1. The European Federation for Freshwater Sciences (EFFS) launches the EFFS Award for the best PhD Dissertation in Freshwater Sciences, which will recognize outstanding scientific and intellectual work in the field of Freshwater Sciences performed by Early Career Researchers in Europe.

2. Applicants for this Award will include all authors of doctoral theses submitted in Europe in the field of Freshwater Sciences. Applicants should be members of an Association related to Freshwater Sciences and affiliated to the European Federation for Freshwater Sciences (EFFS). The PhD dissertation can be written in any European language.

3. Applicants should submit their application form to their reference Association. PhD dissertations must be accompanied by an extended abstract in English not longer than 5 printed pages single spaced, and containing a maximum of 4 figures. The extended abstract have to be signed by the supervisor(s) along with the list of publication related to the PhD work.

4. Federated Associations will perform a pre-selection according to common rules and time schedule for selection, and using evaluation criteria similar to those for Marie Curie fellowship proposals. E.g. PhD dissertation will be evaluated according to their scientific/technological quality (score 0-20), originality (0-20), methodological approach (0-20), relevance and potential scientific impact of the work carried out (0-20).

5. For this call, the PhD thesis must have been defended during the years 2011-2012.

6. Each Association can submit a maximum of two selected PhD dissertations for the final evaluation. This number is increased to four for those Associations collecting members from more than one European country (e.g. AIL collects both Spanish and Portuguese members and the number of dissertations can thus be 4). In any case, no more than four dissertations can be presented by each association.

7. The final evaluation will be carried out by an international Jury. Members of the Jury are identified among the members of the Board of Representatives at EFFS. The evaluation criteria are based on the evaluation reports submitted by national associations, and by the attribution of the scores specified in 4 (above) to the extended English abstract in English (point 3).

8. The Award will consider one main and two subsidiary prizes:

- The main prize will consist of a Diploma and a grant to attend the next Symposium for European Freshwater Sciences (SEFS), including registration fee, travel and lodging. During this meeting, the winning author will be required to give a dedicated Plenary Lecture on his/her PhD dissertation topic.
- The winners of the subsidiary prizes will receive a Diploma and a grant covering the registration fee to attend the next Symposium for European Freshwater Sciences (SEFS).

9. Recipients of the Awards will be informed at least three months before the opening day of SEFS.

10. An awards ceremony will take place just before the dedicated Plenary Lecture. In addition to the Plenary Lecture – given by the main prize winner – the three winning theses will be exhibited during the next SEFS meeting in a section of the venue dedicated to the association of European Fresh and Young Researchers (EFYR). The exhibition will include at least one hard copy of the theses (we will also encourage the distribution of e-copies) and a poster explaining the contents of each winning thesis. Hard copies, electronic copies (if any), and posters must be provided by the authors themselves. Electronic copies will be eventually posted on the EFFS website (www.freshwatersciences.eu).