This year, the Office of the Vice President for Research restructured the Discovery and Innovation Awards to better celebrate research and scholarship across all disciplines.

Key changes include:

• Nominations for the Early Career Scholar of the Year, Leadership in Research, Postdoctoral Research Scholar/Fellow Excellence Award, and Graduate and Professional Student Research Excellence Award will be considered in three disciplinary groups: 
  • Arts, humanities, law, and qualitative social sciences
  • Natural, physical, life, engineering, computational, and mathematical sciences; and quantitative social sciences
  • Health, biomedical, and clinical sciences
• Graduate and professional student research awards were consolidated into the Graduate and Professional Student Research Excellence Award.
• The Faculty Newsmaker of the Year Award is the updated Faculty Communicating Ideas Award. 
• Expanded disciplinary categories  and increased representation for the arts and humanities in the Early Career Scholar of the Year and the Leadership in Research Award replace The Distinguished Achievement in Arts and Humanities Research Award.
• The Distinguished Achievement in Publicly Engaged Research Award was merged with the Faculty Leadership Award in Community Engagement, presented by the Office of Community Engagement.

Learn more about each award and submit nominations through the individual award pages.