Case Study

Case Study: American Society for Cell Biology

Powering the ASCB Porter Prizes for Research Excellence with Reviewr

Overview

The American Society for Cell Biology (ASCB) presents the Porter Prizes for Research Excellence — a pair of prestigious awards that honor one graduate student and one postdoctoral researcher whose individual contributions exemplify scientific excellence, creativity, and novel research in the spirit of pioneering cell biologist Keith R. Porter. Winners receive a financial stipend, recognition at the ASCB annual meeting, and opportunities to present their research and network with leaders in the field. The awards celebrate discoveries that open new avenues for exploration in cell biology and research innovation.

ASCB also administers a broad suite of awards across career stages and scientific achievements, and engaged Reviewr to support a scalable, efficient, and transparent award ecosystem capable of accommodating multiple concurrent campaigns and complex nomination workflows.

The Challenge

As a large scientific society with thousands of members and multiple honorific and trainee awards, ASCB needed a platform capable of:

Supporting flexible nomination pathways: Allowing both self-nominations and third-party nominations, where nominated scientists receive notification and are guided into the same application process as self-applicants.
Managing external letters of support: Ensuring applicants can solicit and track required supporting letters — such as nomination letters and independent letters of endorsement — with automated follow-up reminders and attachment to candidate profiles.
Handling diverse supporting documents: Including narrative statements, structured CVs or biosketches, research abstracts, and candidate statements on inclusion, mentoring, or scientific impact.
Facilitating fair, rigorous review workflows: Enabling external judges to evaluate nominees using rubric-based scoring, with normalization features to balance scoring across reviewers who see different subsets of applications.
Scaling across multiple concurrent awards: Many distinct awards — including early-career prizes, innovation awards, and senior honors — each with unique criteria, committees, and evaluation rubrics.
Capturing ongoing impact and reporting: Beyond the award decision, enabling ASCB to collect post-award materials and presentations tied to the annual meeting.

The Solution: Reviewr Awards Management Platform

To address these needs, ASCB implemented Reviewr as the central system for the Porter Prizes and its broader awards portfolio — enabling a modern, scalable, and equitable awards infrastructure.

1. Flexible Nomination Workflows

Reviewr supports both self-application and third-party nomination paths. Nominators enter candidate information and contact details; Reviewr then automatically notifies nominees and directs them into the same structured form used by self-applicants. This ensures a consistent experience and uniform dataset regardless of nomination route.

2. Advanced Reference Management

Nominees can input the names and emails of required letter writers directly in Reviewr. The platform sends automated invitations to references and tracks submissions in real time. Automated reminders reduce manual tracking burden, ensuring all supporting letters are completed before review begins.

3. Secure Uploads of Supporting Materials

Reviewr’s submission interface allows applicants to upload narrative statements, NIH-style biosketches, research abstracts for conference presentation, and statements about broader impacts such as contributions to education or inclusion. All attachments are embedded into the nominee’s profile for seamless access by reviewers.

4. Robust Evaluation Tools for Judges

Each award is configured with its own custom scoring rubric — reflecting criteria such as scientific excellence, creativity, novelty of findings, and broader professional impact. Judges log into Reviewr with secure accounts, view all candidate materials side-by-side, score submissions, and leave qualitative feedback. Reviewr’s scoring normalization ensures fairness even when judges evaluate different subsets of nominees.

5. Multi-Award, Scalable Architecture

Reviewr enables ASCB to manage multiple awards simultaneously — each with distinct workflows, deadlines, and reviewer assignments — while centralizing administration, reporting, and historical data. This scalable infrastructure reduces administrative overhead and enables ASCB to expand its awards portfolio without duplicative systems.

6. Ongoing Impact Reporting

After winners are selected, Reviewr supports structured workflows for capturing awardee outputs, such as abstracts presented at the ASCB annual meeting, videos of presentations, and related deliverables. This ongoing data collection supports ASCB’s post-award reporting, archival record-keeping, and sponsor engagement.

Results

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Key Outcomes

Streamlined intake and processing of award nominations from graduate students and postdocs nationwide.
Automated reference solicitation and submission tracking, reducing administrative effort.
Consistent, fair evaluation across reviewers with normalization and collaborative tools.
Unified infrastructure for ASCB’s award portfolio, enabling scalability and operational efficiency.
Longitudinal capture of award presentations and scientific outputs tied to ASCB meetings.

The Impact

With Reviewr, the American Society for Cell Biology has modernized how it administers the Porter Prizes for Research Excellence and its broader suite of research and professional awards. The platform’s flexible workflows, review tools, and automation ensure a transparent, equitable, and scalable awards process that honors scientific achievement and supports ASCB’s mission to advance cell biology knowledge and community. The system’s ability to manage both nomination complexity and post-award impact reporting has strengthened ASCB’s award strategy and enhanced participant and reviewer experiences.

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