Who is eligible for the Mid-Career Leadership Award?
Eligibility is bounded from both ends: nominees should be past the early-career stage (typically with 10+ years’ experience in their present field for operations, or 10+ years post-final degree for scientific and engineering staff), but should not yet have reached senior level, as defined in terms of their relevant professional context at the Lab. (Senior Scientists are eligible if they transitioned to that rank within the last year prior to the nomination.) Nominators who are unsure whether their nominee qualifies can contact the Recognition Team (recognition@lbl.gov).
What makes a compelling nomination?Nominations for this award follow the standard Director’s Award nomination process, requiring two to five support letters, as well as a nomination submission form and summary slide. Strong nominations for this award will describe both the trajectory of the nominee’s contributions over time and the impact on people and teams across LBNL and beyond. They should include perspectives from early-career colleagues, peers, external collaborators, or others who have directly benefited from the nominee’s work. The award is not for a single achievement but for a pattern of evolving, path-creating contributions that has grown in impact.
Are both Operations and Scientific staff eligible?
Yes! These contributions can come from staff from both science and operations. Nomination-worthy contributions from scientific staff examples might include opening a new cross-institutional collaboration; standing up new workshops, laboratories, or facilities; developing new program domains, methodologies, algorithms, or models that are now widely used by others; pioneering a research direction that clarified the path for those who followed; becoming a critical authority in an area through review articles, training, or best practices that others rely on; or establishing new standards for benchmarking or reproducibility in a field.
Nomination-worthy contributions from operations staff might include creating new cross-functional approaches, developing training that establishes new standards, or building new ways of working across teams, Labs, or external organizations.
How is the Mid-Career Leadership Award different from the existing Mentorship Award?
The Mentorship Award recognizes people who foster belonging and access to career advancement opportunities through their relationships with the individuals they mentor. Mid-Career Leadership Award recognizes people who have created something new, such as a methodology, approach, training, or way of working, that changed what’s possible for others. A mid-career leader’s impact may include mentoring, but the award is for the path they created, not the relationships alone.
How is the Mid-Career Leadership Award different from the existing Organizational Impact Award?
The Organizational Impact Award recognizes outstanding accomplishments in improving existing processes, collaboration, efficiency, or policy implementation. The Mid-Career Leadership Award is for contributions that are generative: they opened up a new direction that didn’t exist before, rather than improving something that already did. The award also requires a trajectory of contributions that has built over time, rather than a single accomplishment.
Can someone who has received an Early-Career award receive the Mid-Career award?
Yes, but their achievements being recognized in this award should be distinct.
