Liddy Shriver Early Research Award

Definition and Guidelines

The Liddy Shriver Early Career Research Award is intended to recognize, with an elite international award and lecture, an outstanding early-career researcher working in the sarcoma field. It is not primarily an award for future research, but an award based on track record of early achievement, and is intended to be international in scope. An important aspect of this award is the lecture at CTOS and subsequent publishing of the lecture.

  1. The award will be made on the basis of internationally recognized, outstanding contributions by the researcher to the field of sarcoma research.
  2. Nominees must be early career researchers between 3 and 6 years past their first faculty position. In judging eligibility, time taken out of research for parental duties, or for health or other reasons, will be taken into account.
    1. Nominees may be from any country and must be exclusively employed at a not-for-profit institution.
    2. Nominees must demonstrate a focus specifically on research into sarcomas.
    3. Each nominee will be nominated by a nominator, with letters of support and other appropriate documentation by at least two colleagues with recognized standing as researchers in their field. At least one of the letters must come from outside the nominee's institute. A nominator may only nominate one person each year.
    4. Nomination packets are to be submitted by the deadline of August 15th, 2023. Up to 10 nominations will be accepted each year. The CTOS LSERA Award Nominations Guidelines must be followed when submitting a nomination.
  3. The nominees will be judged by a panel, the CTOS LSERA Panel, comprised of five persons consisting minimally of three members of the CTOS Board of Directors, a member from SARC, and a member from the EORTC Bone and Soft-tissue sarcoma group.
    1. The CTOS LSERA Panel will be comprised of individuals internationally recognized as outstanding researchers across the breadth of the sarcoma field. In practice, the panel should represent the clinical community, the basic research community, pediatric sarcomas, adult sarcomas, bone sarcomas and soft tissue sarcomas.
    2. Appointments to the CTOS LSERA Panel are made by the President of the CTOS Board of Directors in consultation with the Board. Appointments to the CTOS LSERA Panel are for a 2-year period with some, but not all, of the initial appointments being made for 3-years. An individual may serve on the Panel for no more than two consecutive terms.
    3. Each year, the members of the CTOS LSERA Panel will choose its Chair, who will conduct its meetings, interact with nominators as appropriate, and relay the Panel’s recommendations to the CTOS Board of Directors.
    4. A member of the CTOS LSERA Panel should be excused from voting on any nominee where a possible conflict of interest or lack of impartiality exists. Importantly, no member of the panel may nominate or provide letters of support for any nominee.
  4. In the event that no nominee in any given year is regarded as worthy, the CTOS LSERA Award will be not be made.
  5. If a nominee is selected, the recipient will receive the CTOS LSERA Award and an associated plaque, provided by CTOS, at the annual CTOS scientific meeting. The awardee will be notified no later than September 1, 2023, and the winner will need to create a 20 minute lecture with a Powerpoint presentation to be presented during the 2023 CTOS Annual Meeting in Dublin, Ireland.
    1. The CTOS LSERA Award recipient will receive US$60,000, to go to research into sarcomas. The guidelines for the use of the funds are subject to the usual conditions of grants from the Liddy Shriver Sarcoma Initiative, i.e. the funds are to be used only to directly support research and not administrative costs, travel fees, conference fees, or publications costs.
    2. The CTOS LSERA Award recipient must give a lecture with a PowerPoint presentation at the CTOS annual meeting.
      1. The lecture should project forward in time, reflecting the awardee’s anticipated future research in the field of sarcoma. Only in exceptional circumstances will the award be made to an individual who is unable to attend the CTOS meeting, and in this event, a video presentation is mandatory.
      2. The lecture must be submitted as an essay of up to 1,600 words, double spaced in PDF format, with slides from the oral presentation, to the CTOS website for public access.
  6. The CTOS LSERA Panel should provide a brief report annually to the CTOS Board of Directors and to the Liddy Shriver Sarcoma Initiative to monitor the award process and to provide a mechanism for iterative revision to this Definition and Guidelines document by agreement of both organizations.

Nomination Guidelines

Download the Nominations Guidelines for the Liddy Shriver Early Career Research Award.pdf document