The Communicate Your Science & Engineering (CYSE) Contest accepts essay entries that explain scientific work with a broad, non-technical audience in mind. The competition’s goal is to convey information, excitement and enthusiasm about computational science and engineering. It’s open only to DOE CSGF fellows and alumni who have not previously won an essay or CYSE contest.
Judging Criteria
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Originality: Is the piece derivative or is it groundbreaking?
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Clarity: Is the science murky or can an intelligent high school student get it?
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Execution: Does the quality of the piece approach what a professional might produce?
Prize, Publication & Recognition
The winner receives a cash prize, certificate and dedicated time to collaborate with a professional science writer to edit and prepare their essay for publication in an upcoming issue of DEIXIS, The DOE CSGF Annual. The print magazine reaches an audience of more than 12,000 U.S. academics, national laboratories staff, leaders in fields supported by the fellowship and friends of the program. It is also available online to ensure broader exposure.
When possible, the year's contest winner is formally recognized at the summer program review meeting.
Winners
Each year's top submission(s) is linked below. With the exception of 2013, all will open as a PDF.
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2024 — Daniel Abdulah: Diving Deep on Enceladus
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2023 — Carlyn Schmidgall: The Arctic Ocean, With a Grain of Salt
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2022 — Arianna Krinos: Shell Scripting: Cracking the Code of Ocean Microbes
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2021 — Ellis L. Torrance: Sex Isn't Everything
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2020 — Steven Torrisi: Shazam for Atoms
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2019 — Jacob Bringewatt: Spherical Cows
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2018 — Gerald J. Wang: Big Surprises Come in Nanoscale Packages
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2017 — Hilary Egan: To Boldly Go (And Survive When We Get There)
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2016 — Eric Isaacs: Atoms on the Dance Floor
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2015 — Andrew Stershic: Building Batteries from the Microstructure Up
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2014 — Phoebe DeVries: When?
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2013 — Milo Lin: Folding on Time (YouTube video: protein folding dance)
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2012 — Kenley Pelzer: A Place in the Sun; Paul M. Sutter: A New View on Old Light
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2011 — Kenley Pelzer: Can Peeling an Onion Cure Cancer?; Hayes Stripling: On the Quantification of 'Maybe': A Niche for Computation
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2010 — Anubhav Jain: Why Don't Batteries Improve Like Transistors?; Milo Lin: Under the Hood; Scott Clark: Solving Genomic Jigsaws
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2008 — Carolyn L. Phillips: The Simulated Simulator, or Why I Stopped Deleting My Files; Jack Deslippe: Changing the World One Atom at a Time
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2007 — Sommer Gentry: Math Maximizes Organ Transplants; Jordan Atlas: The Genetic Carry-On Limit; Brandon Wood: Nature's Great Compromise
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2006 — Julianne Chung: Making Blurry Images a Thing of the Past; David Potere: Space Harvest
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2005 — Ian Parrish: Not Enough Milk in the Milky Way; Mala Radhakrishnan: The Dream of the Drug-Designing Machine; Kristine Cochran: Shades of Right
The DOE CSGF launched its annual Essay Contest in 2005 with winning entries published in Compose from 2005 to 2008, and in DEIXIS starting in 2009. It was renamed in 2013 as the contest expanded to include multimedia entries (thus Milo Lin's winning video that year); however, subsequent entries focused on the written word, necessitating a return to an essay-centric competition.