Early Career Investigator Awards
2024 ECIA Nominations
The San José State University Research Foundation invites you to submit faculty nominations for the 2024 Early Career Investigator Awards (ECIA). Nominations are due by 11:59 p.m., Pacific Time (PT) on Tuesday, December 31, 2024.
We are excited to provide this opportunity to celebrate SJSU faculty members for their Research, Scholarship, and Creative Activity (RSCA) accomplishments, and we look forward to your participation.
Award Purpose
This award recognizes two tenure-track SJSU faculty who have excelled in areas of research, scholarship, and creative activity during their probationary period at SJSU. One awardee will be selected from each of the categories described below.
Category 1
Considers faculty member in the following colleges:
- Charles W. Davidson College of Engineering
- College of Science
Category 2
Considers faculty member in the following colleges:
- Lucas College and Graduate School of Business
- Connie L. Lurie College of Education
- College of Health and Human Sciences
- College of Professional and Global Education
- College of Humanities and the Arts
- College of Social Sciences
- SJSU Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Library
Eligibility Criteria
- The nominee is a full-time Unit 3 faculty member.
- The nominee is tenure-track, but non-tenured at the time of the nomination.
- The nominee has completed no more than six full years in their SJSU tenure-track appointment.
- The nominee must not have previously received this award.
Nomination Instructions
Nominations may come from the faculty member’s academic unit (dean, chair, or faculty). Nominators do not need to be tenured or tenure-track. Self-nominations will also be accepted. Faculty members who are submitting a self-nomination should notify their dean and chair of their submission.
The nomination period for the 2023-24 cycle has closed, and we are no longer accepting submissions.
The selection committee will consider a nomination and its supporting materials through three selection cycles, as long as the nominee still meets all eligibility criteria. Nominees from previous years will be asked to submit an updated CV before each year’s nomination deadline.
Selection Criteria
Selection will be based on the nominee’s demonstration of success in the following areas:
- Securing External Funding
This category encompasses having been awarded externally funded research grants and/or contracts. An explanation of how such awards contribute to the research capability and recognition of San José State University may be included.
Only the following grants and contracts will be considered:
— Those on which the nominee has served as the principal investigator or co-principal investigator.
— Those awarded on or before midnight June 30 of the prior fiscal year.
— Those awarded during employment by or affiliation with the San José State University Research Foundation or San José State University. - Scholarship and Creative Activity
This category encompasses successfully publishing in top-ranked peer-reviewed journals, authoring respected scholarly books, presenting at conferences, exhibiting in renowned galleries, or other artistic endeavors. Specific information (journal name, book citations, presentations, exhibits, performances, etc.) should be included in the nomination form, curriculum vitae (CV), or resume. - Student Involvement
This category includes the nominee’s impact on student RSCA in a manner that benefits the students in their academic journey. This support can include evidence of students as part of the research team that benefits students in their student’s academic journey, financial support, mentor relationships, teaching research methods, and presentation skills, among other benefits. - Interdisciplinary Research
Interdisciplinary research Integrates information, data, techniques, tools, perspectives, concepts, or theories from two or more disciplines or bodies of specialized knowledge, can be done by teams or by individuals, and advances fundamental understanding or solves problems whose solutions are beyond the scope of a single discipline or area of research practice. - Community-Engaged Research
Community-engaged research is a process that incorporates input from people who are impacted by the research outcomes — the research outcomes will impact and involve such people or groups as equal partners throughout the research process. This involvement may include co-designing research questions to solve problems, making decisions, influencing policies, and creating programs and interventions that affect their own lives. Community engagement often involves partnerships and coalitions that help mobilize resources and influence systems, change relationships among partners, and serve as catalysts for changing policies, programs, and practices.
Selection Committee
The selection committee will consist of the Interim Associate Vice President for Research, the Research Foundation Executive Director, the Research Foundation Director of Sponsored Programs, one faculty researcher from Category 1, one faculty researcher from Category 2, and one prior award winner.
Reward and Recognition
Each award recipient will receive a commemorative trophy, a cash award of $5,000, and a Certificate of Special Congressional Recognition. The award will be presented at the Celebration of Research on Thursday, April 24, 2025 (save-the-date — new date). A profile of each recipient’s accomplishments will be announced to faculty and staff via email and featured on the Research Foundation’s website and in the Research Foundation’s Annual Report. This information may also be publicized in university media. ECIA award winners are expected to make themselves available for the year after their award to attend division of R&I events, speak about their RSCA journey at SJSU and sit on the selection committee for the following year.
2023 ECIA Winners
Please join us in congratulating the San José State University Research Foundation (SJSURF) 2023 Early Career Investigator Award (ECIA) recipients – Assistant Professor Hilary M. Hurst in the Physics and Astronomy Department at the College of Science and Assistant Professor Melissa Beresford in the Department of Anthropology at the College of Social Sciences.
Drs. Hilary M. Hurst (left) and Melissa Beresford (right)
Dr. Hilary M. Hurst joined the Physics and Astronomy Department at the College of Science as an Assistant Professor in the fall of 2020. Within a short time, she significantly advanced quantum information science research and education both on campus and at large. Since joining SJSU, Dr. Hurst has published seven articles in peer-reviewed journals, and she has brought a total of $947K in research awards from the National Science Foundation to the campus. In addition to her research accomplishments, Dr. Hurst was key in establishing the Master of Science in Quantum Technology (MSQT) program at SJSU, which is a joint endeavor between the College of Science and the Charles W. Davidson College of Engineering, and she also spearheaded an NSF Research Traineeship grant, which helped to position SJSU as a leader in quantum information science research and education. Dr. Hurst’s work actively supports undergraduate research opportunities through mentorship, underpinning her student researchers' academic and professional success in a groundbreaking field.
Dr. Melissa Beresford, Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the College of Social Sciences, joined SJSU in 2019 and has demonstrated exceptional productivity through her research and publication activity on how people use informal and hidden economic arrangements — moral economies — to cope with water insecurity amid climate change, as well as migration and urbanization. Her community-based, mixed-methods field research in California has allowed her to collaborate with other scholars to cross-culturally compare local ethnographic fieldwork findings from several sites across the world. Dr. Beresford has brought $571K in funding from the National Science Foundation as a Principal Investigator to SJSU since joining its faculty in addition to a collaboration with Arizona State University as a co-PI on a NSF grant for $350K. Dr. Beresford has co-authored 31 articles in peer-reviewed journals such as American Anthropologist; Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute; WIREs Water; Environmental Research Letters; Field Methods; and International Journal of Qualitative Methods among others. Demonstrating her commitment to student involvement and success, her Culture, Economy, and Environment (CEE) laboratory group recruits, trains, and develops undergraduate and graduate students from diverse backgrounds to gather and analyze social science data and approach social issues in a collaborative manner.
Past ECIA Winners
Congratulations to all of our previous recipients.
