Awards, Grants and Competitions

Awards

We are pleased the Australian Entomological Society will again be supporting a number of awards. The awards this year include: 

Please go to the Australian Entomological Society website for further details.

Australian Entomological Society Student Conference Grants  

The Australian Entomological Society is calling for grant applications from student members for attendance at the 5th joint conference with the New Zealand Entomological Society in Canberra this year. The Board has approved up to 10 individual grants of $500 each, to be reimbursed to successful applicants for the cost of travel or registration at the conference, subject to provision of receipts.

Eligibility 

Applicants must be members of the Australian Entomological Society and enrolled as students at a university in an Honours (~1-year full time or equivalent), Research Masters (~2 years full time or equivalent) or PhD (~3 years full time or equivalent). Successful applicants will not have received any other funding from the Society in the same financial year for attendance at the conference (e.g. Phil Carne Prize). Student members involved in AES committee activities may also apply.

Application 

Please see all the details on the AES website. 

Applications should be emailed in PDF format to the Director of Student Affairs at patricia.slattery@flinders.edu.au by 8 August 2025. 

Photographic Competition 2025 

The Photographic Competition will be run again in conjunction with the conference. The Society’s Photographic Competition aims to encourage and recognise high standards of entomological photography and the communication of science through various media. We are asking for submissions in three categories:

  1. Photography (SLR or other camera types). Code "SLR"
  2. Smart phone photographs. Code "SLR"
  3. Open category: digital artwork, illustration, sculpture, painting or any other media. This will need to be transported by you and displayed at the venue (so the artwork can’t be the size of Ouroboros!). Code "Open"

Who is Eligible?

The competition will be open to members of the Society who are not employed or contracted as professional photographers, artists, or creatives for fee or reward. You do not need to attend the conference to submit a photo for judging in the first two categories (the open category may be subject to showing your art at the conference, so please contact us if you need more advice).

How to Enter: 

Please submit your photos/scan of images into the Dropbox folder via this Link. In the file name please add your name and the category code (SLR, Smart, Open). For those people with sculptures, painting etc. in the open category, please bring them to the event and we will take photographs of them and record them in the folder ready for judging. If you would like to add details about the content of your submission (species, location etc.) please send an email to Consec aes@consec.com.au and they will collate them in the folder with your submission. Please note that we will use your photos in the PowerPoint slides during breaks and over dinner. 

Who will be Judging?

The Photographic Competition is judged by the members of the local organising committee during the conference. We will nominate one finalist and one honourable mention in each category.

Student Presentation Awards 2025 

To encourage and recognize the time and effort taken to develop excellent scientific oral presentations and posters, we have several awards on offer this year specifically for students:

  1. First prize and honourable mention for presentation - Australian student
  2. First prize and honourable mention for presentation - New Zealand student
  3. Best student poster award (open to any students)

The Pollinator Futures Research Centre (Macquarie University) is kindly sponsoring additional student presentation awards for those presenting on pollination topics:

  1. Award for best full presentation
  2. Award for best lightning presentation
  3. Award for best poster

Who is Eligible?

If you identified as a student in the registration process for this conference, you are automatically eligible for these awards. If a student is awarded a Pollination Futures award, they will not be eligible to receive a general award as well (i.e. we will judge everyone at the conference regardless of topic, but a single person cannot be awarded in multiple categories).

How to Enter?

By registering and presenting at the conference, you are automatically entered in this awards process. We will not be able to consider students who registered but could not present their poster/talk at the conference (due to illness or unexpected events).

Who will be Judging?

The Pollination Futures awards will be judged by a selected group of scientists in this field. The other student awards will be judged by many people at the conference (the local organizing committee is arranging judges to be present at each student presentation/poster). 

*We may need to alter certain details of the judging process at the conference depending on how many people enter into each category and the award type. The local organizing committee reserves the right to make changes as necessary to these award processes.

Student prize for the Australasian Section of the International Union for the Study of Social Insects 

Students presenting talks in the Social Insects symposium are eligible for a $500 prize - see the IUSSI 2025 Newsletter for application details or contact the Committee:

https://bee-lab.sydney.edu.au/iussi-2/committee/

Non-members can become eligible by joining the Society:

https://bee-lab.sydney.edu.au/iussi-2/membership-and-journal/

Please register and submit your abstracts through the conference portal noting the "social insects" symposium.

Conference Managers

Consec - Conference and Event Management
PO Box 3127, Belconnen Delivery Centre
BELCONNEN ACT 2617

Tel: +61 2 6252 1200 | Email: aes@consec.com.au 


Sunset behind Black Mountain and the Telstra telecommunications tower, Canberra, ACT. Photo credit: Robert Kerton