Student Competition Guidelines

1.  About Co-chairs (organizers):
   The PFT Graduate Student Competition is organized by volunteers. Two co-chairs are assigned by the PFT Executive Committee each year to perform the following tasks:
• Work with the PFT Scientific Program Chair to schedule student oral or poster presentations at the conference in a form that it allows referees to judge all competitions.
• Recruit volunteer referees to judge the quality of each student’s presentation.
• Assess any possible conflict of interest of recruited referees.
• Compute scores assigned by referees in the evaluation sheets and report finalists to Conference organizers. This is conducted with the aid of 1 to 2 volunteers not involved in the competition. These volunteers cross check score entries and computation prior to announcement of finalists.
• Announce finalists at the PFT banquet and present prizes.
• The chairs of student competition have the sole role of organizers who do not participate as referees and have no influence in the outcome of the competition.
2.  About Referees:
    Volunteer referees are invited by co-chairs to participate in either the oral or poster student competition. Each group of volunteers is composed of a pool of PFT members from academia, industry and governmental agencies. Participating in the competition as a referee is a time consuming task and the organizers are thankful to PFT members that take on this task.
   About our referees and their duties:
• An equal number of referees (a minimum of 5 and a maximum of 7) will be recruited for each competition category (oral or poster).
• Referees will evaluate every presentation competing within the category (oral or poster) they are assigned to judge.
• Referees must not evaluate presentations of students working under their guidance or participating in research of common interest.
• Referees are expected to report any possible conflict of interest to co-chairs before the start of the competition.
• Referees shall not be assigned the task of participating as judges in both competitions because this poses unrealistic demand of time from our volunteers.
• Referees should get familiar with the evaluation sheet before the start of the competition.
• Referees will receive a package with evaluation sheets from one of the co-chairs prior to the start of oral or poster competition and will return the package to one of the co-chairs as soon as the last evaluation sheet in the package has been completed.
3.  About Students Entering the Competition:
• Students are encouraged to enter the competition and can compete in both categories (oral and poster); however, a student is limited to choose only one presentation entry for each category (poster or oral).
• Students are encouraged to download score sheets (evaluation sheets) and familiarize themselves with the criteria referees will be using to judge the quality of their presentations. It is advisable that students do this before the presentation is put together.
• Students are welcome to review their scores and score sheets after the competition finalists have been announced. Either co-chair will be available to provide students with feedback about their performance up to the end of the PFT meeting.
4.  About Finalist and Awards:
• A certificate and prize is awarded to each finalist.
• Prizes are provided for 1st, 2nd and 3rd place competitors entering the Oral Competition
• Prizes are provided for 1st, 2nd and 3rd place competitors entering the Poster Competition
• The value of the cash prize is stipulated by the PFT Executive Committee each year, and the figures may vary due to budget constraints or surpluses for each PFT meeting.