ACM Doctoral Dissertation Award
Deadline
Annual Value
Citizenship
Degree Level
ACM established the Doctoral Dissertation Award program to recognize and encourage superior research and writing by doctoral candidates in computer science and engineering. The award is presented each June at the ACM Awards Banquet and is accompanied by a prize of $20,000 plus travel expenses to the banquet. As of January 1, 2014 all winning dissertations are published exclusively in print and electronic formats as part of the ACM Books Series, which includes distribution through the ACM Digital Library. Honorable Mention(s) may also be awarded, with a prize of $10,000 shared among recipients.
Eligibility
Only a PhD student’s supervisor may nominate a dissertation. The nominated dissertation must have been successfully defended and submitted between October 1, 2022 through (and including) September 30, 2023.
Note regarding the competitiveness of this award: UBC may nominate only 2 dissertations to the international competition, and only 1 ACM Doctoral Dissertation Award is offered by ACM annually worldwide.
Evaluation Criteria
In accordance with ACM's selection criteria, dissertations will be reviewed for technical depth and significance of the research contribution, potential impact on theory and practice, and quality of presentation.
Nomination Procedures
Only a PhD student’s supervisor may nominate a student's dissertation.
Submitted to the student's graduate program by the student's PhD supervisor (internal deadline set by graduate program):
- Nomination statement (200-300 words in length) addressing why the candidate should receive this award. This should address the significance of the dissertation, not simply repeat the information in the abstract.
Each graduate program can submit 1 nomination, submitted to the Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies (via the graduate program's SharePoint folder) by the graduate program by 4:00 pm PT on Friday, 6 October 2023. The nomination would consist of:
- Nomination statement (200-300 words in length) addressing why the candidate should receive this award. This should address the significance of the dissertation, not simply repeat the information in the abstract.
- The nomination statement should be in PDF format and labelled ACM_PROG_Last-Name_First-Name.pdf (ex. "ACM_CPSC_Smith_Jane")
Graduate programs of successful nominees will be contacted after the nomination deadline with further instructions on submitting the full nomination package.
Note that, should the student be selected to be one of UBC's nominees, the PhD student's thesis supervisor will be responsible for submitting the nomination items to ACM by the October 31 institution nomination deadline. ACM requires that the nomination be submitted by the PhD student's thesis supervisor. The full nomination package includes:
- Suggested citation if the candidate is selected. This should be a concise statement (maximum of 25 words) describing the key technical or professional accomplishment for which the candidate merits this award.
- Nomination statement (200-300 words in length) addressing why the candidate should receive this award. This should address the significance of the dissertation, not simply repeat the information in the abstract.
- An endorsement letter from the department head.
- At least 3, and not more than 5, supporting letters should be included from experts in the field who can provide additional insights or evidence of the dissertation’s impact. (The nominator/advisor may not write a letter of support.)
- Copy of the dissertation, together with a copyright transfer form filled out by the candidate and assigning exclusive publication rights to ACM. Copyright will revert to the author if it is not selected for publication.
For full details, see the ACM website.
Adjudication Procedures
Depending on the number of nominations submitted, G+PS may form an adjudication committee to submit up to 2 nominations to ACM.
Further Information
For further information, please visit the ACM webpage: https://awards.acm.org/doctoral-dissertation/nominations. Questions can be sent to bree.wilson@ubc.ca.