2026 Winners
PhD Category
1st Place: Frank Efe Erukainure, Virginia Tech
Early Detection of Sclerotinia Blight in Peanut Plants via Nanostructured 3D-Printed Platinum Sensors
2nd Place: Supriya Savalkar, Washington State University
Climate change impacts on snowmelt contributions to streamflow and implications on ecosystem services
3rd Place: Md Redwan Ahmad Khan, Washington State University
CropSyst-EWM: A Novel Model Framework to Quantify the Total Agricultural Water Footprint, Including Water for Extreme Heat Management
MS Category
1st Place: Divyanth Loganathan Girija, Washington State University
Design, Integration, and Evaluation of a Dual-Arm Robotic System for High-Throughput Sampling from Potato Tubers
2nd Place: Forough Torabi, Kansas State University
Effects of Wood Anatomy, Climate, Soil Type, and Plant Configuration Variables on Urban Tree Transpiration in the Context of Urban Runoff Reduction: A Systemic Metadata Analysis Review
3rd Place: Macy Shafer, Michigan State University
Effectiveness of Pulse Irrigation on the Growth and Production in Highbush Blueberry
Past Winners
The Competition
The Boyd-Scott Graduate Research Award is to recognize excellence in the conduct and presentation of research to build the knowledge base needed by engineers who design equipment, facilities, and processes for the sustainable operation of a biological system.
Contestants are required to be a member of ASABE.
Entry Deadline: March 15
The Boyd-Scott Graduate Research Award consists of a written competition, and an oral competition held during the ASABE Annual International Meeting. Judges will select three M.S. finalists and three Ph.D. finalists from the written competition who will then be invited to present their research before judges at a scheduled technical session held during the ASABE Annual International Meeting. The six finalists' meeting registration will be waived.
Cash prizes of $500, $300, and $200 will be awarded to the top three finishers in each category after the meeting.
Entry Form must be submitted with properly formatted paper. Please see guidelines below for formatting requirements.
Submissions that do not follow the formatting guidelines published by ASABE for refereed journals will be disqualified from the competition.
2. Organization of Paper - Students are advised to adhere to the following guidelines when preparing their research paper entries:
a. Organization of the research paper must conform to the guidelines published by ASABE for refereed journals. Access the Guide for Authors for information concerning journal manuscript submission and formatting.
b. The entire research paper entry, including all figures, list of references and appendices, must not exceed 20 pages.
c. Some graphics (figures and tables) do not print or download well so students are encouraged to produce their graphics in black-and-white format.
3. Submit entry form and research paper as a PDF file. It is the entrant's responsibility to verify that the converted file appears as intended. Send to the Awards Administrator
4. Scoring - Click here to see the judging criteria and allocation of points.
For the current competition, all entries must be submitted via e-mail to the Awards Administrator by March 15.