The Earthquake Research Engineering Institute sponsors competitions open to students and EERI members. Get involved!
The EERI Annual Student Paper Competitions
EERI’s Student Awards Committee is excited to offer its Annual Student Paper Competitions. These competitions encourage the active involvement of students in earthquake engineering and the earthquake hazards community and allow emerging experts to share their research. The prize for each winner is a trip to the EERI Annual Meeting, recognition during the Institute’s Awards Ceremony, and the opportunity to meet and network with peers and experts in the field.
There are two competitions: graduate and undergraduate.
Undergraduate Competition
Undergraduate students are encouraged to submit a short research paper. All papers must be directly related to earthquake engineering or earthquake hazard reduction.
Guidelines:
- The paper must not exceed four (4) pages in length inclusive of all figures, tables, photographs, appendices, and list of references. Please note: final papers from other programs, such as REU’s, will be accepted if shortened to 4 pages.
- The paper must be authored by the student alone. A faculty member or other advisor can provide feedback before submission of the paper but may not co-author the paper. The advisor’s name should be included in the “acknowledgments” section of the paper.
- Applicants must be enrolled at an accredited U.S. college or university and must be U.S. residents.
Prize:
- Free registration to the EERI Annual Meeting
- Recognition during the Institute’s Awards Ceremony
- Up to $1,000 to cover airfare, ground transportation, and hotel costs associated with attending the meeting.
Graduate Category
In past years, the rules of the EERI Graduate Paper Competition required the paper to be an original paper, authored by the student alone, and directly related to earthquake engineering or earthquake hazard reduction. This process failed to recognize the contributions of the full research team and constrained the ability of the student and the author team from submitting this content to a technical journal.
The following changes were made in January 2018 to (1) encourage graduate student researchers to publish their high-quality work in Earthquake Spectra, (2) ensure that other research team members are properly credited for their contribution to the work, and (3) align more with current interdisciplinary earthquake engineering research trends.
Guidelines:
- Papers will be submitted to Earthquake Spectra for possible publication. The submitted papers may have any number of authors, but the first author must be a graduate student researcher at the time of first submission. The submitted paper will undergo the normal peer-review process.
- Each year (i.e., each volume of Earthquake Spectra), the preceding published papers will be collected by the managing editor, and then reviewed by the Student Awards Committee to determine which paper(s) will win the graduate student paper award for that year. For example, the 2020 winning paper will be chosen from papers published in Volume 36 of Earthquake Specta, for which the first author was a graduate student researcher at the time of first submission.
- Do not submit a paper for the competition. If your paper was published in Earthquake Spectra and qualifies, it will be reviewed by the Student Awards Committee for the award.
- The authorship team wins the award, and at least one co-author should be designated to accept the award on behalf of the research team at the EERI annual meeting.
Prize:
- Free registration to the EERI Annual Meeting for the first author
- Recognition during the Institute’s Awards Ceremony
- Up to $1,000 to cover airfare, ground transportation, and hotel costs associated with attending the meeting.
The EERI Undergraduate Seismic Design Competition
The Seismic Design Competition is organized by the Student Leadership Council. For more information about the 2018 competition please visit the SDC website.
