The Robert Guthrie Award is given annually to honour a member of the International Society for Neonatal Screening who has made an outstanding contribution to newborn or other population-based screening which is recognized as such world-wide. The award includes a cash prize of USD 5,000 donated by PerkinElmer.
The recipient may opt to receive the prize money in the form of a travel award to one of the ISNS-sponsored neonatal screening conferences or to have it used in one of the ISNS-sponsored neonatal screening development projects.
Nomination for the Award
Nomination for the Robert Guthrie Award may be made by any active member of the International Society for Neonatal Screening (ISNS) and must be seconded by at least two other active members of the ISNS. The nomination must be accompanied by a statement of 100-200 words which describes the nature of the contribution. The statement may be accompanied by supporting information such as copies of publications, curriculum vitae or other documentation of the contribution, This information together with a letter from the nominator and at least two seconding letters from Society members, must be sent to the President of ISNS. A member may not nominate or second more than one nominee for the Award each year. The President, Vice-President, Secretary and Treasurer are not eligible for the Award.
Voting for the Award
A list of nominees together with copies of the supporting information for each nominee will be circulated to all members of the ISNS Executive Council, and others who may be appointed by the President if deemed necessary and appropriate by the Council. Each of the members above will be able to cast a vote for one nominee for the Award in any one year. However, an eligible member of Council who is nominated for an award will not be able to vote. The method for voting will be by ballot as determined by the President in consultation with the other office holders, and the votes will be auditable by the Secretary of the ISNS.
The Council members review the documentation and decide on their vote. All votes are sent to the ISNS Office manager who tabulates the results.
- If there is only one nomination, the vote is either positive or negative (or abstention); in case of a tie the President has a second vote.
- If there are two nominations, the vote is for nominee A or for nominee B (or abstention); in case of a tie the President has a second vote.
- If there are three (or more) nominees, the preferred nominee gets a score of 3 points (or 4, or 5, or 6 ... etc in case of multiple nominees), the second preferred nominee gets a score of 2 points, and the least preferred nominee gets a score of 1 point; in other words the vote consists of all names together with the appropriate points.
In a situation with three or more nominees the total points per nominee may be tied. In case of three nominees the nominee with the highest number of scores "3" is the winner. In a situation with four nominees the one with the highest number of scores "4" is the winner; if then there is still a tie, then the nominee with the highest number of scores "3", etc."
The Council may elect not to present an award if no nominations for outstanding contribution are received or if those received are deemed unworthy. On the other hand the voting committee may conclude to honour more than one nomination in one year.
Announcement of the Robert Guthrie Award recipient.
The Robert Guthrie Award recipients will be announced on the website of the Society. There will be a brief biography of the recipient and an explanation of the contribution made.
1996: Hiroshi Naruse
1997: Harvey Levy
1998: Jean Dussault
1999: W. Harry Hannon
2000: Brad L. Therrell
2001: Jean Pierre Farriaux
2002: Rodney J. Pollitt
2003: Bridget Wilcken
2004: Jan Østrup
2005: Benjamin J. Schmidt
2006: David S. Millington & Mohamed S. Rashed
2007: Jean Louis Dhondt
2008: Dianne Webster
2009: Bent Norgaard Pedersen
2010: J. Gerard Loeber
2011: Toni Torresani
2012: Masaru Fukushi
2013: Piero Rinaldo
2014: Ed Naylor
2015: Gustavo Borrajo
2016: Veronica Wiley
2017: Carmencita Padilla
2018: Barry Wolf
2019: R. Rodney Howell
2020: Georg Hoffmann
2021: Joanne Mei
2022: Michael Gelb
2023: Ralph Fingerhut