Eligibility Criteria
To qualify for the award, a student should have successfully defended his/her MASc or PhD thesis at the Departmental Oral within two or five years respectively. The student should have authored/co-authored at least one first-authored paper per year in the program at the time of the Departmental Oral.
Eligible papers for a specific program (MASc or PhD) must be prepared based on work done while in the same program. Papers from one’s MASc thesis but published/submitted during one’s PhD program are not eligible for a PhD-SDA.
The qualified papers normally include ones that have been published, accepted and submitted for publication in refereed journals at the time of the Departmental Oral. Students with fewer papers but having high impact contributions (publications and patents et al.) are also encouraged to apply. The oral examination committee evaluates the application and makes recommendation to the Chair of the Department for the final approval.
Notes
•Non-first-authored papers are counted as 0.5 of first-authored papers.
•The value of a SDA is $1,500 for MASc students and $3,000 for PhD students.
•Winners will also receive a certificate.
Application Procedures
The candidate submits a list of publications and an impact statement (one-page) to the examination committee at the time of the Departmental Oral.
Evaluation and Recommendation
Both are conducted by the Departmental Oral examination committee.
Approval
All approvals are made by the Chair of the Department.