WNAR Student Paper Competition

What is it?

WNAR holds a student paper competition each year in conjunction with its annual conference.  Prizes are awarded for best papers in written and oral categories.  Winners of the Outstanding Written Paper Award and the Outstanding Oral Presentation Award receive $500, which will be payable by checks at the banquet.  Typically there is one winner in each category, but there can be two winners in case of tie.  

Who is eligible?

To enter the student paper competition, an entrant must: 

o Be a current student or recent graduate (graduation date not earlier than May 1 of the conference year) of an undergraduate or graduate program in biostatistics, statistics, or other applied mathematical fields having a biometric focus AND
o   Be a current WNAR member (entrants located outside of the WNAR region must be a member of their IBS region and join WNAR as a supporting member) AND 
o   Register for the conference (registration is free for students) AND 
o   Submit an abstract AND 
o   Submit a manuscript that follows the guidelines below AND 
o   

Give an oral presentation at the conference, during a student paper session. 

Additional eligibility information: Students having previously won a WNAR student paper competition award, or a student competition award from any other IBS region competition, are excluded from subsequent WNAR competitions. Only one submission is allowed per year per student. Students who wish to present a paper but do not wish to enter the competition may submit a contributed paper to the conference. Students who are presenting in an invited or contributed session at the conference are not eligible to participate in the student competition at the same conference. 

What are the guidelines for the mansucripts?

Manuscripts must meet the following guidelines:

• The paper must have been initiated while a student, where the bulk of the effort leading to the paper was put forth by the student.  The reported work must be that of the student, although collaborators may be co-authors, provided that the student is the first author. 
• Reported research should be relevant to biometrics applications.
• Manuscripts should be typeset using the Biometrics LaTeX template with the “referee” option (this option makes the manuscript double-spaced with 1-inch margins and at least 10-point font). 
• The page limit for manuscripts is: 1 title page with abstract, 10 pages of manuscript text (not counting title page, references, tables, or figures), and a combined maximum of 4 tables or figures. 
• The submitted manuscript should be blinded, with author and institution information removed from the manuscript. 
•  The manuscript must not be published or accepted for publications at the time of submission to the competition. 
•   Entrants whose manuscript does not follow these guidelines may be disqualified from the competition.

What are the guidelines for presentations?

Participants in the student competition must present the research from their manuscript in a special student competition session at the WNAR meeting. Specific details of presentation timing vary by conference year depending upon the number of submissions, but generally the talks are 15 minutes in length with an additional 5 minutes for questions. 

What are the deadlines for entering?

TBD for 2025

Abstract submission

Abstracts should be submitted via the main conference abstract submission page and include the same information as for contributed talks: contact information for the corresponding author [i.e. the student], the manuscript title, list of co-authors and affiliations, and the abstract body.

Manuscript submission

The manuscript should be submitted to the Student Paper Competition Committee Chair at TBD. 

Review criteria

Review criteria for both the written and oral competitions can be found here.