The SIGSOFT Outstanding Doctoral Dissertation Award is presented annually to the authors of outstanding doctoral dissertations in the area of Software Engineering. The author of winning dissertation(s) will be invited to publish a dissertation summary in the SIGSOFT newsletter, Software Engineering Notes (SEN).
The award is for an outstanding dissertation (in software engineering) dated within the year preceding the nomination due date. For nominations for the October 20, 2025, deadline, dissertations dated November, 2024 to November, 2025 are eligible. The dissertation date can refer to the “deposit date,” “committee approval date,” or another reasonable and relevant date, depending on the process followed by the nominee’s institution. However, please note that a dissertation can be nominated only once. Thus, if, e.g., the “deposit date” and “committee approval date” would fall into two award periods, the thesis cannot be nominated twice, and the nomination must choose one period. Especially given the time-specificity of this award, note that the selection committee is able to recognize multiple outstanding dissertations in a year, if circumstances warrant.
Consult the main SIGSOFT Awards page for key dates, general nomination and eligibility instructions, and a link to the submission portal. Nominee affiliations should specify both the degree-granting institution, and the nominee’s current affiliation, if different. In addition to the other nomination package requirements listed on the main awards page, the single nomination package PDF should also include:
- The student’s advisor(s)
- One- to two-page summary of the nominee’s dissertation (in English)
- List of nominee’s publications (that were used as the basis of chapters in the nominated dissertation)
If you have questions about this award, please contact sigsoft-dissertation-award (at) acm (dot) org.
Winners
- 2025 Elizabeth Dinella, Neural Inference of Program Specifications, University of Pennsylvania, advisor: Mayur Naik.
- 2025 Jialun Cao, Towards Automatic Testing and Fault Localization in Natural Language Processing Systems, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, advisor: Shing-Chi Cheung
- 2024 Bianca Trinkenreich, Understanding and Supporting Women’s Participation in Open Source Software, Northern Arizona University, advisors: Igor Steinmacher and Marco Aurelio Gerosa
- 2023 David Shriver, Increasing the Applicability of Verification Tools for Neural Networks, University of Virginia, advisors: Matt Dwyer and Sebastian Elbaum
- 2022 Wing Lam, Detecting, Characterizing, and Taming Flaky Tests, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, advisors: Darko Marinov and Tao Xie
- 2021 August Shi, Improving Regression Testing Efficiency and Reliability via Test-Suite Transformations, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, advisor: Darko Marinov
- 2020 Rachel Tzoref-Brill, Comprehension and Evolution of Combinatorial Models and Test Plans, Tel Aviv University
- 2019 Sergey Mechtaev, Semantic Program Repair, National University of Singapore; Honorable Mention: Christoffer Quist Adamsen, Automated Testing Techniques for Event-Driven and Dynamically Typed Software Applications, Aarhus University
- 2018 Fan Long, Automatic Patch Generation via Learning from Successful Human Patches, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
- 2017 Srdan Krstic, Trace Checking of Quantitative Properties, Politecnico di Milano
- 2016 Milos Gligoric, Regression Test Selection: Theory and Practice, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Darko Marinov, advisor
- 2015 Muath Alkhalaf, Automatic Detection and Repair of Input Validation and Sanitization Bugs, University of California, Santa Barbara, Tevfik Bultan, advisor
- 2014 Nicolas Mangano, Calico: An early-phase software design tool, University of California, Irvine, André van der Hoek, advisor
- 2013 Jeff Huang, Effective Methods for Debugging Concurrent Software, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Charles Zhang, advisor
- 2012 Mark Gabel, Inferring Programmer Intent and Related Errors from Software, University of California, Davis, Zhendong Su, advisor
Committee
2025
- Aldeida Aleti, Monash University, Australia
- Dan Hao, Peking University, China
- Justyna Petke, University College London, UK
- Foutse Khomh, University of Montreal, Canada
- Ayse Tosun, Istanbul Technical University, Turkey
- Lei Ma, The University of Tokyo, Japan
- Valerio Terragni, University of Auckland, New Zealand
- Marcio Eduardo Delamaro, Universidade de São Paulo Campus de São Carlos, Brazil
- Yuriy Brun, Universeity of Massachusetts - Amherst, USA
- Marsha Chechik, University of Toronto, Canada (SIGSOFT chair, non-voting)
- Claire Le Goues, Carnegie Mellon University, USA (SIGSOFT award chair, non-voting)
2024
- Myra B. Cohen, Iowa State University, United States (chair)
- Gordon Fraser, University of Passau, Germany (deputy chair)
- Aldeida Aleti, Monash University, Australia
- Kelly Blincoe, University of Auckland, New Zealand
- Gregory Gay, Chalmers and the University of Gothenburg, Sweden
- Cindy Rubio-Gonzalez, UC Davis, United States
- Rachel Tzoref-Brill, IBM, Israel
- Shin Yoo, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, South Korea
- Lingming Zhang, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, United States
- Thomas Zimmermann, Microsoft Research, United States (SIGSOFT chair, non-voting)
- David Lo, Singapore Management University, Singapore (SIGSOFT award chair, non-voting)
2023
- Natalia Juristo, Universidad Politecnica de Madrid, Spain (chair)
- Grace A. Lewis, Carnegie Mellon University, United States
- Shahar Maoz, Tel Aviv University, Israel
- Ignacio Panach, Universitat de Valencia, Spain
- Birgit Penzenstadler, Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden
- Federica Sarro, University College London, United Kingdom
- Francisco Servant, Universidad de Malaga, Spain
- Ayse Tosun, Istanbul Technical University, Turkey
- Tao Xie, Peking University, China
- Thomas Zimmermann, Microsoft Research, United States (SIGSOFT chair, non-voting)
- David Lo, Singapore Management University, Singapore (SIGSOFT award chair, non-voting)
2022
- Christian Bird, Microsoft Research, United States (chair)
- Paolo Tonella, Università della Svizzera Italiana, Switzerland
- Jeff Huang, Texas A&M University, United States
- Lingming Zhang, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, United States
- Shing-Chi Cheung, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, China
- Dan Hao, Peking University, China
- Natalia Juristo, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Spain
- Myra B. Cohen, Iowa State University, United States
- Lin Tan, Purdue University, United States (non-voting)
- Thomas Zimmermann, Microsoft Research, United States (SIGSOFT chair, non-voting)
- David Lo, Singapore Management University, Singapore (SIGSOFT award chair, non-voting)
2021
- Chris Bird (chair)
- Andy Zaidman
- David Lo
- Gabriele Bavota
- Mario Linares-Vasquez
- Paola Spoletini
- Peter Rigby
- Venera Arnaoudova
- Zhi Jin