SIGSOFT Awards Overview

ACM SIGSOFT Awards

ACM SIGSOFT recognizes excellence in software engineering through several awards, presented annually. These awards honor outstanding contributions to our field, throughout our colleagues’ careers. Awards are typically presented to individuals, but can be awarded jointly when circumstances warrant, such as for joint contributions. Awards are not given posthumously.

Award Categories

Senior Awards

  • Distinguished Service Award - Recognizes dedicated and important service to the software engineering community
  • Outstanding Research Award - Honors significant and lasting research contributions to the theory or practice of software engineering
  • Influential Educator Award - Celebrates significant contributions and impact on software engineering education as a teacher, mentor, researcher, author, and/or policy maker

Junior Awards

Impact Award

  • Impact Paper Award - Recognizes papers from SIGSOFT conferences that have had significant influence

Nomination Process

All awards follow a similar nomination process, with two key deadlines:

Important Dates for 2025

  • Intent to Nominate Deadline: October 6, 2025 (First Monday in October)
  • Full Nomination Package Deadline: October 20, 2025 (Two weeks after intent deadline)

How to Nominate

  1. Submit an intent to nominate through the awards nomination portal by the first deadline
    • 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 will not be considered in the current award year.
  2. Submit the complete nomination package as a single PDF by the second deadline

Nominators of candidates who are not selected in a given award year will be given the option to reuse nomination materials unmodified for up to two consecutive additional years.

Shared Nomination Requirements and eligibility

Note: Certain awards have additional or different requirements and eligibility restrictions. Consult individual award pages for complete details.

Nomination packages for all but the Impact Paper and Frank Anger awards should include:

  • Full name(s) and affiliation(s) of 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 is sufficient for support letters, although longer statements of support are of course welcome)
  • Important: 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.”

Eligibility

  • Self nominations are permitted.
  • The same individual cannot be nominated for different SIGSOFT awards in the same year. However, the committee reserves the right to consider an individual for a different award than the one for which they are nominated, if they deem it more suitable.
  • In general, SIGSOFT will not select individuals recognized by an award from another professional society to receive an equivalent or substantially similar SIGSOFT award. Nominations of such individuals are permitted, but must include a clear justification for the nomination that articulates and justifies the special circumstances that motivate considering the nominee for such a substantially similar award (the committee reserves the right to accept or deny the justification).

In general, the selection committee shall have the option to decline to make an award in a given year, if no suitable nominations are received.

Award Benefits

Awards are presented by SIGSOFT at ICSE during ICSE’s award presentation session. Recipients receive a plaque engraved with their name and signed by the chair of SIGSOFT.

Recipient(s) of the Outstanding Research, Influential Educator, Distinguished Service, Early Career Researcher, and Outstanding Dissertation awards, typically receive a $1000 honorarium (shared, if multiple recipients are jointly recognized), and support for travel to ICSE of up to $2500 within their home continent, and up to $3000 outside their home continent. Recipients of the Impact Paper award share a $1000 honorarium, and receive comparable support to travel to FSE.

Some awards include other benefits; consult individual pages for award-specific details.

Process

SIGSOFT 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. Each award’s selection committee evaluates nominations based on award-specific criteria. Committees have the option to decline making an award if no suitable nominations are received.

2025 Committee Leadership

  • Senior Awards Committee Chair: Lionel Briand, University of Ottawa, Canada and LERO, University of Limerick, Ireland
  • Junior Awards Committee Chair: Aldeida Aleti, Monash University, Australia
  • Impact Paper Award Committee Chair: Abhik Roychoudhury, National University of Singapore, Singapore
  • SIGSOFT Chair (non-voting): Marsha Chechik, University of Toronto, Canada
  • SIGSOFT Award Chair (non-voting): Claire Le Goues, Carnegie Mellon University, USA

Contact Information

The Awards Chair may be reached at sigsoft-awards-chair (at) acm (dot) org

For questions about specific awards:

  • Distinguished Service: sigsoft-service-award (at) acm (dot) org
  • Outstanding Research: sigsoft-research-award (at) acm (dot) org
  • Influential Educator: sigsoft-educator-award (at) acm (dot) org
  • Outstanding Doctoral Dissertation: sigsoft-dissertation-award (at) acm (dot) org
  • Early Career Researcher: sigsoft-early-career-award (at) acm (dot) org
  • Frank Anger Memorial: sigsoft-angermemorial-award (at) acm (dot) org
  • Impact Paper: sigsoft-impact-award (at) acm (dot) org

Past Recipients

Visit individual award pages to see the complete list of past recipients and learn about their contributions to the software engineering community.

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