AREA Student Research Award

After the success of the 2023 AREA Student Research Award, the AREA is excited announce the 2024 award to recognize and support an outstanding graduate student who are conducting research pertaining to use of AR in the workplace. The goals of this award are:

• to bring greater attention to the enterprise AR Research Agenda topics,
• to engage with the research community, and
• to support aspiring future leaders in the AR field.

Principles

• The AREA is a powerful community of enterprise AR thought leaders. The AREA ecosystem is composed of customers, providers of AR technologies and services, and organizations dedicated to research or public service.
• The Research Committee runs programs that support the continuous technological advancement of enterprise AR for the benefit of customers and users.
• The AREA welcomes applications from all qualified graduate students and strongly encourages under-represented populations, including women, under-represented racial and ethnic minorities, and persons with disabilities, to apply for this award.

Timeline

Qualifications

To qualify to receive the AREA Student Research Award, applicants must have:

• Completed all bachelors-level college coursework in any field and received a diploma from an accredited institute of higher learning,
• Be admitted to and have begun (no less than 1 full semester or quarter completed at the time of submission) to meet requirements for an advanced degree (above bachelor level), and
• Submit a letter of support from a supervising member of faculty (see application process and requirements below).

Application Process and Requirements

Applicants will examine the AREA Research Agenda themes and consider if and how they may tie a research project to exploring or addressing one of the under-studied topics in the table. Using a Web form on the AREA web site, applicants will submit a proposal. The proposal will be at least 3 and not more than 5 pages. The written proposal describes a research study, including but not limited to:

• Title of the project
• Abstract (50 words)
• Problem or challenge the project seeks to address
• Research methodology
• Hypotheses (as appropriate)
• Anticipated analysis
• Relevance or benefits to the AREA/connection to the Research Agenda topic(s)
• Risks/dependencies
• Faculty supervisor name and contact information
• How you plan to use the funds if you are selected
• Any support or inputs the project might seek from the AREA

In addition, the proposal must be accompanied by a short letter from a supervising academic (member of faculty at an institution of higher learning), including but not limited to a statement about the applicant’s current status (e.g., enrolled and actively engaged in studies) and focus on enterprise AR topics.

Upon receipt of the written proposal and letter of support via this form, the applicant will be invited by e-mail to schedule a 5-7 minute presentation about the proposed project to the Research sub-committee with 3 min Q&A. Upon conclusion of the applicant presentation, a committee of no less than three reviewers (one from each segment of the enterprise AR ecosystem) will score the proposal independently.

The reviewers’ comments and scores will be anonymized and merged.
 

Legal

The legal relationship will be established between the individual student and the AREA so that the intellectual property is the student’s (not that of the AREA). The AREA will not be able to contract with a department or university.   A draft contract can be found here.
 

Financial

The AREA has provisionally reserved funding for this award in its 2024 financial year, however, the budget for AREA 2024 research projects will only be finalized on March 29, 2024. Therefore, the AREA will not be able to award the final two applicants until after March 29, 2024. The application deadline is May 17, 2024 and the final selection will be announced on or after June 3.

One applicant will be awarded $5,000 distributed in two equal payments (at the beginning and upon completion of the project) to be used for:

• research materials,
• equipment,
• research participant compensation, and/or
• travel to a conference for final presentation.

 Submit