Education is vital to the advancement of the research and practice of Software Engineering. Yet, the contributions of an educator often go unnoticed, except perhaps by those closest to the educator. The SIGSOFT Influential Educator Award is presented annually to an educator or educators who have made significant contributions to, and impact on, the field of software engineering with his or her accomplishments as a teacher, mentor, researcher (in education or learning), author, and/or policy maker. The award may be made to multiple collaborators for joint contributions, such as a co-authored text book.
The award recipients share a $1000 honorarium, and each recipient receives a plaque engraved with their name and signed by the chair of SIGSOFT. The award is presented by the SIGSOFT chair at ICSE during ICSE’s award presentation session. Each award recipient also receives 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.
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 November 4, 2024. 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 November 11, 2024 (one week after the registration deadline). The PDF should contain the following:
- Full name(s) and affiliation(s) of the nominee(s)
- Proposed citation (up to 25 words)
- Succinct description of why the nominee(s) is well-qualified for the award (100-250 words)
- Detailed nomination statement (no length limit, but please be reasonable)
- 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 I am endorsing has not committed any action that violates the ACM Code of Ethics and ACM’s Core Values.
The selection committee shall have the option to decline to make an award in a given year, if no suitable nominations are presented. If you have questions about this award, please contact sigsoft-educator-award (at) acm (dot) org.
Winners
- 2024 Martin Robillard, McGill University, for significant contributions to hands-on software design education, including a textbook and a learner-focused software modeling tool.
- 2023 Tao Xie, Peking University, China, for significant contributions in mentoring of graduate students and junior researchers, broadening participation of underrepresented groups in software engineering/computing, and innovation in educational tooling
- 2022 Miryung Kim, University of California, Los Angeles, for outstanding achievements in undergraduate and graduate mentoring with an emphasis on research excellence in software engineering, diversity, and inclusion
- 2021 Katsuro Inoue, Osaka University, for his life-long foundational contributions to software engineering education and his success in connecting generations of educators and researchers from Japan with the international community
- 2020 Greg Wilson
- 2019 Ahmed E. Hassan
- 2018 Shriram Krishnamurthi, for his contributions to the advancement of the research and practice of software engineering
- 2017 Bertrand Meyer, for contributions to the advancement of the research and practice of software engineering
- 2016 Lori Pollock, for mentoring of undergraduate and graduate students, innovation in software engineering education, and educational research
- 2015 Barbara Ryder, for significant contributions in software engineering education, graduate student and faculty mentoring and efforts to improve the representation of women in the field
- 2014 Mary Lou Soffa, for a sustained record of mentoring of women at all ranks in the field of computing, especially software engineering
- 2013 Tony Wasserman, for early contributions to software engineering curriculum development and extensive academic and professional education in software engineering methods, tools, and management
- 2012 Mehdi Jazayeri, for significant and lasting contributions to software engineering and computer science education
- 2012 David Notkin, for tremendous impact in graduate-level education, in mentoring junior researchers, and in nurturing future researchers
- 2011 Ian Sommerville, for his contribution to the education of successive generations of Software Engineers internationally, through his writings, his teaching, and his student mentoring
- 2010 Leon J. Osterweil, for pioneering software engineering as an academic discipline, contributions to software engineering scholarship and excellence through graduate education, and mentoring of new software engineering faculty
- 2009 Laurie Williams, for significant and lasting contributions to software engineering and computer science education
- 2009 Nico Habermann (posthumously), for significant and lasting contributions to the field of software engineering as a teacher and mentor
Committee
2025
- Lionel Briand, University of Ottawa, Canada and LERO, University of Limerick, Ireland (chair)
- Benoit Baudry, University of Montreal, Canada
- Domenico Bianculli, University of Luxembourg, Luxembourg
- Jialun Cao, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, China
- Paola Spoletini, Kennesaw University, USA
- Jun Sun, SMU, Singapore
- Lin Tan, Purdue University, USA
- Yang Liu, NTU, Singapore
- Andrea Zisman, Open University, UK
- Marsha Chechik, University of Toronto, Canada (SIGSOFT chair, non-voting)
- Claire Le Goues, Carnegie Mellon University, USA (SIGSOFT award chair, non-voting)
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
- Ahmed E. Hassan (chair)
- Hironori Washizaki
- Patanamon Thongtanunam
- David Lo
- Michael Godfrey
- Max Di Penta