For the second consecutive year, honorees of the The Root 100 were presented with custom awards created by Bennett Awards. The Root 100 awards honor the 100 most influential African Americans, age 25 to 45, of the past year. The 2018 recipients of this award included LeBron James, Serena Williams, and Kendrick Lamar, among many other deserving recipients.

XPRIZE commissioned Bennett Awards to create a new custom award for its latest competition: the Water Abundance XPRIZE. The Water Abundance XPRIZE was created to recognize pioneering technologies aimed at alleviating the global water crisis with energy-efficient technologies that harvest fresh water from thin air. The winner, Skysource/Skywater Alliance, received a custom award created by Bennett Awards, along with $1.5 million in prize money. The custom award was a clear acrylic water drop sculpture with an embedded globe mounted on a cast pewter base with sculpted engravings.

Bennett Awards created a set of unique custom awards for PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals). PETA is the largest animal rights organization in the world, with more than 6.5 million members and supporters. These custom awards were designed and produced for PETA’s Elly Awards, which celebrate the TV stars and shows that have promoted kindness to animals. For these awards, Bennett Awards created a new custom award design that featured a realistic sculpture of an elephant holding a flower in its trunk.

For the second straight year, Bennett Awards produced a set of unique custom awards for the Dell Technologies Hall of Fame Open, the first stop of the pro tennis summer swing in the United States. The tournament is held at the International Tennis Hall of Fame in Newport, Rhode Island, the original location of the U.S. National Championships. These custom awards are based on a sculpture in the shape of the ITHOF’s logo – a stylized tennis racquet. The tennis racquet sculpture is cast in pewter and has a brushed pewter finish.

For the second consecutive year, U.S. Soccer used a custom award created by Bennett Awards to crown its Tournament of Nations champion. The Tournament of Nations is an international women’s soccer tournament, consisting of a series of friendly games between 4 different women’s national teams. The custom championship trophy used for this tournament features 4 curving, intertwined spires, with each spire representing one of the four participating teams. A globe sculpture is mounted on top of the spires. The sculpture is cast in gold-plated pewter, and then mounted to custom polygon-shaped hardwood base with personalized engravings.

The AKC (American Kennel Club) presented a custom Bennett sculpture award at their 2017 National Championship, presented by Royal Canin. In combination with its ancillary events, this is the largest dog show in North America. For this event, the AKC presents a custom, hand-sculpted perpetual cup created by Bennett Awards to its Best in Show winner. Unique, custom medallions on the base of the cup signify each year’s winner.

For the 2nd straight year, a Bennett custom award was presented to the Defender of the Nation Award recipient. This award, established by the Charlotte Touchdown Club, is presented each year to a football player from of the nation’s service academies. The award recognizes an athlete from these academies that demonstrates exceptional leadership qualities on the field, in the classroom, and in the community, as well as exhibiting high standards of integrity by leading through example. The latest recipient of this recognition award was Greg Sanders, a senior defensive back from VMI.

The Real-World Cryptology Conference presented an interactive custom award created by Bennett Awards to two 2018 recipients of the Levchin Prize: IBM Fellow Hugo Krawczyk and The OpenSSL team. The Levchin Prize honors significant contributions to real-world cryptography and celebrates recent advances that have had a major impact on the practice of cryptography and its use in real-world systems. The Levchin Prize award, created by Bennett Awards, is a unique, custom award that functions as an interactive puzzle that can be “solved” by award recipients.

The National Lacrosse League (NLL), North America’s premier professional indoor lacrosse league, commissioned Bennett Awards to create a unique custom award for its new championship trophy. The custom award, called the National Lacrosse League Cup, is a perpetual award that will honor each year’s champions. This unique custom sculpture award was produced in nickel-plated bronze.

Bell Labs presented a unique, custom Bennett Award to Vint Cerf, widely regarded as the “Father of the Internet”. Cerf received Bell Lab’s Shannon Visionary Award, created by Bennett Awards, for his participation in the Shannon Luminary Lecture Series and Award. This lecture series is comprised of speakers who are luminaries in a wide diversity of fields and who share their perspective on the most important technologies, science, engineering, mathematics – and even more aesthetic matters – that will transform human existence in the next decades.