At our annual conference, in the true spirit of a symposium (as in the work with the same name by Plato, i.e., a friendly contest of extemporaneous speeches given by a group of notable men attending a banquet
), we reward the best papers, oral presentations and posters.
The contest has had different names, formats and rules over the years, but it has always been a way to recognize participants, and in particular students, and their efforts.
Currently, the contest has two separate groups (students and professionals) each with three competitions:
All authors and presenters are automatically entered in the contest.
The written competition for both groups is part of our paper review process: all papers accepted for publication in
Biomedical Sciences Instrumentation are reviewed by at least two individuals as part of the peer-review process and a dedicated form is used to provide a numerical score. The scores are normalized by reviewer, averaged across all reviewers and later ranked to find out the best papers of the publication cycle.
The oral and poster competitions are conducted at the annual symposium. To ensure full engagement by all attendees, all registered symposium participants, independently of the status of student or professional, are asked to judge all presentations and posters no matter who is giving them, a students or a professionals. Only at the final tally the two groups are ranked separately. This give an opportunity to students to be judges not only of other students but also of professionals, including sometimes their teachers. and an individual can get up to three awards
We try to recognize as many students as possible, so there are also some "special awards":
They are presented to students that have not yet won anything and the recipients are chosen respectively by the RMBS president, the Program Chair(s), the Contest Chair(s) and one Board member who, at their sole discretion, select who they think is most meritorious.
The award consist of a certificate and often a check.
Click on a specific year on the top of this page to find out the winners for that year.
