IETF | Applied Networking Research Prize 2026 Nominations Now Open

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Submit nominations for the 2026 Applied Networking Research Prize (ANRP) until 17 November 2025 to recognize the best recent results in applied networking, interesting new research ideas of potential relevance to the Internet standards community, and upcoming people that are likely to have an impact on Internet standards and technologies.
We encourage nominations of researchers with relevant research results, interesting ideas, and new perspectives, particularly of people or ideas would not otherwise get much exposure or be able to participate in the discussion within the Internet standards community.
The award will offer them the opportunity to present and discuss their work with the engineers, network operators, policy makers, and scientists that participate in the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) and its research arm, the Internet Research Task Force (IRTF). Both self- and third-party nominations for this prize are encouraged.
The Applied Networking Research Prize (ANRP) consists of:
In addition, prize winners may be offered additional travel grants to attend future IETF and/or IRTF meetings. Such grants are made at the discretion of the award committee, based on community feedback, engagement with the community, and potential future impact.
Applied Networking Research Prize awards are made once per calendar year. Each year, several winners will be chosen and invited to present their work at one of the three IETF meetings during the following year.
Nominations are for a single author of an original, peer-reviewed, journal, conference or workshop paper that was recently published or accepted for publication. The nominee must be one of the main authors of the nominated paper. Both self-nominations (nominating one’s own work) and third-party nominations (nominating someone else, with their permission) are encouraged.
The nominated paper should provide a scientific foundation for possible future engineering work in the IETF, or research and experimentation in the IRTF. It should analyse the behaviour of Internet protocols in real-world deployments or realistic testbeds, make an important contribution to understanding the scalability, performance, reliability, security or capabilities of the Internet, or otherwise be of relevance to ongoing or future IETF or IRTF activities.
Nominations must state how the nominated paper relates to these goals. They should describe how involving the nominee in the IETF and IRTF process, and bringing them to an IETF meeting, would help to foster the transition of the results and/or ideas into new IETF engineering work or IRTF experimentation, or otherwise seed new activities that will have an impact on the real-world Internet.
The goal of the ANRP is to foster the transitioning of research results into real-world benefits for the Internet. Therefore, applicants must indicate that they (or the nominee, in case of third-party nominations) are available to attend at least one of the IETF meetings in the following year.
Nominations are submitted via the IRTF website and must include:
All nominees will be notified by email about the decision regarding their nomination.
Nominations for the Applied Networking Research Prize (ANRP) are not considered to be contributions to the IETF or IRTF. However, the invited talks at the IRTF Open Meeting are co