The purpose of this award is to honor those that exemplify the spirt of service within the early career astrobiology community.

The 2018 selection process
As this is a community award, the community will participate in the selection of the final candidate. Nominations will be accepted from members across the entire astrobiology community (self-nomination is not allowed) and then nominated candidates will be selected through a community online voting system. The nominees will be listed along with their nomination write-up on the AbGradCon website and community voting will commence during AbGradCon 2018. The awardee will be announced at the closing dinner of AbGradCon on Thursday June 7th, 2018. The awardee will be honored with a plaque and a monetary award of $1000.

Nominee Eligibility
Nominees for this new award must be a graduate student or a post-doc (within 3 years of their PhD) who are actively working in the field of astrobiology.

Call for Nominations
We are calling for nominations for candidates through June 3rd, 2018. We are asking that nominators send the name, title, and institutional affiliation of the nominee along with a brief nomination paragraph to Dr. Kennda Lynch (klynch31@gatech.edu) by 11:59 PM EST on June 3, 2018.