IAMG Awards:

In 2013 IAMG launched an awards scheme, linked to its three IAMG journals, to provide financial assistance to students, starting their careers in geomathematics, geocomputation and geoinformatics.

This awards program was initiated by Elsevier as part of the latest publishing sponsorship agreement for the journal Computers & Geosciences. Under this agreement, US$10,000 will be allocated for up to four new annual awards, the Computers & Geosciences (C&G) Research award. They are thus co-sponsored by Elsevier and IAMG.

IAMG Executive and Council has supported this development and decided to sponsor similar awards linked to its other two IAMG journals: namely, the Mathematical Geosciences (MG) Student Awards and the Natural Resources Research (NRR) Student Awards. There will be up to three annual MG awards totalling US$7,500 per year, and up to two annual NRR awards totalling US$5,000 per year.

Applications for these awards will be submitted online through the IAMG website using a single application form. The deadline is May 31 every year. Applicants must select one of the three award types (C&G, MG or NRR), based on the best subject alignment of their research to the Aims and Scope of the respective journal.

The winners will be notified before the IAMG’s annual conference (or IGC every fourth year).  Award payments (minus a holdback amount of US$500) will be made to the selected candidates by the IAMG Treasurer by September 30 of the award year.

The application form must be submitted online by 31st May every year. Please read the guidelines below before submitting the application.

Guidelines for Student Research Grants

Number of Awards:

CAGEO: 4; MG: 3; NRR: 2. Total = 9.

Value of each award: US$2500.

Purpose of Awards:

Research projects should lie within the Aims & Scopes of the respective journals (CAGEO, MG and NRR), as outlined in the respective journal’s official webpage. Awarded funds may be used either to support the applicant’s research project at their home institution or to facilitate a part of his/her research at a different university/industry/research institute. The awarded funds CANNOT be used

  1. as travel grants to attend national and/or international conferences.
  2. to meet the Open Access publication charges.
  3. towards payment of registration fee for conferences.
  4. towards payment of semester tuition fee. 

These awards are intended to financially help and encourage post graduate students, doctoral and post-doctoral researchers working in the fields of geocomputation and geoinformatics (for CAGEO journal), mathematical methods in geosciences (for MG journal) and exploration, assessment, extraction and utilization of a variety of natural resources (for NRR journal). The chief objective of these awards is to foster advancement in fundamental scientific research, by carrying out theoretical and/or experimental work and by pursuing scientific discussions and exchange of ideas with experts in suitable fields.

Information to be provided by the applicant in the grant application:

  1. Describe the research project, in particular: (a) the scientific motivation for the proposed study, (b) the relationship of the proposed work to the present-day state of the art advancements in the respective field of research, (c) the main objectives and (d) relevance of the proposed research to the applicant’s ongoing PhD or Master’s degree thesis work.
  2. Name and contact e-mail address of the research supervisor and the name of the institution, where the proposed work will be undertaken. 
  3. Outline of budget, detailing how the funds will be utilized. Providing complete details of budget utilization is mandatory for better understanding of the use of funds.
  4. And (optionally) describe any special needs (e.g. equipment, field travel) required by the applicant.
  5. A letter from supervisor or co-supervisor mentioning the importance of the proposed study to the applicant’s ongoing thesis work.

Evaluation Procedure:

For all the three journal awards, there will be a six-member technical evaluation committee, consisting of a minimum of two members from the Students Affairs Committee (SAC), all nominated by the EiCs of all the three journals. EiCs may also self-appoint themselves to evaluate the applications of their respective journals. However, reviewers (including the EiCs) can be nominated as members of the evaluation committee successively only for a period of two years and can be re-appointed only after a cooling off period of the following two years. Additionally, the Chair of the SAC will oversee the constitution of the evaluation committee and will also act as the Chair of the evaluation committee. The final recommendations along with the comments of each reviewer and the Chair will be sent to the President IAMG for approval.

Terms and Conditions of the Award:

Any academic research paper arising from the research conducted using the IAMG Student Research Grant of any of the three journals should be submitted to respective journal for first refusal. A candidate is eligible to apply for any of the journal research grant awards only once during the entire period of his/her pursuing of that particular academic degree/diploma.

The awardee must submit an abstract and a full report based on the research results to the IAMG office by September 30thof the following year, whereupon the final holdback amount will be paid to the awardee. All the reports and abstracts will be uploaded to the IAMG members’ website for information to members at large.