2026 OWSD-Elsevier Foundation Awards for Early-Career Women Scientists in the Developing World (USD 5,000 Prize) – Opportunities For Africans

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Application Deadline:  31 August 2025.

Applications are actually open for the 2026 OWSD-Elsevier Foundation Award. OWSD invites purposes from early profession girls scientists from the Global South working in the space of sustainable, reasonably priced, and dependable vitality.

Eligibility Requirements

• The applicant should be a lady who has acquired her PhD in a scientific self-discipline inside the earlier ten years (date of PhD certificates should be no sooner than 10 years previous to application deadline) and whose present scientific analysis is said to the space of sustainable, reasonably priced, and dependable vitality.
• Given that from 2022-2026 the awards will reply to the name for motion set forth by the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), candidates should show how their analysis contributes to advancing data in the space of sustainable, reasonably priced, and dependable vitality and to attaining the SDG7 (Affordable and clean energy).

The OWSD-Elsevier Foundation Awards are supplied to girls in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM). Applications from girls in Social sciences, Humanities, Arts or different are NOT eligible. 

Eligible STEM fields:

• Agricultural Sciences
• Astronomy, Space and Earth Sciences
• Biological Systems and Organisms
• Chemical Sciences
• Computing and Information Technology
• Engineering Sciences
• Mathematical Sciences
• Medical and Health Sciences (together with Neurosciences)
• Physics
• Structural, Cell and Molecular Biology

Prize

• Cash prize of USD 5,000.
• All-expenses-paid journey to attend a related worldwide convention.

The 5 awards will likely be distributed as follows: one for every of the 4 areas of the creating world (Africa, Arab area, Asia & the Pacific and Latin America & the Caribbean), plus a further ¨floating” award for an impressive candidate from any of those areas.

Applications

Applications for the 2026 awards are invited from girls scientists who’ve made vital contributions in the space of sustainable, reasonably priced, and dependable vitality, whose analysis is linked to the SDG7 (Affordable and clean energy), and have lived and labored for a minimum of 5 years in an eligible STLC.

Applications should be made online, in English, and should embody: 

• Official documentation proving 5 years’ residency in an eligible STLC .

The following paperwork might be submitted as proof of residence so long as the identify of the applicant (as written in the on-line kind) seems clearly: assertion from the native police workplace or municipality, inhabitants registry workplace, rental settlement, utilities payments, employment contract. This record shouldn’t be exhaustive and different paperwork might be thought of. Please write to [email protected] if you’re undecided about the eligibility of your paperwork.

• Evidence on how your analysis contributes to advancing SDG7 (Affordable and clean energy).
• Motivational assertion of not more than 2500 characters describing why you need to be chosen for this award, the wonderful high quality of your analysis, biggest achievements of your scientific profession, influence of your work regionally/regionally/internationally, and the place related, any persona/skilled challenges you’ve confronted and overcome given your context (for ease, we suggest that you just put together this beforehand and copy-paste into the textual content field).
• PhD certificates
• Curriculum vitae
• Full record of publications
• At least 2 reference letters (reference letters should be ready on official letterhead and must be written and signed by senior scientists acquainted with your analysis).

For More Information:

Visit the Official Webpage of the OWSD-Elsevier Foundation Award