M. Barry Carlton Award

The M. Barry Carlton Award is an annual award recognizing the best paper published in the Transactions on Aerospace and Electronic Systems. To help assess impact, nominations are limited to the papers published in calendar year four years before the award year. For example, the Carlton Award made in 2020 was to a paper published in the Transactions in 2016. The award was established in 1957 after the early death of M. Barry Carlton in an air accident the year before. M. Barry Carlton's friends established the award as a means to honor a man who had dedicated much of his life to promoting the reliability of communications equipment, especially that relating to air transportation. It is one of the IEEE's oldest awards and supports a wonderful tradition of excellence.

We urge our Transactions readers to participate in the tradition. If you have read a paper that you think is outstanding (and it does not matter if you are acquainted with the authors), please consider nominating it. Concurrently, the Senior Editors of each of the technical areas will cooperate with their Associate Editors to identify publications to be examined by the award committee. The recommendations provided by at least two Editors will serve as formal nominations. Despite this internal selection process, any of the Transactions readers is strongly encouraged to nominate publications.

The procedure is simple: send a letter or email to the TAES Editor-in-Chief explaining the rationale for your choice and arrange at least two endorsers to submit supporting letters. The evaluation criteria are importance as an advancement in state-of-the-art, originality, quality, and scholarly character. By making a nomination, you will not only show your respect for the authors (and possibly give great help to some deserving careers) but also honor Mr. Carlton.