Dear KAUST community,

We would like to bring to your attention that the deadline to apply for The 2025 Web Of Talents STEM award is approaching (January 31^st, 2025). The goal of this award is to prize master and doctoral students with excellent skills and potential for research in the fields of Materials Science, Physics, Chemistry and Electronics. Prizes up to 1,500 USD to the best student are given. Find more details below.

Web of Talents (https://weboftalents.com, WOT) is an online platform (developed at KAUST) that gives maximum visibility to talented researchers working in the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM), and it facilitates recruitment tasks to professors and team leaders looking for students and postdocs. The goal of this award is to prize master and doctoral students with excellent skills and potential for research in the fields of Materials Science, Physics, Chemistry and Electronics. 

Prize: 

• The first winner will receive 1,500 USD plus one commemorative plaque. 
• The second winner will receive 1000 USD plus one commemorative plaque. 
• The third winner will receive 500 USD plus one commemorative plaque. 
  

The three winners will be invited to give a presentation at the 1st Web of Talents International Online Workshop, which will be held around June 2025 (registration fee will be waived). 

Application requirements: 

• Applicants must be enrolled in a Bachelor, Master or Doctoral study program at the time of the deadline. Applications from fresh-graduated doctors who defended their thesis after June 1st 2024 are also acceptable. 
• Applicants must have published one article in a journal that has impact factor (no need to be as 1st author). Conference proceedings may be considered if: i) the article is online available with DOI number; ii) the article has been peer reviewed; and iii) the conference is organized by a reputed society or publisher. 

Application process: 

1 – Register in the platform Web of Talents as Candidate at: https://weboftalents.com/auth/signup (or login, if you already have a profile). 

2 – Fill your profile tab (or update it, if you already have a profile) indicating your most important achievements and publications. Indicate clearly your contribution in each article. Upload a 20-30 video webinar in your profile tab. See additional instructions in next page. Applications without video webinar will be discarded. 

3 – Deadline: The winners selection will take place on January 31st, 2025. All persons with a Candidate profile in Web of Talents will be considered as applicants. By that day, make sure that your profile is up to date and reflects all your merits (publications, awards, etcetera). 

Members of the Award Committee: 

1. Prof. Jesus del Alamo (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA) 
2. Prof. Yury Gogotsi (Drexel University, USA) 
3. Prof. Saptarshi Das (Penn State University, USA) 
4. Prof. Cinzia Casiraghi (The University of Manchester, United Kingdom) 
5. Prof. Deji Akinwande (University of Texas at Austin, USA) 
6. Prof. Eilam Yalon (Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, Israel) 
7. Prof. Fei Hui (Zhengzhou University, China) 
8. Prof. Mario Lanza (National University of Singapore, Singapore) 
9. Prof. Stephan Roche (Catalan Institute of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology, Spain) 
10. Prof. Max Lemme (RWTH Aachen University, Germany) 
    

Materials to be submitted 

• Certificates. Provide a scanned copy of your diploma and transcript (grades) for each degree completed (it in the “Education” section, use the buttons “Upload Diploma” and “Upload Scores”). 
  

• Video Webinar. This can be uploaded at bottom of the profile page, and it is aimed to showcase your research skills. You can present the content of your Bachelor, Master or Doctoral degree, if you completed any of them. Please describe clearly the problem that you have faced, the state-of-the-art methods used by others to trying to solve it, the approach that you have used to solve it and why it is suitable, the methodology and protocols followed, and the conclusions extracted. If you have experience in more than one project, you can replicate this structure to present more than one project, as far as your video does not surpass 30 minutes. It is particularly important that you showcase your skills, emphasizing which experiments you can do and which machines and/or software you can use. The work done by others must be clearly indicated and cited. The committee will evaluate the depth of the technical content, the clarity of explanations (including format of the slides), as well as communication skills in English. Presentations must be objective and claims of potential applications must be realistic; making unreasonable hype will be seen negatively by the committee. 
  

To record the video you could use Zoom or Teams software (or similar), share your screen and camera, and record the video in your computer. After that, upload it in MP4 format. Applications without video Webinar will be automatically discarded. As an example, in this link you can find the profile of a candidate correctly filled, and with the video uploaded: 

https://weboftalents.com/profilepublic/yue%20yuan 

Web of Talents platform is available Desktop and Laptops (still not in smartphones). For technical issues related to the platform please send an email to info@weboftalents.com. This address is only for technical issues. All the information considered to evaluate the candidates must be in the profile; independent files sent via email will be discarded. 

Evaluation criteria 

The winners will be those candidates who have higher potential for doing research and becoming a strong scientist in the fields of Materials Science, Physics, Chemistry and Electronics. The committee will consider all the merits indicated in the profile (publications, awards, etcetera), giving significant importance to the clarity and depth of the video webinar. The committee will consider in which career stage is each candidate, meaning (for example) that a master student with one excellent publication who makes a very clear and technically deep video presentation can rank higher than a last-year PhD student with three average publications and video webinar. 

Additional information about Web of Talents 

Candidates who have a profile in the platform can get some immediate additional benefits to promote their career and visibility, as well as to apply for an academic or industry position. First, they can apply for positions from top groups, universities and companies with only one simple click. Second, they can make their profile public and use it as personal website by clicking in their image in the top right corner and click in Account. In the URL section, switch the toggle and copy the URL.