The ENS offers an annual award to recognize an outstanding PhD thesis. The award is organized under the auspices of the ENS High Scientific Council.

The ENS High Scientific Council values excellence, innovation, and originality in scientific research in the field of Nuclear Science and Engineering. In order to express this point of view and to encourage these traits among PhD students, the HSC selects an outstanding PhD student based on scientific merit, degree of innovation, and extent of originality of his/her dissertation.

For this award, each national society nominates one candidate. Since many national societies already offer PhD Awards (on a nation-wide level), the idea is to add value to those awards by allowing the winner to participate in a European-wide competition.

The candidates are evaluated by the HSC in a two-stage process. In the preliminary stage, candidates are evaluated based on their dissertation, papers, and recommendation letters according to the HSC evaluation criteria. Finalists are then invited for a personal presentation in front of the HSC, which entails a presentation, followed by a Q&A session. The winner is then selected based on both the preliminary evaluation and the presentation. The renowned scientists of the ENS High Scientific Council (HSC) will act as the Selection Committee for this prestigious award.

The winner of this prestigious award is offered a publication in the Open Access Journal EPJ-N and also receives prize money of 2000€.