It has been reported that the enthusiasm for applying for the Fourth Engineer Award has been extremely high, with nearly a thousand individuals submitting applications. A group of engineers who have previously received national awards actively participated in the application process. After rigorous scrutiny and screening by various recommendation units, a total of 345 engineer candidates were recommended. Following a preliminary review, 331 of these candidates advanced to the evaluation phase, including 224 Distinguished Engineer candidates and 107 Distinguished Young Engineer candidates. Among the Distinguished Engineer candidates, 124 have previously received national-level awards, accounting for 55.4%, with a total of 202 awards received. Similarly, among the Distinguished Young Engineer candidates, 24 have received such awards, making up 22.4%, with a total of 24 awards received. The quality of applications has further improved compared to previous years.
The expert review phase for the Distinguished Engineer Award is divided into two stages: the initial review by experts in the specific field and the final review by the review committee.
Affected by the pandemic, the preliminary review process of the Fourth Distinguished Engineer Award was primarily conducted through online evaluation. To ensure the quality of the review, the Distinguished Engineer Award review system was refined, and various aspects of the online review process were detailed. This year's Distinguished Engineer Award preliminary review was divided into nine fields and ten groups, with a total of 63 review experts invited, including 20 academicians. The preliminary review began on September 27th and concluded with voting on October 30th. During this period, upon seeking the opinions of expert group leaders, the geology and mineral group convened in an offline meeting format, while the electronic information group held expert discussions via video. Other groups directly conducted expert remote voting, ultimately identifying 81 candidates to proceed to the final review stage.
At the final review meeting, experts from various professional fields presented the discussions within their respective groups. Adhering to the principles of fairness and impartiality, the review committee comprehensively evaluated the 81 nominees, ultimately selecting 40 candidates for the Distinguished Engineer Award and 30 for the Young Distinguished Engineer Award. The 70 nominees identified through the final review as recipients of the Outstanding Engineer Award must undergo a public announcement and be reviewed by the Distinguished Engineer Award Committee before the final list of awardees is determined.