This award is presented to an individual or individuals who have made significant and lasting research contributions to the theory or practice of software engineering.
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 announced by the SIGSOFT chair at ICSE during ICSE’s award presentation session. The award recipients are invited to give a keynote presentation at the ICSE conference in the year in which the award is made. Each award recipient also receives travel support up to $2500 within their home continent and up to $3000 outside their home continent, including airfare, hotel, and conference registration to attend the ICSE conference.
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’ research contributions to software engineering. The selection committee shall also have the option to decline to make an award in a given year, if no suitable nominations are presented.
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.
If you have questions about this award, please contact sigsoft-research-award (at) acm (dot) org.
Winners
- 2024 Tsong Yueh Chen, Swinburne University of Technology, for contributions to software testing through the invention and development of metamorphic testing.
- 2023 Gail Murphy, University of British Columbia, for pioneering contributions to recommenders for software engineering and program comprehension that have impacted both theory and practice
- 2022 Lionel Briand, University of Ottawa and Centre for ICT Security, Reliability, and Trust (SnT), University of Luxembourg, for contributions in software testing, software quality assurance, and context-driven software engineering research, notably in exemplary collaborations with industry
- 2021 Prem Devanbu, UC Davis, for profoundly changing the way researchers think about software by exploring connections between source code and natural language
- 2020 Michael Ernst
- 2019 Mark Harman
- 2018 Andreas Zeller
- 2017 Daniel Jackson
- 2016 James Herbsleb
- 2015 Carlo Ghezzi
- 2014 Alexander Wolf
- 2013 David Notkin
- 2012 Lori Clarke
- 2011 David Garlan and Mary Shaw
- 2010 Erich Gamma, Richard Helm, Ralph Johnson and John Vlissides (posthumously)
- 2009 Richard N. Taylor
- 2008 Axel van Lamsweerde
- 2007 Elaine J. Weyuker
- 2006 David Harel
- 2005 Jeff Kramer and Jeff Magee
- 2004 Nancy Leveson
- 2003 Leon J. Osterweil
- 2002 Gerard Holzmann
- 2001 Michael Jackson
- 2000 Victor Basili
- 1999 Harlan Mills (one-time posthumous)
- 1999 Niklaus Wirth
- 1998 David Parnas
- 1997 Barry Boehm
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
- Sebastian Uchitel, Universidad de Buenos Aires, Argentina
- 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 Devanbu, 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
- Marsha Chechik (Chair)
- Mark Harman
- Jane Cleland-Huang
- Massimiliano Di Penta