CIRES Members’ Council is now accepting nominations for the annual Outstanding Performance Awards: nomination window closes on February 7

The CIRES Outstanding Performance Awards aim to recognize novel, high-impact efforts that illustrate remarkable creativity or resourcefulness within the distinct categories of “Science and Engineering” and “Service”.

If you know a CIRES member or team that made a ground-breaking scientific discovery, creatively applied technology to advance environmental research, or spearheaded some heroic organizational feat in support of the CIRES mission, please make time to submit a worthy nomination for this special individual or group using the CIRES nomination website

  • Anyone can nominate a CIRES employee or team whom they feel is deserving!
  • Nominations must be received by 5:00 PM MST on Feb. 7, 2023.

(Nominations received after this deadline will be considered in next year’s decision.)

  • Letters of support will be accepted until 5:00 PM MST on Friday, Feb 17, 2023.

For team nominations, please list all names in the “Nominee Name” section and use the team lead email address.
Please note that a nomination, including the nominee list, cannot be changed or appended once the nomination deadline has passed.


The criteria by which nominations will be evaluated are described in detail on the CIRES nomination website. All renewable-term CIRES employees are eligible except CIRES Fellows, visiting scientists, senior management, and students who are not part of a larger team effort. On average, we receive 10-20 nominations and make about six selections. Thus, we strongly recommend that all nominations clearly and concisely address all the criteria described on the CIRES nomination website, providing evidence of the nominee’s qualifications, directly stating why the nominee(s) deserves the award, and supporting the nomination with 2-3 letters of support. Nominators are encouraged to start the process of reaching out to supporters for letters early on. The requested support letters will be submitted by the references directly to the OPA Committee via the online submittal system.  

Awards will be presented at the 2022 CIRES Rendezvous, date TBD in Spring 2023.
OPA recipients typically receive a $2,000 award, which is shared if a nomination includes multiple teammates.

Nominations will be evaluated by a panel of CIRES members composed of three members of the CIRES Member’s Council and three representatives of the CIRES community. Please note that panel members may be neither nominators nor nominees. To find out more, please send an email to ciresawards@lists.colorado.edu. This email address is for questions only; nominations cannot be accepted by email but must be submitted by logging into the InsideCIRES portal using the Next button after selecting either Science and Engineering Award or Service Award.