Distinguished Service Award

This annual award is presented to individuals who have contributed dedicated and important service to the software engineering community. The award typically goes to a single person but can also be assigned to multiple people for joint contributions.

Recipients receive a plaque engraved with their name and signed by the chair of SIGSOFT and share a $1000 honorarium. The award is presented by the SIGSOFT chair at ICSE during ICSE’s award presentation session. The award recipient(s) each receive support for travel to ICSE up to $2500 within their home continent and up to $3000 outside their home continent, including airfare, hotel, and conference registration for ICSE.

The selection committee solicits nominations from the software engineering community in a variety of ways including announcements in SIGSOFT’s newsletter, Software Engineering Notes, and postings on appropriate newsgroups and websites. The committee considers all external nominations in the context of the nominees’ specific and general service contributions to the overall software engineering community. The selection committee shall have the option to decline to make an award in a given year, if no suitable nominations are presented.

Criteria that the committee considers in evaluating nominations include:

  1. Service to ACM SIGSOFT
  2. Service to the software engineering community outside of SIGSOFT
  3. Service to broadening participation of underrepresented groups in software engineering
  4. Service to students
  5. Length of time serving the software engineering community
  6. Other service contributions

To submit a nomination for the award, please use the awards nomination portal. Please note that:

  • An intent to nominate must be submitted in the nomination system by October 16, 2023. The intent submission is very lightweight and only requires: (1) full name(s) and affiliation(s) of the nominee(s), (2) contact information of the nominator, and (3) some metadata. If no intent is received by the deadline, the nomination will be deemed late and not considered for this round of award selection.

  • A single PDF containing the nomination package must be submitted through the portal to complete the submission by October 30, 2023. The PDF should contain the following:

    1. Full name(s) and affiliation(s) of the nominee(s)
    2. Proposed citation (up to 25 words)
    3. Succinct description of why the nominee(s) is well-qualified for the award (100-250 words)
    4. Detailed nomination statement (no length limit, but please be reasonable)
    5. Up to three support letters (200-300 words will be sufficient for each support letter, although longer statements of support are of course welcome). Each support letter must include the following sentence: “To the best of my knowledge, the candidate(s) I am endorsing has not committed any action that violates the ACM Code of Ethics and ACM’s Core Values.

If you have questions about this award, please contact sigsoft-service-award (at) acm (dot) org.

Winners

  • 2024 Massimiliano Di Penta, University of Sannio, for outstanding service to the software engineering community, including serving as program co-chair for all premier software engineering conferences and several other events.
  • 2023 John Grundy, Monash University, for continued outstanding service to the software engineering community, including the repeated successful organization of flagship conferences, and leadership in the Australasian research and education community
  • 2022 Joanne M. Atlee, University of Waterloo, for sustained, outstanding service to the software engineering community and enabling a research environment in software engineering world-wide that is equitable, diverse and inclusive
  • 2021 Tao Xie, Peking University, for outstanding service contributions to the software engineering community, including substantial activities on SIGSOFT history, broadening participation in software engineering, and successful chairing of technical events
  • 2020 Nenad Medvidović
  • 2019 Matt Dwyer
  • 2018 David S. Rosenblum
  • 2017 Laura Dillon
  • 2016 Martin Glinz
  • 2015 Bashar Nuseibeh
  • 2014 Leon Osterweil
  • 2013 Wilhelm Schäfer
  • 2012 Alexander Wolf
  • 2011 Jeff Kramer
  • 2010 Mary Lou Soffa
  • 2009 Stuart Zweben
  • 2008 John C. Knight
  • 2007 David Notkin
  • 2006 Carlo Ghezzi
  • 2005 Richard N. Taylor
  • 2004 Will Tracz
  • 2003 Axel van Lamsweerde
  • 2002 Lori Clarke
  • 2001 Kouichi Kishida
  • 2000 Marvin Zelkowitz
  • 1999 Bill Riddle
  • 1998 Bruce Barnes
  • 1997 Peter Neumann
  • 1996 Rick Adrion
  • 1995 Tony Wasserman

Committee

2024

  • Walid Maalej, University of Hamburg, Germany (chair)
  • Filippo Lanubile, University of Bari, Italy (deputy chair)
  • Lionel Briand, University of Ottawa, Canada and University of Luxembourg, Luxembourg
  • Katsuro Inoue, Nanzan University, Japan
  • Barbara Paech, Heidelberg University, Germany
  • David Shepherd, Louisiana State University, USA
  • Paola Spoletini, Kennesaw State University, USA
  • Thomas Zimmermann, Microsoft Research, United States (SIGSOFT chair, non-voting)
  • David Lo, Singapore Management University, Singapore (SIGSOFT award chair, non-voting)

2023

  • Andrea Zisman, Open University, United Kingdom (chair)
  • Walid Maalej, University of Hamburg, Germany (deputy chair)
  • Paris Avgeriou, University of Groningen, Netherlands
  • Luciano Baresi, Politecnico di Milano, Italy
  • Daniela Damian, University of Victoria, Canada
  • Prem Devambu, UC Davis, United States
  • Zhenjiang Hu, Peking University, China
  • Robyn Lutz, Iowa State University, United States
  • Thomas Zimmermann, Microsoft Research, United States (SIGSOFT chair, non-voting)
  • David Lo, Singapore Management University, Singapore (SIGSOFT award chair, non-voting)

2022

  • Marsha Chechik, University of Toronto, Canada (chair)
  • Daniela Damian, University of Victoria, Canada
  • Prem Devambu, UC Davis, United States
  • Mark Harman, Facebook and UCL, United Kingdom
  • Jon Whittle, CSIRO’s Data61, Australia
  • Tao Xie, Peking University, China
  • Andrea Zisman, Open University, United Kingdom
  • Thomas Zimmermann, Microsoft Research, United States (SIGSOFT chair, non-voting)
  • David Lo, Singapore Management University, Singapore (SIGSOFT award chair, non-voting)

2021

  • Will Tracz (chair)
  • Laurie Dillon
  • Mike Wing

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