Report of the Committee on Awards
for the Year ending June 30, 2006

During the year ending 30 June 2006, the Committee on Awards met to make recommendations to the Society's Board of Directors in regard to recipients of Sigma Xi awards for the year beginning 1 July 2006.

A meeting of the Committee took place on Friday, 4 November 2005, during the Society's annual meeting in Seattle. During this meeting, the Committee agreed on its recommendations.

For the 2006 William Procter Prize for Scientific Achievement, the Committee recommended and the Board approved, that the award should go to Susan Lindquist is a professor of biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. For the 2006 John P. McGovern Science and Society Award, the Committee recommended and the Board approved physicist, novelist, and essayist Alan Lightman. For the 2006 Young Investigator Award, the Committee recommended and the Board approved W. Raphael Hix, a researcher at the Oakridge National Laboratory. The Committee recommended and the Board approved Claudia Dreifus of The New York Times and Richard L. Hill of The Oregonian to election as Honorary Members of the Society.

The Committee was also pleased to nominate the first recipient of the Walston Chubb Award for Innovation, chemical engineering professor Mark T. Holtzapple at Texas A&M University. The Chubb Award, along with the other Society Awards and Prizes will be presented at the 2006 Sigma Xi Annual Meeting and Student Research Conference in Detroit, Michigan.

Details for all Sigma Xi awards can be found on the Sigma Xi web page (http://www.sigmaxi.org/programs/prizes/index.shtml) or from local Sigma Xi chapters.

Nominations for Sigma Xi awards are welcomed by the Committee on Awards and can be forwarded to the Committee at the Society's administrative offices. The Committee urges that chapter leadership and regional directors take a stronger role in the coming years in nominating potential awardees, particularly for the Proctor Prize. Kevin Bowen can be contacted at the Society's administrative offices for additional information about Sigma Xi's awards and nomination procedures.

As Chair of the Committee on Awards, I would like to thank the Directors who worked with me on the Committee. It has been a pleasure working with them and I thank them for their willingness to serve the Society as a member of the Committee.

The members of the Committee on Awards for the year ending 30 June 2006 were:

Ernest H, Gilmour, Chair
John Kelley
Donald McGraw
Linda K. Meadows
M. A. (Tony) Whitehead