ACM Announces 2021 A.M. Turing Award Recipient
ACM has named Jack J. Dongarra recipient of the 2021 ACM A.M. Turing Award for pioneering contributions to numerical algorithms and libraries that enabled high performance computational software to keep pace with exponential hardware improvements for over four decades. Dongarra is a University Distinguished Professor of Computer Science in the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department at the University of Tennessee. He also holds appointments with Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the University of Manchester.
Pieter Abbeel Honored with ACM Prize in Computing
ACM has named Pieter Abbeel of the University of California, Berkeley and the Co-Founder, President and Chief Scientist at Covariant the recipient of the 2021 ACM Prize in Computing for contributions to robot learning. Abbeel pioneered teaching robots to learn from human demonstrations (“apprenticeship learning”) and through their own trial and error (“reinforcement learning”), which have formed the foundation for the next generation of robotics. Abbeel’s groundbreaking research has helped shape contemporary robotics and continues to drive the future of the field.
Mark Horowitz Receives 2022 Eckert-Mauchly Award
Mark Horowitz, a Professor at Stanford University, was named the recipient of the 2022 ACM - IEEE CS Eckert-Mauchly Award for for contributions to microprocessor memory systems. Horowitz was the first to identify the processor to dynamic random-access memory (DRAM) interface as a key bottleneck that required architecture and circuit optimization. He pioneered high-bandwidth DRAM interfaces. In addition, modern DRAM interfaces such as SDDR and LPDDR were strongly influenced by his techniques.
Doctoral Dissertation Award Recognizes Young Researchers
Cornell University graduate Manish Raghavan receives the 2021 ACM Doctoral Dissertation Award for significant contributions to the understanding of algorithmic decision making and its societal implications, including foundational results on issues of algorithmic bias and fairness. Honorable Mentions go to Dimitris Tsipras of Stanford University, Pratul Srinivasan of Google Research, and Benjamin Mildenhall of Google Research.
Raluca Ada Popa Receives ACM Grace Murray Hopper Award
Raluca Ada Popa, University of California, Berkeley, is the recipient of the 2021 ACM Grace Murray Hopper Award for the design of secure distributed systems. The systems protect confidentiality against attackers with full access to servers while maintaining full functionality. Popa’s research provides confidentiality guarantees where servers only need to store encrypted data, processing it without decrypting. Thus, hackers see only encrypted data. Computing on encrypted data, possible in theory, has been prohibitively inefficient inpractice. Popa addresses this by replacing generality with building systems for a broad set of applications with common traits, and developing encryption schemes tailored to these application archetypes.
Software System Award Goes to Seven for Practical Optimizing Compiler
Xavier Leroy, Collège de France; Sandrine Blazy, University of Rennes 1, IRISA; Zaynah Dargaye, Nomadic Labs; Jacques-Henri Jourdan, CNRS, Laboratoire Méthodes Formelles; Michael Schmidt, AbsInt Angewandte Informatik; Bernhard Schommer, Saarland University and AbsInt Angewandte Informatik GmbH; and Jean-Baptiste Tristan, Boston College, receive the ACM Software System Award for the development of CompCert, the first practically useful optimizing compiler targeting multiple commercial architectures that has a complete, mechanically checked proof of its correctness.
Contributors to the Development of Differential Privacy Receive Kanellakis Award
Avrim Blum, Toyota Technological Institute at Chicago; Irit Dinur, Weizmann Institute; Cynthia Dwork, Harvard University; Frank McSherry, Materialize Inc.; Kobbi Nissim, Georgetown University; and Adam Davison Smith, Boston University, receive the ACM Paris Kanellakis Theory and Practice Award for their fundamental contributions to the development of differential privacy. Their separate but related work formed a definition of differential privacy which captures the kind of privacy needed in statistical settings, where individual information must be protected while still allowing for discovery of common trends.
ACM, AAAI Recognize Carla Gomes for Computational Sustainability and Artificial Intelligence.
Carla Gomes of Cornell University receives the ACM - AAAI Allen Newell Award for establishing and nurturing the field of computational sustainability and for foundational contributions to artificial intelligence. Gomes is a leader in AI, particularly in reasoning, optimization, and the integration of learning and reasoning. She is the driving force behind the new subfield of computational sustainability, embodying the values of multidisciplinary research and social impact. Her research advances core computer science and AI while establishing rich connections to other disciplines.
Karlstrom Educator Award Goes to Mark Allen Weiss
Mark Allen Weiss, a Professor at Florida International University, receives the Karl V. Karlstrom Outstanding Educator Award for advancing the art and science of computer science (CS) education through his textbooks, research, and curriculum design, which have affected thousands of instructors and students worldwide.
