Young Investigator Award

This year, the ESCAN Young Investigator Award is awarded ex-equo to Dr Jennifer Murphy (Royal Holloway University of London) and Dr Simone Battaglia (University of Bologna)

Dr. Jennifer Murphy has made substantial and innovative contributions in the fields of social perception and interoception as evidenced by numerous high-quality publications that highlight the importance of robust measures and comprehensive theoretical and methodological frameworks.

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Dr. Simone Battaglia has made substantial and innovative contributions to the field of cognitive and affective neuroscience, specifically in the domain of emotional learning in humans. His research shed new light on the intricate neurofunctional role of the prefrontal cortex in fear memory consolidation and reconsolidation, employing various psychophysiological measures and non-invasive brain stimulation techniques.

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The ESCAN Young Investigator Award honours early achievements of scientists working in the area of Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience and is meant to promote further ascendance of a research star. Scientific excellence should be represented in high-impact publications. The award is intended to first and foremost celebrate the innovative, robust, and substantial scientific contributions of the applicant. Beyond the outstanding scientific contributions, we also consider overall achievements of the applicants and contributions to the wider community, in terms of adopting Open Science practices, esteem, outreach and visibility.

The award includes a honorarium in the amount of 1000 Euro and provides resources to fund travel to the biennial ESCAN meeting (max. 500 Euro). The 2024 award recipient is expected to attend the upcoming meeting from 22nd to 25th of May 2024 in Ghent (Belgium), and to deliver an award talk.

Eligible are researchers with a PhD awarded not longer than 5 years ago on the basis of the PhD award date (plus one year per child and/or plus maternal or paternal leave) whose research falls within the scope of the society’s key focus. Candidates must be active members of ESCAN. Self-nomination is possible.

Applications will be evaluated in terms of the candidate’s:

  1. Scientific Contributions (70%)
    based on the novel, robust, and transformational nature of the candidate’s research output. The research is expected to contribute to the credibility of the field and to adopt Open Science practices (for example, studies are pre-registered, findings are replicated, data and scripts are made available, and/or findings are published as preprints). 
  2. Scientific Achievements (20%)
    based on theoretical contribution, evidence of research independence, service to the scientific community (peer-review, editorship, open science contributions) and grant capture.
  3. Esteem, outreach, and visibility (10%)
    based on past awards, international invited talks, keynotes, participation in international symposia, public engagement, media coverage.

Documents to be submitted

  1. A maximum 2-page document explaining the key scientific achievements of the candidate. Emphasis should be given on how these achievements map onto specific research articles of the candidate. This document can be written/signed by the nominator or the applicant herself/himself in case of self-nomination.
  2. CV (maximum 2 pages) to cover education, employment, awards, international invited talks, keynotes, participation in international symposia, contributions to Open Science, public engagement, service to the scientific community, media coverage, engagement with non-academic audiences or any other information the candidate deems necessary.
  3. Publication list, including citations as provided by Scopus (excluding self-citations), and H index. The applicant should highlight the publications for which the PhD supervisor is not included in the authors’ list.
  4. Copies of the candidate’s three most important peer-reviewed papers.

Please submit all documents in the aforementioned order, as ONE single pdf file named after the surname of the candidate (e.g., “SURNAME.pdf”) to escan@escaneurosci.eu, and mention the award in the title.

Deadline: November 27th, 2023