2026 Student Research Paper Award

At the CHESS User Meeting, we recognize the best student paper based on research performed at CHESS during the past year. See eligibility, deadline, and award details below.

2026 CHESS User Meeting

Paper Prize winner at CHESS

Tom Ugras, winner of the 2025 CHESS Student Paper Prize, with his talk entitled: “Transforming achiral semiconductors into chiral domains with exceptional circular dichroism”

CHESS STUDENT RESEARCH PAPER AWARD

CHESS is soliciting nominations for the CHESS Student Paper Award. The award recognizes outstanding research by a student (at the time of the measurements) based on experiments performed at CHESS. To be eligible for the 2026 CHESS Student Paper Award, the paper must have been published between March 31, 2025 - March 31, 2026. The research presented in the paper must be based to a significant extent on experiments performed at CHESS. Nominations can be submitted by any researcher familiar with the research of the student.

NOMINATIONS MUST INCLUDE: 

  • Nomination letter (email) summarizing the impact and importance of the research published in the paper. For papers with multiple authors, the nomination should explain the role of the student in planning the experiments, the measurements as well as the data analysis.
  • Student Curriculum Vitae
  • A link to the published paper

TO SUBMIT:

  • Please send the above documents to the CHESS User Office with the headline "2026 Student Paper Prize Nomination" to chessuseroffice@cornell.edu.

DEADLINES:

  • All nominations are due by Friday, May 1st, 2026

RULES:

  • The paper must have been published between March 31, 2025 - March 31, 2026
  • Papers must have appeared online within that time window.
  • The paper must be based in part on data collected at the Cornell High Energy Synchrotron Source.
  • The work (research) must have been substantially complete when the first author on the paper was a graduate or undergraduate student.

PRESENTING at the USER MEETING:

The prize winner will be notified by May 8, 2026, and asked to present at the annual CHESS User Meeting, held on June 2, 2026, at which time the award will be presented.