ACM Honors Erik Altman with Distinguished Service Award
Erik Altman receives the ACM Distinguished Service Award for leadership in the computer architecture communities, and for contributions to ACM organizational development. He has demonstrated excellence both as a computer architecture research scientist at IBM and as a driver of positive change within the Association for Computing Machinery and the IEEE Computer Society.
ACM Honors Judy Brewer with Policy Award
Judy Brewer receives the ACM Policy Award for her leadership of the Web Accessibility Initiative and development of multiple web accessibility standards, which have been adopted globally and improved accessibility for millions worldwide. Brewer leads the development of standards and strategies for inclusive web design, providing web developers with tools necessary to bring the power and the promise of the World Wide Web to millions of people.
ACM President Honors Dame Wendy Hall with 2022 Presidential Award
ACM President Gabriele Kotsis has recognized Dame Wendy Hall for her technical contributions that have significantly influenced the development of the Semantic Web and the field of Web Science, her leadership and impact in shaping technology policy and informatics education internationally, and her committed and inspired work to strengthen ACM’s geographically diverse footprint by fostering regional councils to promote ACM activities in China, India, and Europe.
Carla Brodley Receives 2021 ACM Frances E. Allen Award
ACM named Northeastern University’s Carla E. Brodley recipient of the inaugural ACM Frances E. Allen Award for Outstanding Mentoring. Brodley is recognized for significant personal mentorship and leadership in creating systemic programs that have increased diversity in computer science by creating mentoring opportunities for thousands at Northeastern and other universities across the US. An internationally recognized leader in the fields of machine learning, data mining, and artificial intelligence, Brodley has shown a deep commitment to mentoring and increasing diversity in computer science throughout her academic career.
ACM Names Éva Tardos 2022-2023 Athena Lecturer
ACM has named Éva Tardos of Cornell University as the 2022-2023 Athena Lecturer. Tardos is recognized for fundamental research contributions to combinatorial optimization, approximation algorithms, and algorithmic game theory, and for her dedicated mentoring and service to these communities. Tardos is one of the most influential leaders in the field of theoretical computer science and an outstanding educator, mentor, and leader in her scientific community.
ACM Names 2021 Fellows
ACM has named 71 members 2021 ACM Fellows for significant contributions in areas including algorithms, computer science education, cryptography, data security and privacy, medical informatics, and mobile and networked systems, among other areas. The ACM Fellows program recognizes the top 1% of ACM Members for their outstanding accomplishments in computing and information technology and/or outstanding service to ACM and the larger computing community.
ACM Names 2021 Distinguished Members
ACM has named 63 Distinguished Members for outstanding contributions to the field. All 2021 inductees are longstanding ACM members and were selected by their peers for a range of accomplishments that advance computing as a science and a profession. The ACM Distinguished Member program recognizes up to 10 percent of ACM worldwide membership based on professional experience and significant achievements in computing.
ACM, CSTA Announce Cutler-Bell Prize Student Recipients
ACM and the Computer Science Teachers Association have announced the 2021-2022 recipients of the ACM/CSTA Cutler-Bell Prize in High School Computing. The award recognizes computer science talent in high school students and comes with a $10,000 prize, which they will receive at CSTA's annual conference in July. The 2020-2021 recipients are Harshal Bharatia, Plano Senior High School, Plano, Texas; Yash Narayan, The Nueva School, San Mateo, California; Shoumik Roychowdhury, Westwood High School, Austin, Texas; and Hiya Shah, Amador Valley High School, Pleasanton, California. Read the news release.
SIAM, ACM Announce 2021 Computational Science & Engineering Prize Recipient
George Em Karniadakis of Brown University was awarded the 2021 SIAM/ACM Prize in Computational Science and Engineering at SIAM's CSE 2021 conference. Karniadakis was recognized for advancing spectral elements, reduced-order modeling, uncertainty quantification, dissipative particle dynamics, fractional PDEs, and scientific machine learning, while pushing applications to extreme computational scales and mentoring many leaders. A Fellow of SIAM, Karniadakis's work has been cited more than 53,500 times.
Read the SIAM news release.
Munmun De Choudhury Receives ACM-W Rising Star Award
ACM-W has announced Munmun De Choudhury, an Associate Professor at the School of Interactive Computing at Georgia Institute of Technology, as the recipient of the 2021 ACM-W Rising Star Award. The award recognizes a woman whose early-career research has had a significant impact on the computing discipline. De Choudhury's research develops novel computational techniques, and technologies powered by them, to responsibly and ethically employ social media in quantifying, understanding, and improving personal and societal health and well-being.
