Keith Brian Rodenhausen and Daniel Schmidt are winner of the 2011 Topical Focus Ellipsometry Session Best Young Scientist Paper Awards, together with Noemi Leick-Marius from the Technische Universiteit Eindhoven, The Netherlands. The awardees were chosen by the Focus Topic Programm Committee for the three best contributed papers given by a graduate student or young post-doc researcher. Brian was awarded for his talk on "Real-time Spectroscopic Ellipsometry and Quartz Crystal Microbalance with Dissipation Characterization of Biomolecule Adsorption within Sculptured Thin Films". Daniel gave a presentation about "Vector-Magneto-Optical Generalized Ellipsometry on Sculptured Thin Films". The Ellipsometry student awards are sponsored by the J.A.Woollam Co., Inc. of Lincoln, Nebraska.