Nominations for the 2025 R. Berner Lecture

Who may submit a nomination?

Anyone may submit a nomination for the R. Berner Lecture except for the members of the R. Berner Award Committee, the EAG Council and the GS Board. They may not nominate a candidate directly but they may actively solicit nominations from others.

Who may be nominated?

The R. Berner Lecture is bestowed to a mid-career scientist shown to have made exceptional contributions to define globally important biogeochemical processes, developed new understanding(s), and significantly advanced this area of research.

To be eligible, nominees should be a mid-career scientist who has received their PhD at least 10 years and no more than 21 years of full time equivalent scientific employ before the Goldschmidt conference at which the lecture is presented; hence, for the 2025 Berner Lecture, the lecturer should have received their PhD between 2004 and 2015 (but see information on career breaks here).
Nominations of underrepresented groups are encouraged.

We are committed to promoting the diversity of our awardees, to recognizing a wide range of different types of exceptional contribution, and we acknowledge the different career paths that lead to the achievement of such contributions.

Any scientist may be nominated except for:

the current members of the EAG Council
the current members of the GS Board
the current members of the R. Berner Award Committee
past recipients of the R. Berner Lecture

We do not exclude mentors or mentees (e.g., supervisor-student, post-doctoral employer-employee relationship) from making nominations. We also do not exclude collaborators or members of the same institution as writers of nominator or support letters. We do regard such nominations as a potential conflict of interest if the relationship has been in the past 3 years. Such potential conflict of interest should be acknowledged and communicated to the selection committee as part of the nomination (in the nomination letter), but do not disqualify the individual from participating.

What are the nomination requirements?

A nomination package should consist of:

Nominee’s CV (up to 4 pages)
List of publications
List of recent presentations and link to webpage, if available
A recommendation letter from the nominator (up to 2 pages)

Please assemble all the files into one PDF file and upload it below.

Nomination deadline: 6 December 2024

Submit your nomination here

An “outstanding / exceptional / profound contribution(s)” encompasses one or various combinations of the following contributions:

a series of publications (including any combination of papers, edited volumes, authored books, written reports, other writing) that represents outstanding contribution
an innovative breakthrough
teaching and training the next generation of geochemists
improvements to infrastructure and techniques
capacity building - especially in developing countries or emerging disciplines
significant contributions to building of the community such as through meeting organisation, building peer-networking groups, other positive initiatives, and tangible efforts that advance diversity, equity, and inclusion
work with policy makers to ensure that their decisions are grounded in rigorous science
curation of significant sample collections and databases of long-term scientific value
communication of the intrinsic excitement of our field to the general public, where innovative and / or connecting with traditionally underrepresented or underserved people will be considered a plus
exceptional editorial contributions

Career Paths

The European Association of Geochemistry recognizes that there are diverse research career paths, as well as the challenges of managing a research career alongside other personal commitments, possible chronic illness, and/or disability. When reviewing applicants’ eligibility and research experience, the societies will take into consideration - where reported with brevity in nomination packages - time spent working on a part-time basis and/or outside of the research environment. If a nominee has been reported to have worked part-time, they should briefly state the percentage of full-time equivalent hours that they observed and the time period it pertains to.

Where nominees have had a career break, worked outside of scientific research (where relevant to the nominee’s assessment category), taken formal periods of maternity, paternity shared parental and adoptive leave as the primary care giver, or extended/repeated sick or bereavement leave, this will be taken account of by awards committees. Each case will be considered individually.

Career Paths

The European Association of Geochemistry and the Geochemical Society recognize that there are diverse research career paths, as well as the challenges of managing a research career alongside other personal commitments, possible chronic illness, and/or disability. When reviewing applicants’ eligibility and research experience, the societies will take into consideration - where reported with brevity in nomination packages - time spent working on a part-time basis and/or outside of the research environment. If a nominee has been reported to have worked part-time, they should briefly state the percentage of full-time equivalent hours that they observed and the time period it pertains to.