NAS Held Prize: Call for nominations

From chair of the committee, Dan Spielman:
Nominations are now being accepted for the National Academy of Sciences’ 2023 Michael and Sheila Held Prize. The Held Prize honors outstanding, innovative, creative, and influential research in the areas of combinatorial and discrete optimization, or related parts of computer science, such as the design and analysis of algorithms and complexity theory. This $100,000 prize is intended to recognize recent work (defined as published within the last eight years). Additional information, including past recipients, eligibility requirements, and more, can be found at http://www.nasonline.org/held 

All nominations must be submitted online. Unless otherwise stated, the following materials must be submitted: 

1. A letter from the nominator describing the candidate’s work and why he or she should be selected for the award. No more than three (3) pages.
2. Curriculum vitae. No more than two (2) pages (similar to CVs included with NSF proposals).
3. Bibliography listing no more than twelve (12) of the nominee’s most significant publications.
4. Suggested citation. A 50-word summary stating why the nominee should be considered for this award. (Citation
   examples)
5. Two letters of support. Support letters must be written by individuals from institutions outside both the
   nominator’s and the nominee’s institution. Up to three letters of support are accepted.

Nominations will be accepted through Monday, October 3, 2022. Please help spread the word that the nomination process is underway. 

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.

Call for nominations: Knuth Prize

Deadline: March 31, 2022.

The Donald E. Knuth Prize for outstanding contributions to the foundations of computer science is awarded for major research accomplishments and contributions to the foundations of computer science over an extended period of time. The Prize is awarded annually by the ACMSpecial Interest Group on Algorithms and Computation Theory (SIGACT) and the IEEETechnical Committee on the Mathematical Foundations of Computing (TCMF).

Nomination Procedure. Anyone in the Theoretical Computer Science community may nominate a candidate. To do so, please send nominations to knuth.prize.2022@gmail.com by March 31, 2022. The nomination should state the nominee’s name, summarize their contributions in one or two pages, provide a CV for the nominee or a pointer to the nominee’s web page, and give telephone and email contact information for the nominator. Any supporting letters from other members of the community (up to a limit of 5) should be included in the package that the nominator submits. Supporting letters should contain substantial information not in the nomination. Others may endorse the nomination simply by adding their names to the nomination letter. If you have nominated a candidate in past years, you can re-nominate the candidate by sending a message to that effect to the above email address. (You may revise the nominating materials if you so desire.)

Criteria for Selection. The winner is selected by a Prize Committee consisting of six people appointed by the SIGACT and TCMF Chairs, see below for the composition of the committee.

Previous nominations made or updated in the last 5 years will be considered. Older nominations must be updated for consideration. Note that the Knuth Prize is awarded to a single individual each year. Nominations of groups of researchers will not be considered.

In selecting the Knuth Prize winner, the Committee pays particular attention to a sustained record of high-impact, seminal contributions to the foundations of computer science. The selection may also be based partly on educational accomplishments and contributions such as fundamental textbooks and high-quality students. The award is not given for service to the theoretical computer science community, but service may be included in the citation for a winner if appropriate.

The 2022 prize committee consists of Harold Gabow (U. Colorado), Monika Henzinger (U. Vienna), Kurt Mehlhorn (Max Planck Institute), Dana Randall (Chair, Georgia Tech), Madhu Sudan (Harvard U.), and Andy Yao (Tsinghua U.).

Call for nominations: Godel Prize

Deadline for nominations extended to March 31st 2022.

https://www.sigact.org/prizes/g%C3%B6del.html

The Gödel Prize for outstanding papers in the area of theoretical computer science is sponsored jointly by the European Association for Theoretical Computer Science (EATCS) and the Special Interest Group on Algorithms and Computation Theory of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM SIGACT). This award is presented annually, with the presentation taking place alternately at the International Colloquium on Automata, Languages, and Programming (ICALP) and the ACM Symposium on Theory of Computing (STOC). The thirtieth Gödel Prize will be awarded at the forty-ninth International Colloquium on Automata, Languages and Programming (ICALP), which will be hybrid, happening both physically and virtually. The physical meeting will take place in Paris, France, July 4–8 2022.

The Prize is named in honor of Kurt Gödel in recognition of his major contributions to mathematical logic and of his interest, discovered in a letter he wrote to John von Neumann shortly before von Neumann’s death, in what has become the famous “P versus NP” question. The Prize includes an award of USD 5,000.

Award Committee

The 2022 Award Committee consists of Samson Abramsky (Chair, University College London), Nikhil Bansal (University of Michigan), Irit Dinur (Weizmann Institute), Anca Muscholl (University of Bordeaux), Ronitt Rubinfeld (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), and David Zuckerman (University of Texas at Austin).

Eligibility

The 2022 Prize rules are given below and they supersede any different interpretation of the generic rule to be found on websites of both SIGACT and EATCS. Any research paper or series of papers by a single author or by a team of authors is deemed eligible if:

• The main results were not published (in either preliminary or final form) in a journal or conference proceedings before January 1, 2009.

