CRA Outstanding Undergraduate Researchers Award

The CRA Outstanding Undergraduate Researcher Awards program recognizes undergraduate students in North American colleges and universities who show outstanding potential in an area of computing research. While it is expected that successful nominees will have excellent academic records and will have engaged in some form of service (e.g., club leadership, teaching, peer tutoring), excellence in research is the primary consideration.  

Eligibility: 

Students enrolled as undergraduates in North American colleges or universities in Fall 2026 are eligible for the 2026-2027 award. On the nomination form, the electronic signature of the chair/head of the home department confirms that the nominee is in good standing and eligible for the award. All nominations require the electronic signature of the chair/head of a nominee’s home department. Students are not able to self-nominate.

Number of Nominees Per Department: 

Departments that grant Ph.D.s in a computing field may nominate up to four students per year. Departments that do not grant Ph.D.s in a computing field may nominate up to two students per year.

Awards: 

Multiple Undergraduate Researcher Awards will be made each year. Each award recipient will receive financial assistance of up to $1,500 to attend a research conference of their choice. In addition, some nominees will be designated as runners-up, finalists, and honorable mentions. Award recipients, runners-up, finalists, and honorable mentions will be announced on our website and directly contacted by e-mail in mid-December. These students will also receive certificates of their awards via mail.

What departments need to submit:

A nomination is officially a submission on behalf of the department chair, but it may be prepared and submitted by a designated representative for the chair. The nomination form includes a prompt to upload the following:

• One letter of recommendation from a faculty member.
  • Recommender Eligibility: Any faculty person who previously worked with the nominee is eligible to write the letter of recommendation. Faculty need not be from the same department or institution.
  • Content Limit: Letters should not exceed three pages in length.
  • Content Recommendations: All recommendation letters should address the following:
    • The significance of the research problem the student addressed:
      • Explain the problem the nominee addressed and its significance to the field and/or society.
      • Highlight the challenging aspects of the work undertaken.
• The nominee’s contributions to the research:
  • Specify the tasks undertaken by the student.
    • For example: data collection, analysis, algorithm development, implementation, paper writing, etc.
  • Emphasize the individual contributions. If the nominee collaborated with other individuals, distinguish between their contribution, the contributions of others, and the overall team’s accomplishments.
• Other information relevant to the nominee’s leadership skills and/or community engagement:
  • Highlight what sets this student apart from other research peers, considering research prowess and community involvement (e.g., club leadership, teaching, peer tutoring).
  • Describe opportunities the student took advantage of outside of your group that demonstrate development of research skills or engagement in research.
• Materials prepared by the student (these are described in detail under the “What students prepare” section), but include:
  • A resume (up to two pages)
  • A summary of research (up to 750 words)
  • A personal statement (up to 300 words)
  • Student’s academic transcript(s) (unofficial transcripts are accepted)

What students need to prepare:

A nominee is expected to share the following documents with their nominator: a resume, a research summary (not to exceed 750 words in length), a personal statement (not to exceed 300 words), and an academic transcript (unofficial transcripts are accepted).

Resume: Resumes should not exceed two pages in length. A resume should contain information on the nominee’s academic record and service. It should also indicate the nominee’s involvement in research project(s). For each project the student has participated in, the resume should include:

• a few sentences describing the project,
• the name(s) of the research mentor(s),
• the institution where the research was conducted,
• complete citations of publications arising from this research (if any),
• and, for manuscripts currently under review (if any), the titles and the venues to which they are submitted.

Research Summary: The research summary (not to exceed 750 words) gives the nominee the opportunity to describe research project(s) in detail. While the award committee is comprised of computer science professors, it’s likely that most of them will not have expertise in the specific field in which the nominee worked.  So, while one can use well-known concepts without defining them (e.g., names of data structures and terms like “NP-completeness”, “compiler”, or “k-means clustering”), nominees should imagine they’re writing to a computer science professor who works in a different sub-discipline.

A research summary should:

• Explain the research problem:
  • Clearly outline the research problem, emphasizing its significance to the field or society.
  • Detail challenges faced during the work.
• Describe the nominee’s contributions:
  • Note specific problems addressed and, if relevant, the reasons for tackling them.
  • Specify tasks directly undertaken by the student, such as idea generation, data collection, analysis, algorithmic development, implementation, and paper writing.
• Collaboration and individual contributions:
  • If your research project was a collaborative effort, please, indicate specific individual contributions.
• Leadership and independence:
  • Highlight instances where the nominee assumed a leadership role or demonstrated independence in their work.

Personal Statement:  The personal statement (not to exceed 300 words) should address the student’s interests and activities outside of research (e.g., club leadership, teaching, peer tutoring) and/or challenges encountered with respect to getting and staying involved in research.

Academic Transcript: Excellence in research is the primary consideration for this award, but all students are required to submit an academic transcript from their institution. Unofficial transcripts are acceptable.