Eligibility

Member Societies who have been affiliated with the Federation for at least one year, are current in their membership dues, and are in the second half of Members Societies as ranked using the IFSCC ranking methodology. A Member Society may receive the Prize up to two times.

To learn more about Lester Conrad, click here to read a profile on him from the IFSCC archives.

Conditions

There is no formal application to be filled out for the Lester Conrad Educational Prize. Societies wishing to win this award explain (in an email or letter to secretariat@ifscc.org) how they would use the CHF 8,000 grant money over a 3 year period. The prize is awarded to the Society with the best proposed educational program. The next Lester Conrad Education Prize will be awarded in 2023 at the IFSCC Barcelona Congress is open to Societies in the lower 50% of our post-London Congress rankings. The deadline to receive email submissions is 1 July 2023. The winner will be notified in July.

Here is a complete list of the Societies eligible for the IFSCC Lester Conrad Education Prize in 2023, based on the post-London Congress rankings: Austria, Chile, Colombia, Croatia, Czech Republic, Greece, Hong Kong, Hungary, Israel, Netherlands, New Zealand, Nigeria, Philippines, Romania, Scandinavia, SCOAC, Singapore, Slovakia, Thailand, Uruguay, and Venezuela. From this list we exclude from consideration any Societies affiliated with the IFSCC less than 1 year, those which are not current in their Membership Dues, inactive Societies, and those Lester Conrad-winning Societies which are still holding programs.

Prize winners

Nigeria Society NICOS is the winner of our 2023 Lester Conrad Education Prize, having been voted by the Praesidium as the Society with the best proposed educational programme from this year’s applicants. NICOS joined the IFSCC in 2020, with Grace Abamba as Founding President.

The 2021 Lester Conrad Educational Prize was won by the Asociación Centroamericana de Ciencias Cosméticas, our Central American-affiliated Society. Due to the ongoing impact of COVID ACACC plans to hold their initial conferences virtually and will invite all Spanish-speaking IFSCC Member Societies to participate as well.

The Bulgarian Society of Cosmetology won the 2019 Lester Conrad Educational Prize. They attended the 2019 IFSCC Conference in Milan to accept their prize. They will be delivering two high-quality lectures a year 2020-2022 on a variety of topics of interest to their Membership, including the use of Bulgarian plants in cosmetics. IFSCC Past Secretary General Mary Lynn Halland called Dr Krastanka Marinova on 5 August 2019 to deliver the good news. Dr. Marinova said “the Bulgarian Society is very grateful to have this funding. We will now be able to carry out 3 years of wonderful seminars and, hopefully, build our Membership. Thank you, IFSCC.”

On winning the 2017 prize, Manuel Li, President of the Asociación Peruana de Química Cosmética, based in Lima, Peru, said: “The support from the IFSCC will permit us to offer our Members 3 years of high-quality education we could not afford on our own. Also, we hope our outstanding programmes will attract new Members to our Society. Many thanks to the IFSCC for choosing us.”

Awards made to date have been presented to the following Societies:

• Nigeria in 2023
• Central America in 2021
• Bulgaria in 2019
• Peru in 2017
• Hong Kong in 2013
• Indonesia in 2011
• India in 2009
• Ecuador in 2007
• Slovakia in 2005
• Romania in 2003
• Poland in 2001
• Croatia in 1999
• Argentina (again) in 1997
• Israel in 1995
• Uruguay in 1993
• Venezuela in 1991
• New Zealand in 1989
• Brazil in 1987
• Yugoslavia in 1985
• Argentina in 1983
• Czechoslovakia in 1981