Rising Star Award
for Spatial Intelligence

Call for Applications

Key Dates and Award Snapshot

Proposal Submission Deadline	May 24, 2026, 11:59 PM PST
Announcement	May 31, 2026, 11:59 PM PST Due to a high volume of applications, the announcement will be made on June 2.
Workshop Date	June 3, 2026, CVPR 2026, Denver
Selection	1 final awardee and 5 finalists
Eligibility	Current PhD students and postdoctoral researchers
Research Gift Fund	Up to USD 30,000 to the institution of the awardee as gift funding. No indirect cost is intended. Final terms are subject to sponsor approval and institutional policies.

Purpose

The Rising Star Award for Spatial Intelligence is organized as part of the E2E3D Workshop at CVPR 2026. The award recognizes an early-career researcher with strong research achievements and a clear future vision for spatial intelligence.

The award focuses on work that connects 3D perception, 3D generation, 3D representations, world models, spatial reasoning, embodied AI, XR, and real-time systems. The goal is to highlight a research agenda that helps future models understand, reconstruct, generate, and act in 3D and dynamic environments.

Eligibility

Applicants must be in one of the following roles at the time of submission:

• Current PhD student.
• Current postdoctoral researcher.

Additional guidelines:

• Applicants may submit only one application.
• Current E2E3D workshop organizers are not eligible.
• Applications will be reviewed relative to career stage.
• Conflicts of interest will be handled by the award committee.

Required Materials

Each applicant should submit three PDF documents. The Research Achievement Summary and Research Vision Proposal should each be at most one page; the Advisor Reference Letter has no page limit.

1. Research Achievement Summary, 1 page. Summarize the most important research achievements to date. This may include selected papers, systems, datasets, benchmarks, open-source releases, demos, awards, community service, or evidence of research leadership.
2. Research Vision Proposal, 1 page. Describe the future research plan of the applicant for spatial intelligence. The proposal should include:
   • Abstract: a brief summary of the proposed research vision.
   • Research Thrust: the main technical direction, key problems, proposed methods, data needs, and evaluation plan.
   • Broader Impact in Spatial Intelligence: expected impact on the research community, open resources, reproducibility, safety, deployment, or new applications.
3. Advisor Reference Letter. A reference letter from the applicant's PhD advisor or postdoctoral supervisor, signed and on institutional letterhead, uploaded by the applicant as a PDF.

Suggested Vision Proposal Structure

Applicants may use any format, but a strong one-page proposal should state the core research question, explain why the problem matters now, outline the technical path, define how progress will be measured, and describe what the community will gain.

Example Research Areas

Relevant areas include, but are not limited to:

Area	Example Topics
3D/4D reconstruction	Single-view, multi-view, and video-to-3D/4D reconstruction; RGB-D and LiDAR reconstruction; SLAM, mapping, localization, and geometry from unposed images.
3D/4D generation and editing	Object, scene, human, and asset generation; text-to-3D/4D, image-to-3D/4D, video-to-3D/4D; controllable editing; physically grounded generation.
3D/4D representations	Neural radiance fields, 3D Gaussian splatting, implicit fields, meshes, point clouds, occupancy fields, signed distance fields, and hybrid representations.
Video generation and world models	Dynamic scenes, temporal consistency, persistent spatial memory, physical prediction, scene simulation, and long-horizon video understanding.
Spatial reasoning	3D vision-language models, spatial relation understanding, scene graphs, layout reasoning, geometric and physical reasoning, and action-conditioned perception.
Embodied AI	Vision-language-action models, world-action models, navigation, manipulation, affordance learning, policy learning in 3D environments, and sim-to-real transfer.
Spatial computing, XR, and mixed reality	AR, VR, mixed reality, spatial maps, real-time scene understanding, user-facing 3D perception, and interaction in spatial computing systems.
Data, evaluation, and systems	Large-scale 3D and video data engines, synthetic data, multi-sensor logs, benchmarks, robustness, latency, memory, energy, and edge deployment.

Award and Recognition

• The program will select 1 final awardee and 5 finalists.
• The final awardee will receive up to USD 30,000 in research gift funding to the institution of the awardee, subject to sponsor approval and institutional policies.
• The gift is intended to support research activities related to spatial intelligence, such as computing, data collection, benchmark development, open-source release, equipment, student support, or research travel.
• No indirect cost is intended. Final processing may depend on sponsor and institutional rules.
• The awardee and finalists may be featured on the E2E3D workshop website. The awardee may be invited to present a short research vision talk at the workshop, subject to the final workshop schedule.

Selection Criteria

Applications will be reviewed by the award committee. Reviewers will consider the career stage of the applicant. Main criteria include:

• Research achievement: quality and importance of prior work; evidence of technical depth, independence, leadership, open-source release, datasets, benchmarks, systems, demos, or deployed results.
• Research vision: clarity, originality, and importance of the proposed agenda for spatial intelligence.
• Fit to E2E3D: strong connection to end-to-end 3D learning, 3D reconstruction, 3D generation, 3D representations, world models, radiance fields, embodied AI, XR, data engines, systems, or evaluation.
• Technical plan and impact: credible problem statement, method, data plan, evaluation plan, milestones, and expected benefit to the research community.

Application Portal and Contact

• Application portal: Apply HERE
• Website: https://e2e3d.github.io
• Questions: e2e3d@googlegroups.com

This call may be updated on the workshop website. Applicants should follow the final instructions posted on the E2E3D website.

Submit Your Application