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The HEAD Innovation Prize

The HEAD Innovation Prize (instituted 2020)  is awarded approximately every 18 months to recognize development of innovative, foundational and/or revolutionary instrumentation or software tools that have led to groundbreaking results in high energy astrophysics. The prize may be awarded to individuals or teams.

 The prize is selected and administered by the AAS HEAD Executive Committee. The winner will give an invited talk at the Divisional Meeting in the award year and be presented with a framed certificate.  The HEAD covers up to $1500 for up to two recipients to cover  travel and lodging expenses to attend the meeting, and waives meeting registration fees. The prize carries a total cash award of $1500.

The 2024 Prize Winners: Javier García, Thomas Dauser, & Tim Kallman

Dr. Javier García, Dr. Thomas Dauser, and Dr. Tim Kallman have been awarded the 2024 HEAD Innovation Prize for the development of novel models to describe emission in the strong gravity regime from accreting compact objects. Please see the press release for more information.

The List of Awardees

The Nomination Process

The due date for nomination materials to be submitted to the HEAD Secretary will be approximately six months before the HEAD division meeting.  A nomination should include:

  • A cover letter
  • PDF copies of no more than 5 peer-reviewed publications made possible as a direct result of the nominated work.
  • A nomination statement, listing the specific instrumentation/software contribution.The statement should specifically address the relevance of this work to high energy astrophysics. The nomination statement should describe the contribution under consideration to the published results cited, and explain the importance of the published results to the field of high energy astrophysics. The nomination statement should describe the specific contributions of the nominee or team to the published work.
  • If a team is nominated, the nominator should suggest one member of the team to give the prize talk at the Divisional meeting.

Self nominations are allowed.

Nominations can be submitted using the Innovation Prize nomination form.

Please note that nominations are not held over; nominations need to be re-submitted  for consideration in the next award cycle, 

Deadline

The current deadline for nominations has been extended to October 8, 2024.