Student Paper Competitions

Please direct questions to: 
Cliff Brown, NASA Glenn Research Center

Award Name

Best Student Paper in Aeroacoustics

Undergraduate and graduate students are encouraged to submit papers to the Aeroacoustics Student Paper Competition by selecting "Student Paper Competition" presentation type when uploading abstracts.

Eligibility Requirements & Other Rules:

Student papers should report on thesis-related work conducted in collaboration with faculty advisors. The primary author must have been a student in May 2025 and must present the paper. If students at Aviation or the Aeroacoustics conference decide not to participate in the student paper competition, they will be considered for the AIAA/CEAS best paper award instead.

Selection Criteria:

The award will be based on the technical quality of the paper and the clarity of the presentation. The winning student will receive a monetary award and certificate.

Please direct questions to: 
Max Li, University of Michigan
Min Xue, NASA Ames Research Center

Award Name

Neil Y. Chen Memorial Best Student Paper Award

The best student award in air transportation systems recognizes the best student paper each year in the air transportation system technical discipline at the AIAA Aviation. The authors who want their papers to be considered for this award should select the best student paper option during submission. The full papers will be evaluated by the AIAA requirements and our technical committee selection criteria. The authors (finalists) of the 3-5 candidate papers will be invited to give their presentations in the same session. The award will be announced at the AIAA Aviation.

Section Criteria

Significance of contribution (20%), Structure of paper (10%), Writing quality (10%), Appropriateness of the approach (20%), Clarity of drawings, graphs, and tables (10%), Appropriateness of abstract (10%), Quality of discussion and conclusions (10%), Adequacy of references and discussion of prior work (10%)

Please direct questions to: 
Reza Djeddi, NASA Langley Research Center
Brent Pomeroy, NASA Langley Research Center

Award Name

Applied Aerodynamics Student Paper Competition

The Applied Aerodynamics Technical Committee is sponsoring the APA Student Paper Competition. Eligible written papers will be judged by members of the APATC Education Subcommittee. The winner of the competition will be notified after the conference and receive both a certificate and a $1000 award.

Eligibility Requirements & Other Rules:

Authorship: To be eligible, the student needs to be full-time at either the graduate or undergraduate level. Students are encouraged to submit extended abstracts that are as close as possible to the anticipated final paper. Student papers should report on work primarily conducted by students in collaboration with their faculty advisors; therefore, all primary/presenting authors of papers submitted for consideration in the Student Paper Competition must be students at the time of abstract submission. The first author of the paper must remain the same between the abstract, final paper, and presentation. Up to two non-student co-authors are allowed.

Presentation: At conference, the presentation must be given by the primary author of the paper.

Extended Abstract: Student abstracts must be extended abstracts that follow the rules outlined in this Call for Papers. When submitting to the abstract submission website, select “Student Paper Competition” as the paper type.

Section Criteria

Final papers will be judged based upon the importance of the work, originality, quality, and completeness. Submissions will only be judged based on the written work and not the oral presentation.

Please direct questions to: 
William Wright, HX5, LLC
Nash'at Ahmad, Leidos, Inc.

Award Name

Atmospheric and Space Environments Student Paper Competition

Undergraduate and graduate students are encouraged to submit papers for consideration in the Atmospheric and Space Environments Student Paper Competition. Entries to the Student Paper Competition will be presented in regular technical sessions with other papers in their topic area and archived as AIAA papers.

Eligibility Requirements & Other Rules:

To be eligible for this award, the student must be an AIAA member or student member, the primary author of the paper, and in attendance at the conference to present the paper. In addition, all work must have been performed while the author was a student.

Section Criteria

The written papers will be judged based on the following criteria: (1) originality (is the work original, or is it something that has been addressed in the past); (2) technical quality (appropriate level of technicality and free of errors); (3) organization, completeness, grammar and usage (style and clarity); (4) literature review/acknowledgement of prior work and explanation of the relevance to the work presented in the paper; (5) accuracy of experimental or numerical results (ref. AIAA standards for journals); (6) importance/contribution to field. The student author of the best paper will receive a certificate and a cash award after the conference.

Please direct questions to: 
Krishna Sampigethaya, Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University
Terrence Lewis, NASA Ames Research Center

Award Name

Best Student Paper Award in Aviation and Aerospace Cybersecurity

The best student award in aviation and aerospace cybersecurity recognizes the best student paper each year in the aviation cybersecurity technical discipline at the AIAA Aviation. The authors who want their papers to be considered for this award should select the best student paper option during submission. The full papers will be evaluated by the AIAA requirements and our technical committee selection criteria. The authors (finalists) of the 3-5 candidate papers will be invited to give their presentations in the same session. The award will be announced at the AIAA AVIATION.

Eligibility Requirements & Other Rules:

To be eligible for this award, the student must be an AIAA member or student member, the primary author of the paper, and in attendance at the conference to present the paper. In addition, all work must have been performed while the author was a student.

Selection Criteria:

The written papers will be judged based on the following criteria: (1) originality (is the work original, or is it something that has been addressed in the past); (2) technical quality (appropriate level of technicality and free of errors); (3) organization, completeness, grammar and usage (style and clarity); (4) literature review/acknowledgement of prior work and explanation of the relevance to the work presented in the paper; (5) accuracy of experimental or numerical results (ref. AIAA standards for journals); (6) importance/contribution to field. The student author of the best paper will receive a certificate after the conference.

