Call for Nominations: STOC Test of Time Award (Deadline: Apr 30)

The 2022 STOC Test of Time Award recognizes papers published in the Proceedings of the Annual ACM Symposium on Theory of Computing. This is the second year of this annual award. There are three awards, targeting the STOC conferences 10, 20, and 30 years prior to the year in which the award is given. While there is a preference for papers in the target years (and nominations from those years are encouraged), in each of these award categories it is also possible to nominate STOC conference papers published up to four conferences earlier than the targeted conference. Thus, the 2022 STOC Test of Time Awards will be for papers presented at the STOC conferences in 2008-2012, 1998-2002, and 1988-1992. The awards, which will be presented at STOC 2022, include a prize of US $500 per author as well as complimentary registration for all authors who attend the conference at which the award is given.

Nomination Procedure

Nominations should be sent to stoc22.tot.award@gmail.com with a subject line of “STOC Test of Time Award” no later than April 30, 2022. Nominations should contain an explanation of the impact of the nominated paper(s), including references to follow-on work. A nomination may be accompanied by up to three additional endorsement letters, which may be sent by the endorsers directly to the same email address with the same subject line. Self-nominations are disallowed. 

Selection

The winners will be selected by a committee appointed by the SIGACT Executive Committee. For 2022 the selection committee consists of Toniann Pitassi (Columbia), Satish Rao (Berkeley), Salil Vadhan (Harvard, chair), Avi Wigderson (Institute for Advanced Study). 

In selecting the Test of Time Award winners, the Committee will pay particular attention to long-term impact. This impact can come in many forms, including but not limited to:

1. Opening up a new area of research
2. Introducing new techniques
3. Solving a problem of lasting importance
4. Stimulating advances in other areas of computer science or in other disciplines.

The committee expects to select exactly one paper for each award. However, when circumstances justify it, up to three may be selected. The committee may consider papers that were not explicitly nominated and gather additional input from experts, but formal nominations are extremely helpful in the committee’s deliberations and strongly encouraged.