Background and rules

Background

The Rainer Gross Prize: Recent Innovations in Nutrition and Health in Developing Societies was created by the Hildegard Grunow Foundation to honour the memory of the late Dr. Rainer Gross and memorialise his unique approach to innovation in concepts and research in critical, but novel areas of inquiry, with a view to bettering the nutrition and health of the less fortunate. With the awarding of this Prize, we recognize the merits of others who continue the generation and pursuit of innovative ideas and projects in nutrition and health in developing societies. The Prize is endowed with $ 2500 USD, and will be awarded biennially on the occasion of a large international nutrition-related meeting. The first award will be made in September 2010, during the II World Congress of Public Health Nutrition in Porto, Portugal. The award ceremony will include a lecture by the awardee on the work being recognized, and the awardee is invited to write a corresponding review-style overview regarding the background of the innovation, to be published in a prestigious nutritional journal.

Rules

Selection criteria

• Submitted work must be recent (conducted within the last 5 years) and innovative – i.e. judged as making needy communities at nutritional risk and fellow professionals aware of problems previously unrecognized, while beginning to open a pathway to their practical solution.
• Such concepts should have sufficient support regarding their feasibility and likely applicability. Moreover, they should have passed beyond the "idea" stage into proof-of-principle evidence or initial demonstration, although the derivative findings do not necessarily need to have been formally published in the scientific or technical literature when applying for the award.
• Topics may include the entire gamut of problems related to nutrition, ranging from the molecular to the epidemiological level. This does not exclude technical inventions and plant- or animal-breeding initiatives, provided they are original and novel and deemed likely to solve important nutritional problems in developing countries.

Nomination Process

Applicants must still be actively involved in science. Officers and staff of the Hildegard Grunow Foundation or members of the jury are not eligible. Applicants may either submit the application themselves or be nominated by third parties. Nominations for the Rainer Gross Prize must be submitted in writing to:

Hildegard-Grunow-Foundation; Clemensstr. 27, D-80803 Munich, Germany

Alternatively, nominations may be submitted via the Submission form (max. 10 MB ). Safe receipt will be confirmed by e-mail or mail.

The deadline is extended to 1^st July 2010!

All nominations and entries should be accompanied by a brief report in English of not more than one printed page, which includes and covers the following details:

a. The characteristics, merits, and contributions of the project proposed/carried out by the individual.
b. The methodology used for the development, financing and implementation of the nominated project.
c. The localities or communities benefited by the project.
d. General information on the nominated individual.

July 1, 2010 is the last date for receipt of application/nomination submissions. Only complete submissions, complying with the aforementioned guidelines (a-d) will be included in the judging.

The nominations will be forwarded to a jury panel consisting of two members for the board of HGF, and three internationally regarded professionals in the arena of the policy and scientific aspects of human and community nutrition. The procedure governing the granting of the Award will be based on the principles of attention to the dissemination of news, transparency, objectivity and non-discrimination as to race, religion, national origin or geographical residence of the applicants / nominees. The jury will announce its decision by June 30, 2010 on the basis of the highest scoring of submission, and the decision of the jury is final. The prize will be awarded in September 2010. The Prize Lecture will be held during the II World Congress of Public Health Nutrition in Porto, Portugal, and the travel costs and expenses of the awardee to present the Lecture will be covered by the HGF.