

Being nominated for, and awarded, a prize can help raise the profile of your work, your team, your institution or company, to help advance your career. The process of personal or professional self-reflection can help identify your successes and spotlight areas for growth. Asking a colleague, peer or collaborator to nominate you can be instrumental in this process.

The best person to nominate you is someone who is familiar with you or your team’s work, and who can describe your achievements clearly, and put them in context.

We recommend against encouraging multiple people to nominate you. If more than one nomination is submitted for the same nominee within a single cycle, only one will be forwarded to the Prize Lecture Award Panel. This ensures that the panel has a consistent amount of information for each nominee. Should we receive multiple nominations for the same individual, we will contact all nominators before the review process begins.

The window for nominations is from 1 October to 30 November each year

Please ensure that you leave plenty of time to prepare and submit your nomination. To ensure fairness and transparency, we will not accept any nomination or reference after the advertised deadlines. We will not accept incomplete nomination forms.

There is no limit on the number of nominations you can make.

We will not consider nominations of deceased individuals. The only exception is when nominating teams or collaborations. In this instance, individuals can be recognised posthumously, where they made important contributions to the initiative or breakthrough being recognised.

There is no requirement for the nominee to be a member of The Physiological Society. One year’s membership accompanies the prize and/or lecture, if not already a member.

Once you have found the prize you want to make a nomination for, please read the information and prize specific criteria on the webpage carefully.

When you are ready to start your nomination, you will need to complete the webform for the correct prize. You cannot save this document, but you can copy and paste from a Word document to ensure you do not lose your work. Please be mindful of the word limits for each section and any words over these will be discounted. Please note that we will not accept incomplete nominations forms.

Please email governance@physoc.org for assistance.

The Prize Lecture Award Panel will make their decisions based solely on the information that you include in the nomination. As nominator, you are responsible for providing that information.

• Ensure your supporting statement addresses the prize criteria, providing specific evidence where you can.
• Ensure your supporting statement is written for a non-specialist. The Prize Lecture Award Panel do not know your nominee as well as you do nor the importance of their work.
• Ensure you do not exceed the word count. You have a limited amount of space on the nomination form to make your case. Consider how you make the best use of it – make sure every word counts.

All nominations are checked by Society staff to ensure that basic eligibility criteria for the prize, as detailed on the webpage, are met.

After the nomination window is closed, we will contact all nominators and nominees to confirm receipt of the nomination and that it has met the eligibility criteria.

We also ask both nominators and nominees to complete a short, voluntary diversity survey. While participation is optional, we strongly encourage you to take part. The survey is anonymous, and the data collected helps us better understand diversity within our prize lecture programme. Relevant prize and governance committees actively review our prize diversity data each year which plays a crucial role in shaping the ongoing development of our programme

The nominations will be sent to the Prize Lecture Award Panel who will then meet virtually to discuss and award the prize lectures.

After prize winners have been selected, we will inform all nominators and nominees of the outcome in advance of the announcement of winners, usually in Spring of the following year.

For fairness and transparency, we are not able to accept any nomination or reference after the advertised deadlines.

The Prize Lecture Award Panel reviews all nominations and selects the winners. Further details of the panel can be found here. https://www.physoc.org/about-us/board-of-trustees/committees-and-groups/

The Prize Lecture Award Panel first review the full list of nominees for each prize and flag any conflicts of interest. Panel members do not assess nominations for which they declare a conflict.

The Prize Lecture Award Panel review nominations independently using a numerical scoring grid for fairness and transparency, and then meet virtually to select winners who have scored above a designated threshold. The purpose of the discussion is to enable sharing of perspectives between members and to allow the group to reach the best collective judgement. The quality of science is always considered first, and where this is scored equally between nominees, Equality, Diversity and Inclusion considerations are factored in.

The decision of the Prize Lecture Award Panel is final.

If you are selected to receive a prize, we will be in touch to let you know the good news. We will ask you to complete a short acceptance form and work with you on your entry in our prize winners’ gallery.

We will also ask you to complete a short, voluntary diversity survey. While participation is optional, we strongly encourage you to take part. The survey is anonymous, and the data collected helps us better understand diversity within our prize lecture programme. Relevant prize and governance committees actively review our prize diversity data each year which plays a crucial role in shaping the ongoing development of our programme.

We expect members and non-members who are awarded prize lectures and other forms of recognition to follow and adhere to the principles outlined in our Code of Conduct for membership.

Unsuccessful nominators are contacted. It is up to the nominator to notify the nominee.

We would encourage nominators to nominate again when the call is open as there are always far fewer prize lecture winners than nominees. Although we cannot provide feedback on individual nominations, most prize nomination lists are extremely competitive.

Often people try several times before winning a prize, and the nominee pool for any prize is unique to that particular year.

Prizes are awarded on the condition that the work involved in the nomination has been conducted in good faith, adhering to the highest professional and ethical standards. Additionally, all information and documentation supporting the nomination must be truthful, factual, and not misleading. The Society reserves the right to withdraw any prize if it determines that these conditions have not been met, or if, in its sole discretion, it believes that such action is necessary to protect the best interests of the Society and/or the integrity of the prize.