Why not go both?

It you really want to get GC ASAP, then come up with really good petition letter and try EB1 too, it is still possible if you are lucky. Of course it is possible to get denied too. There are lots of information in INS website. You can read their sample cases(those are all real cases). I saw many strong cases got denied eventually because applicants can't prove they are the top scientists in their fields.

Student awards are useless, it's even worse to list them. If you get a careful visa officer, he will definitely challenge you on this. And only publication is not a prove that you are best in the field.

I don't mean to discourage you. If GC is really, really important to you, then do some good research on it and write really good petition, if you're lucky you get it. Even it's denied, it won't hurt your NIW.

One careful thing to do I can recommend: simply send I-140 petitions, but not 485. If your I-140 gets approved in several months, you can file 485 with the initial PD anytime. If your I-140 is denied, you won't have a leftover 485 tied to your denied 140. Try to do the whole application as clean as possible. INS can get very un-organized sometimes, and you don't want to mess up with them.