• The paper was published in a recognized refereed journal no later than December 31, 2021.
The research work nominated for the award should be in the area of theoretical computer science. Nominations are encouraged from the broadest spectrum of the theoretical computer science community so as to ensure that potential award winning papers are not overlooked. The Award Committee shall have the ultimate authority to decide whether a particular paper is eligible for the Prize.

Nominations

Nominations for the award should be submitted by email to the Award Committee Chair: s.abramsky@ucl.ac.uk. Please make sure that the Subject line of all nominations and related messages begin with “Goedel Prize 2022”. To be considered, nominations for the 2022 Prize must be received by March 31, 2022.

A nomination package should include:

• A printable copy (or copies) of the journal paper(s) being nominated, together with a complete citation (or citations) thereof.

• A statement of the date(s) and venue(s) of the first conference or workshop publication(s) of the nominated work(s) or a statement that no such publication has occurred.

• A brief summary of the technical content of the paper(s) and a brief explanation of its significance.

• A support letter or letters signed by at least two members of the scientific community.
Additional support letters may also be received and are generally useful. The nominated paper(s) may be in any language. However, if a nominated publication is not in English, the nomination package must include an extended summary written in English.

Those intending to submit a nomination should contact the Award Committee Chair by email well in advance. The Chair will answer questions about eligibility, encourage coordination among different nominators for the same paper(s), and also accept informal proposals of potential nominees or tentative offers to prepare formal nominations. The committee maintains a database of past nominations for eligible papers, but fresh nominations for the same papers (especially if they highlight new evidence of impact) are always welcome.

Call for Nominations: SIGACT Distinguished Service Award

From the SIGACT executive committee:

The Theory community benefits in many ways from the dedicated service, above and beyond the call of duty, of many of its members. Among other contributions, the field’s members underpin the operation of conferences, journals, prizes, funding agencies, and other community activities, help ensure funding for the field, and promote the recognition of the field by external communities. The SIGACT Distinguished Service Award is intended to recognize and promote their contributions, as well as to raise awareness of the need for and importance of such service, for the health of our community. The award is given annually to an individual or group who has made substantial service contributions to the Theoretical Computer Science community.

Eligibility
The award can be given to an individual or a group of individuals, for a single contribution or for a series of contributions over a career. All living individuals are eligible with the exception of the sitting SIGACT Chair, an individual or a group of individuals who nominated a majority of the current selection committee members, or a member of the current selection committee.

Deadline for Nominations
This year’s nomination deadline is March 21, 2022, 11:59 EDT.

Please see the full call at the SIGACT website at https://www.sigact.org/prizes/service.html for more information.

We are grateful to Paul Beame, Dieter van Melkebeek, and Rebecca Wright (chair) who have kindly agreed to serve as the selection committee.

Upcoming SIGACT Awards deadlines

From the SIGACT executive committee:

The deadlines to submit nominations for the Gödel Prize, Knuth Prize, and SIGACT Distinguished Service Award are coming soon. Calls for nominations for all three awards can be found at the links below.

• Gödel Prize: deadline February 15, 2020.
• Knuth prize: deadline April 12, 2020. Note that this deadline is a bit later than usual, because the award will be presented at FOCS this year. Next year the deadline will be moved back to February.
• SIGACT Distinguished Service Award: deadline March 1, 2020.

Prize nominations relevant to TCS: due on April 1

The Breakthrough Prize committee is now accepting nominations for the Breakthrough Prize as well as New Horizons Prizes in Mathematics. The New Horizons Prizes are awarded to early-career researchers (Ph.D. within the last 10 years) who have already produced important work. In addition, for the first time, nominations will be taken for the Maryam Mirzakhani New Frontiers Prize – an annual $50,000 award that will be presented to early-career women mathematicians who have completed their PhDs within the previous two years.

Further information is available at https://breakthroughprize.org/Rules/3. Nominations for 2021 are due on April 1, 2020.

Please consider nominating deserving candidates. The task of nominating someone for a high-profile award can be daunting, but the CATCS is available to help. Please contact us if you need help with preparing a nomination.

 

SIGACT Award deadlines

From the SIGACT executive committee:

The deadlines to submit nominations for the Gödel Prize, Knuth Prize, and SIGACT Distinguished Service Award are coming soon. Calls for nominations for all three awards can be found at the links below. Note that March 1 is now the permanent deadline for SIGACT Distinguished Service Award nominations, this year and in future years.

• Gödel Prize: deadline February 15, 2019
• Knuth Prize: deadline February 15, 2019
• SIGACT Distinguished Service Award: deadline March 1, every year (including 2019)
  Those who intend to submit a nomination for the Distinguished Service Award are strongly encouraged to inform the Selection Committee Chair at least two weeks in advance.

Highlights from STOC presentation

Since there wasn’t time to go through the full CATCS Report during the STOC business meeting last week, here are a few items of note.

• The URL http://www.theorymatters.org/ (listed in the presentation) is no longer active.  For now, our blog is just https://thmatters.wordpress.com/
• Tim Roughgarden will be taking over as chair of CATCS starting in August.
• Do make use of the cstheory-jobs site to advertise or look for jobs in theoretical computer science.

