Application Process

We encourage readers to broadly share this call, and we strongly encourage members of groups that are underrepresented in scientific communities to apply for this award.

Applications for the 2025 Research Parasite Awards must be received by August 23, 2024 at 5PM HST (Hawaii Standard Time) at parasite.award@gmail.com. The award will be presented via a video livestream. We plan for this to occur during the first week of January as part of the 30th Annual Pacific Symposium on Biocomputing. An application requires:

• An application letter describing how each selected paper meets the criteria for the award.
• Junior Parasite (aka the sporozoite): a PDF of one paper published after peer review on which the application will be judged.
• Sustained Parasitism (aka the merozoite): PDFs of three papers published after peer review on which the application will be judged.

The award winners will be recognized at the Pacific Symposium on Biocomputing each year and listed on the PSB website along with links to the winning papers.

Eligibility

Selection criteria (both awards) for the work in question:

• The awardee must not have been involved the design of the experiments that generated the data.
• The awardee published independently of the original investigators, and the original investigators are not authors of the secondary analyses but are appropriately credited in the manuscripts.
• The awardee may have extended, replicated or disproved what the original investigators had posited.
• The awardee has provided source code and intermediate or final results in a manner that enhances reproducibility.

Additional selection criteria for the Junior Parasite award:

• The awardee must have published the work at the training stage of their career (postdoctoral, graduate, or undergraduate). If the awardee has assumed a position as an independent investigator she or he should not have been in that position for more than 2 years.
• The award will be based on work described in a single manuscript (submitted alongside the application letter).

Additional selection criteria for the Sustained Parasitism award:

• The awardee must be in an independent investigator position in academia, industry or public sector.
• The awardee must be a last or corresponding author on the three manuscripts submitted alongside the application letter.
• At least a five-year period must have elapsed between the publication of the first manuscript and the final manuscript.

By submitting an application you agree that the decisions of the parasite award committee are final, and the committee is unable to provide feedback on applications that were not selected.

1. PSB conference co-chairs do not serve as nominator or endorser for any application submitted for this award.
2. Members of this award committee do not serve as a nominator for any application for this award. If you have nominated a candidate, inform the committee chair immediately so that one of two actions may be taken: (a) the application will be set aside for the year, or (b) you will step down from the committee for the year.
3. Members of this committee should not be directly involved in application prior to their submittal. Members can answer general questions about what a application should include but may not pre-review or comment on draft applications.
4. Members must maintain confidentiality about the internal discussions of the committee. Information about committee deliberations should not be shared with anyone outside the committee, nor should the winner be discussed until PSB has issued a formal statement.
5. Members of this committee and the committee as a whole do not provide feedback to unsuccessful candidates. If a member is asked for feedback, this policy should be cited.
6. Members of this committee are not eligible to be nominated for the award during their time on the committee. Individuals in the research group of a committee member are also not eligible to be nominated for the award during that member’s time on the committee.
7. Members of this committee must self-identify any relationships/affiliations that might be perceived as a source of potential bias, and inform the committee chair of the COIs before any candidates have been discussed. Identify any candidates with whom you: have had close personal or working relationships within the past 5 years or the period covered by the award, whichever is longer; anyone for whom you were thesis advisor/advisee; anyone for whom you were a postdoctoral advisor/advisee; anyone for whom you were a faculty mentor/mentee; or any other case where your judgment could be affected. Also identify any candidates from your current institution or one where you worked within the past 5 years.

In the event that a committee member has a relationship described in rule 7 with one or more nominees, s/he should disclose that relationship to the other committee members and describe the nature of the relationship(s). The other committee members should then decide (without the conflicted committee member) whether the conflict is adequately mitigated by disclosure. In the event that a majority of the other committee members believes the conflict is not adequately mitigated by disclosure, the following procedure should be followed: (1) The conflicted committee member may not participate in the discussion of the conflicted nominee; (2) If the non-conflicted committee members feel a conflicted nominee should be an awardee, then those committee members should send a written description of the conflict and the rationale for their decision to the PSB co-chairs; (3) if a majority of the PSB co-chairs believe the decision has been improperly biased by the conflict, the conflicted nominee cannot be the award winner, and the committee will be tasked with selecting a different awardee.