20-21 CRA Outstanding Undergraduate Researcher Award (Fall 2020)

Department Deadline: 10/8/2020 by 11:59P
External Deadline: 10/16/2020 by 9:00PM EST

CRA Outstanding Undergraduate Researcher Award (Fall 2020)

CRA's Outstanding Undergraduate Awards Program recognizes undergraduate students in North American universities who show outstanding research potential in an area of computing research.

Nominees must attend a university or college located in North America, be enrolled as an undergraduate for the entire 2020-2021 academic year (i.e. both semesters), and must be nominated by one faculty members and recommended by the chair of their home department. In the past, preference has been given to students in their senior year.

A cash prize of $1,500 will be awarded to each of two undergraduate students for travel to a major conference. A small number of other outstanding candidates will be recognized as Runners-Up and Finalists.

No more than four candidates can be recommended by the same department chair in the same year.

See: http://cra.org/crae/awards/cra-outstanding-undergraduate-researchers/
http://www.cra.org/awards/undergrad-current/

Submission Details (10/8/20 by 11:59P)

Required Materials:

Your resume; list any publications. (2-page maximum length.) The resume should contain information on the nominee’s academic record and service, and it must indicate each research project in which the nominee has been involved. For each such project, the resume should include specific information. See guidelines at the bottom of the first link.
Research Summary. (1-page maximum length) The research summary gives the nominee the opportunity to describe research project(s) in detail. While the award committee comprises computer science professors, it’s likely that most of them will not have expertise in the specific field in which the nominee worked. So, while one can use well-known concepts without defining them (e.g., names of data structures and terms like “NP-completeness”, “compiler”, or “k-means clustering”), one should imagine writing to a computer science professor who works in a different subdiscipline.
Personal Statement: (Not to exceed 300 words) should address interests and activities outside of research (e.g., club leadership, teaching, peer tutoring) and/or special circumstances or adversity that the student has confronted.
Unofficial transcripts. Unofficial transcripts can be obtained for free at: https://apps.uillinois.edu/selfservice/
Letters of support. Have your faculty research supervisor submit a letter of support. (3-page maximum length.) Have them see the guidelines at the bottom of the first link.

Materials should be submitted by 11:59PM on 10/8/2020 to Michelle Wellens.

Note: Electronic documents are preferred and should be submitted as PDFs. Letters of recommendation should be sent from the letter writer directly to Michelle. Students, submit ONE PDF named "20-21. CRA Ugrad - Last Name, First Name."