ACM India 2021-2022 Doctoral Dissertation Award
Suhail Sherif of Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai has received the ACM India Council's 2021-2022 Doctoral Dissertation Award for "Communication Complexity and Quantum Optimization Lower Bounds via Query Complexity." Honorable Mentions went to Suprovat Ghoshal of Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru, for "New Algorithmic and Hardness Results in Learning, Error Correcting Codes and Constraint Satisfaction Problems;" and to Vrunda Dave of Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, Mumbai, for "On Some Fundamental Problems and Applications of Word Transducers."
David Abramson Recognized with Ken Kennedy Award
David Abramson of the University of Queensland has been named the recipient of the 2021 ACM-IEEE CS Ken Kennedy Award. Abramson is recognized for contributions to parallel and distributed computing tools, with application from quantum chemistry to engineering design. He is also cited for his mentorship and service to the field. The award was presented at SC21: The International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage and Analysis virtual awards plenary session in November.
Team from Chinese Institutions Receives 2021 Gordon Bell Prize
A 14-member research team from Chinese institutions was awarded the 2021 ACM Gordon Bell Prize for their project, Closing the "Quantum Supremacy" Gap: Achieving Real-Time Simulation of a Random Quantum Circuit Using a New Sunway Supercomputer. The project far outpaced state-of-the-art approaches to simulating an RQC. The award was bestowed during the SC21 conference, which was held in person and virtually.
ACM Gordon Bell Special Prize for HPC-Based COVID-19 Research
The 2021 ACM Gordon Bell Special Prize for High Performance Computing-Based COVID-19 Research was presented to a six-member team for their project Digital transformation of droplet/aerosol infection risk assessment realized on “Fugaku” for the fight against COVID-19. The Prize is being awarded in 2020 and 2021 to recognize outstanding research achievement toward the understanding of the COVID-19 pandemic through the use of high performance computing. The award was presented at the hybrid SC21 conference.
ACM A.M. Turing Award
Jack J. Dongarra - 2021 ACM A.M. Turing Award
Jack J. Dongarra of University of Tennessee and Oak Ridge National Laboratory received the 2021 ACM A.M. Turing Award for pioneering contributions to numerical algorithms and libraries that enabled high performance computational software to keep pace with exponential hardware improvements for over four decades.
Alfred Aho and Jeffrey Ullman - 2020 ACM A.M. Turing Award
Alfred Aho, Professor Emeritus at Columbia University, and Jeffrey Ullman, Professor Emeritus at Stanford University received the 2020 ACM A.M. Turing Award for fundamental algorithms and theory underlying programming language implementation, and for synthesizing these results and those of others in their highly influential books, which educated generations of computer scientists.
Ed Catmull and Pat Hanrahan - 2019 ACM A.M. Turing Award
Ed Catmull, computer scientist and former president of Pixar and Disney Animation Studios, and Pat Hanrahan, a founding employee at Pixar and Stanford University professor received the 2019 ACM A.M. Turing Award for fundamental contributions to 3-D computer graphics, and the revolutionary impact of these techniques on computer-generated imagery (CGI) in filmmaking and other applications.
Yoshua Bengio, Geoffrey Hinton, and Yann LeCun - 2018 ACM A.M. Turing Award
Yoshua Bengio of the University of Montreal, Geoffrey Hinton of Google, and Yann LeCun of Facebook received the 2018 ACM A.M. Turing Award for conceptual and engineering breakthroughs that have made deep neural networks a critical component of computing. <
John Hennessy and David Patterson - 2017 ACM A.M. Turing Award
John L. Hennessy, former President of Stanford University, and David A. Patterson, retired Professor of the University of California, Berkeley, received the 2017 ACM A.M. Turing Award for pioneering a systematic, quantitative approach to the design and evaluation of computer architectures with enduring impact on the microprocessor industry.
Sir Tim Berners-Lee - 2016 ACM A.M. Turing Award
Sir Tim Berners-Lee of Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Oxford received the 2016 ACM A.M. Turing Award for inventing the World Wide Web, the first web browser, and the fundamental protocols and algorithms allowing the Web to scale.
Spotlight on Turing Laureates
The ACM A.M. Turing Award, computing’s most prestigious honor, acknowledges individuals who have made lasting and major contributions to the field. Here, we look back at some of these technologies and breakthroughs that continue to impact our lives, and the remarkable innovators who helped shape them.
Celebrating 50 Years of the ACM Turing Award
ACM's celebration of 50 years of the Turing Award culminated with a conference June 23 and 24, 2017 at the Westin St. Francis in San Francisco. Keynote talks and panel discussions highlighted the significant impact of the contributions of the Turing Laureates on computing and society, as well as looking ahead to the future of technology and innovation. You can watch videos of these historic presentations here.