The Electromagnetics Academy's Educational Program for Students

Starting from PIERS 2025 Spring, we encourage all students to join the EM Academy's educational program and compete for the Best Student Presentation Awards (BSPTA).

As part of our EM Academy's educational efforts, we encourage professors to train their students well in both effective oral and poster presentations. Thus, we encourage all graduate students to participate in a 3-minute Oral Presentation before the Poster Session on the same day. If the presenting author is a student, the paper (if accepted and selected) will be scheduled for a mini-oral presentation session before the Poster Session, where a committee will interact with these students on the same day. To encourage graduate students to participate in this activity, a sufficient number of students who performed well in both the oral and poster presentations will be selected for awards.  The committee will discuss and vote for the winners of the Best Student Presentation Awards on the same day. Each winner will receive a cash award and a banquet ticket to attend the Award Ceremony. The total number of final winners will increase based on final program enrollment.

The awardees will be selected according to the following procedure.

1. A student competing for the best student presentation award must be listed as the first author as well as the presenting author of an abstract submitted for an oral presentation. One student can submit only one abstract for the BSPTA competition. 

• A one-page abstract is required before the abstract submission deadline.
• A full-length paper is not required.  
• For a short-oral talk, a PPT file of 3-8 pages for a 3-minute oral presentation (see a sample PPT in a 3-minute video at the bottom of this page)  is required to be submitted at least 2 weeks before the conference. The PPT collection link will be available on the PIERS website for students to upload the presentation file in advance. 
• A poster is also required to be posted on-site. 
• A poster file or full-length paper before the full-length submission deadline is welcome but not mandatory.

2. Among the first-author students who have indicated their interest in joining this Academy's education program, the Awards Committee will select a certain number of short oral submissions to form several sessions.

3. Every BSPTA applicant in each session will give a short summary presentation in PPT (a 3-minute countdown timer will be set for each presenter), and no time for questions will be provided. Members of the Awards Committee will give scores to all the BSPTA applicants.
About the Short-Oral Presentation Files:
The short oral presentation file should have 3-8 pages. All the presentation files should be collected at least 2 weeks before the conference.  The speaker needs to wait in line for a numbered seat in advance. The late speaker will automatically be disqualified from the competition.

4. During the Poster Session on the same day, the Awards Committee will interact with these students with questions. Each committee will go to the poster area to interact with the students, particularly those who have a good chance of winning an award in the committee’s opinion, and record the poster scores or overall scores.

5. Final winners of BSPTA will be selected by the Awards Committee after the Poster Session, with several rounds of voting.

6. The awards will be announced and presented collectively in the Awards Ceremony.

The BSPTA applicants are strongly advised to pay attention to the following.

1. On stage (In Oral Session), a student candidate can use about 3 sentences to present the important problem the student wants to solve  (importance, main drawback of existing methods, their goal with significant advantage). Better in plain language so that high school kids/the general public can understand it too. Then use 2 minutes to present the novel ideas and the excellent results clearly. Students should be trained in effective oral presentation, introducing their work in the shortest time (e.g., 3 minutes). 3 minutes is enough to get the committee and the audience interested and to send them to the poster session to learn the details. (A 3-minute video by the first winner of the last PIERS will be posted here as a sample for the future PIERS BSPTA applicants.)
2. Off stage (In Poster Session), the student interacts with the committee and participants, and uses the charts on the poster to present the details and good answers to their questions.
Sample Poster Presentation - click to view

The list of the recipients of the Best Student Presentation Awards 2026 will be posted on this PIERS webpage.

Sample of a 3-minute video by the first winner of PIERS 2025 in Abu Dhabi