And many upcoming deadlines:

• June 30, 2015: proposals for 2017 programs at the Simons Institute 
• July 21, 2015: NSF CAREER Award (for new/young faculty).  See also our repository of past CAREER proposals and other proposal-writing tips.
• Late summer: universities sent calls for nominations for Simons Investigator Awards (long-term support for individuals)
• Late summer: Simons Fellows in Math (sabbatical funding)
• Early fall: Simons Collaborations in Math & Physical Sciences. (large grants for collaborative efforts on fundamental scientific questions of major importance)
• September 10, 2015: Nominations for ACM Fellows.
• September 16, 2015: NSF Medium proposals to Algorithmic Foundations, Secure and Trustworthy Cyberspace, and other programs.
• TBD (September?): Guggenheim Fellowships
• September 24, 2015: NSF Large proposals to Algorithmic Foundations, Secure and Trustworthy Cyberspace, and other programs.
• September 30, 2015: NSF CISE Research Initiation Initiative (CRII).   For new faculty, easier to get than a CAREER award (but both can be submitted at once).  See FAQ.
• October 19, 2015: NSF Mathematical Sciences Postdoctoral Research Fellowship
• TBD (late Oct): NSF Graduate Research Fellowships
• October 31, 2015: ACM Dissertation Award
• November 1, 2015: AAAS Science & Technology Policy Fellowships
• November 18, 2015: NSF Small proposals to Algorithmic Foundations, Secure and Trustworthy Cyberspace, and other programs.
• November 30, 2015: Many ACM Awards (e.g. Turing, Hopper, Kanellakis, Distinguished Service)
• Rolling or Dec 1: CCC Visioning Workshops (eg Theoretical Foundations of Social Computing 6/29-6/30)
• December 7, 2015: NSF CISE-MPS Interdisciplinary Faculty Program in Quantum Information (sabbatical support)
• December 7, 2015: NSF Exploiting Parallelism & Scalability (XPS)
• February 8, 2015: NSF Algorithms in the Field (AitF)
• TBD: Simons Award for Graduate Students in TCS
• March 1, 2016: Nominations for IEEE Fellows.
• March 9, 2016: NSF CISE Expeditions in Computing Preliminary Proposals
• TBD (April?): Symposia at 2017 AAAS Annual Meeting
• TBD (May?): NSF BIGDATA program
• Any time: DIMACS special focus proposal

Call for ACM Award Nominations

See below for upcoming deadlines for ACM Award Nominations.  As usual, the CATCS is available to help with the nomination process (in the form of providing advice, connecting you with others who might help, etc.); just contact a member of the committee.

Note that for ACM Fellow Nominations, the candidate must have been a Professional Member of ACM (not just SIGACT member) for at least 5 years continuously.  Similarly, becoming an IEEE Fellow requires 5 years of continuous IEEE membership (not just IEEE Computer Society Membership).

In addition to the awards below, note that there are also several SIGACT-specific awards.

——————————————–

From: Rosemary McGuinness
Sent: Friday, August 16, 2013 3:51 PM
Subject: Call for Award Nominations

AWARD NOMINATIONS SOLICITED

As part of its mission, ACM brings broad recognition to outstanding technical and professional achievements in the computing and information technology community. Each year our award committees evaluate the contributions of candidates in a wide spectrum of professional and technological arenas.

We welcome nominations by ACM members of those who deserve recognition for their accomplishments. Please refer to the ACM Awards website at http://awards.acm.org for:

• award descriptions and information on former winners

• nomination procedures, members of the 2013 Award Committees, and contact information

Each award has its own nomination cycle. The following nominations are due this Fall.

Nominations due September 5:

Fellows:  ACM’s most prestigious member grade which recognizes the top 1% of members

Nominations due October 31:

ACM Doctoral Dissertation Award:   best doctoral dissertation in computer science and engineering

Nominations due November 30, 2013:

A.M. Turing Award:   major contributions of lasting importance to computing

ACM – Infosys Foundation Award:   personal contributions by young scientists and system developers

Distinguished Service Award:    service contributions to the computing community at large

Grace Murray Hopper Award:   outstanding young computer professional, based on a single recent major technical or service contribution

Paris Kanellakis Theory and Practice Award:   theoretical accomplishments that have had significant impact on practice

Karl V. Karlstrom Outstanding Educator Award:   advancing new teaching methodologies, curriculum development in computing, or significant contributions to ACM’s educational mission

Outstanding Contribution to ACM Award:   outstanding contributions to ACM, in both value and degree

ACM/AAAI Allen Newell Award:   career contributions with breadth or that bridge computer science and other disciplines

Software System Award:    developing a software system that has had a lasting influence

For SIG-specific Awards, please visit http://awards.acm.org.

Cherri Pancake (pancake@nacse.org), ACM Awards Committee Chair
Elisa Bertino (bertino@cerias.purdue.edu), SIG Governing Board Awards Committee Liaison
Rosemary McGuinness (mcguinness@acm.org), ACM Awards Committee Liaison