Please direct questions to: 
Luis Bravo, US Army Research Laboratory

Award Name

AIAA Fluid Dynamics (FD) Student Paper Competition

The AIAA Fluid Dynamics (FD) Student Paper Competition provides students the opportunity to share their research findings. Participation is open to all full-time undergraduate and graduate students pursuing a degree in an engineering or scientific discipline at an accredited college or university. A cash prize of $300 will be awarded to the first-place winner, $200 to the second place, and $100 to the third place. Awards are based on a combination of the extended abstract, the final conference paper, and the presentation. The judges will use the extended abstracts to initially screen the competition entries. Further details of the eligibility and requirements for the submission and the judging criteria are provided below.

The competition results will be announced after the conference and checks will be mailed to the winners. All submissions must meet the deadlines for the conference given in the general information section of this Call for Papers. During the submission, please indicate that the paper is a Student Paper Competition Entry on the title page. Papers submitted to the FD Student Paper Competition will be presented in regular technical sessions with other papers in the relevant topic area. Student Paper Competition entries will be treated as regular AIAA conference papers in the conference proceedings and will be archived as AIAA papers.

Selection Criteria:

Criteria for judging include:

• The work’s importance in advancing the state of the art
• The technical approach
• Rationale for the work
• Sufficient and consistent results
• Verification and validation
• Style, clarity, and format of the paper and presentation

Please direct questions to: 
Andy Lacher, NASA Langley Research Center
Jay Wilhelm, Ohio University

Award Name

Intelligent Systems Student Paper Competition

Graduate students are invited to participate in the Intelligent Systems Student Paper Competition. Students must be registered as full-time students in good academic standing at the time of submission. Primary or sole authorship by a single student is required, and any second or third author must be the graduate thesis advisor (no more than three authors shall be permitted). A student competition paper subcommittee will review the extended abstracts submitted as Intelligent Systems Student Paper Competition papers based on their originality, clarity, and potential impact on practical applications or theoretical foundations, and select 5 or 6 paper finalists. All papers that are not selected will be forwarded to the area chairs for possible inclusion as regular conference papers. A student paper competition session will be held during the conference; the 5-6 finalists will present once at Aviation during this session. Directly after this session, the subcommittee will decide the winner based on both the paper and the presentation, and the student will be notified by email. The winner will be presented with an award during Aviation 2025. Those graduate students interested in participating should submit an extended abstract by the Aviation 2025 deadline (21 Nov 2024) being sure to select participation in the paper contest. They will be notified by 10 March 2025 whether they are being considered as one of 5-6 finalists. A full draft manuscript is due 18 April 2025; with the final manuscript due to AIAA by the general deadline of 16 June 2025. Students must attend AIAA Aviation in person to present their paper during the competition session.

Please direct questions to: 
Martin Muir, Imperial College

Award Name

Multidisciplinary Design Optimization Student Paper Competition

The MDO Student Paper Competition, sponsored by NASA Transformational Tools and Technologies (TTT) Project, encourages undergraduate and graduate students to submit papers to the technical topics listed in this call for papers. Co-authored papers are welcome; however, the first author must be an AIAA member and a registered student at the time the final paper is submitted. The student must have played a primary role in the research, the technical development and the writing of the paper. When submitting an abstract for the MDO Student Paper Competition, authors must choose a "Presentation Type" from the drop-down menu on the abstract submission website and click on "Student Paper Competition" and select the topic "Multidisciplinary Design and Optimization”. This will ensure that the abstract is submitted to the MDO topic. If you are unable to enter the student paper competition, because you must submit to a different topic, then please email the chair and ask to be included. Abstract acceptance notification will occur at the same time as the regular papers. Students will be notified if they are finalists, or not, approximately 2 weeks after the final papers are due. The finalists will present their papers in-person in a special MDO session during the first day of the AVIATION Forum.

Eligibility Requirements & Other Rules

The deadline for the student paper abstracts is the same as the conference abstract deadline and the student paper abstracts will be reviewed in the same way as the regular conference abstracts. The full papers of the Student Paper Competition are due at the same time as the regular papers. No extensions will be granted to the full manuscript submission deadline if you wish to remain in contention of the award. At the time of the final submission the authors will be required to identify, through communication to the chair of the competition, the individual contributions of each listed co-author. Papers that do not show primary contributions from the first author will not be considered for this competition.

Selection Criteria:

The papers will be judged by expert reviewers, and finalists will be selected to present in-person at a special MDO session during the first day of the AVIATION Forum. The award decision will be based on both the paper and the presentation. The judging criteria are: i) the originality and technical quality of the work and its novelty and importance to the field; ii) the clarity of the presentation, with special emphasis given to visuals and their contribution to the understanding of the material; iii) the clarity of research objectives and the organization and conciseness of the paper. A soft word limit of 5000 will be imposed (not including abstract, figures, captions, or bibliography), with the judges’ discretion used to decide if additional length added meaningful value to the paper. First prize is $2,000 and the runner-up will receive $1,000.

Please direct questions to: 
Tarek Abdel-Salam, East Carolina University

Award Name

Terrestrial Energy Systems Best Student Paper Award

This award will be presented to best student paper submitted under Terrestrial Energy Systems Committee.

Selection Criteria:

A rubric will be used. This includes contribution to the field, relevance to TES, and Meritorious archival value.

Please direct questions to: 
Andrew Lacher, NASA
Keith Hoffler, Adaptive Aerospace Group

Award Name

Best Paper in Uncrewed and Autonomous Systems

Single paper awarded based on technical discipline selection criteria below.

Eligibility Requirements & Other Rules

Must be submitted/presented under any of the Uncrewed and Autonomous Systems topics.

Section Criteria

• Scope & significance of contribution
• Originality
• impact on the domain of unmanned systems
• Relevance: systems optimization and integration, simulation, flight testing, and implementation of technologies for the advancement of the unmanned systems domain