Mihara Award candidates are selected exclusively on the basis of recommendation summaries submitted by heads of various institutions on form 2 before October 31, 2009. No applicant may apply directly and any personal application will be automatically rejected. After collection of summaries, the first meeting of the Steering Committee is held in November and the summaries are broadly screened.

The seven members of the Steering Committee listed below can each award 3 points at maximum, and their assigned points are summed up. The second meeting is held in December. The total points scores and other relevant factors are discussed. Finally, a single winner is selected from throughout the world each year. There will be no response to inquiries concerning the outcome of the selection procedure. The winner is notified via either airmail or e-mail. The winner is required to submit a 1200-word abstract which is suitable for publication in a mass communication medium. The Mihara Award Award Ceremony is held in the next February. The winner is requested to come to Tokyo and give a 30 min lecture at the ceremony. The winner's partner is also invited. We will cover their hotel expenses, but not transportation fees. The recommendation summaries of failed candidates are not returned, but remain privileged documents and will not be publicly released.

Note: The original Mihara Award award had two categories. One was an ordinary award designed to support a scientist with work in progress who has contributed to the field of outstanding stroke treatment in the fiscal year, or in the recent past, and the other was a praised award for an internationally known, established scientist with Nobel-Prize-class achievement in the field of cerebrovascular disease. However, the praised award was suspended from 1996, because interest rates on the Fund’s capital were too low to support it.