US National Science Foundation Supports Turing Awardees

ACM's A.M. Turing Award, often referred to as the "Nobel Prize of Computing," is given to individuals who have contributed lasting and major technical accomplishments to computing. But did you know that more than half of A.M. Turing awardees have been funded by the US National Science Foundation at some point in their careers? Now the NSF has created a website commemorating all A.M. Turing Award recipients, their accomplishments, and their relationships with the Foundation. Please visit the site to learn more.

ACM Names 2023 Fellows

ACM has named 68 members ACM Fellows for significant contributions in areas including algorithm design, computer graphics, cybersecurity, energy-efficient computing, mobile computing, software analytics, and web search, to name a few. The ACM Fellows program recognizes the top 1% of ACM Members for their outstanding accomplishments in computing and information technology and/or outstanding service to ACM and the larger computing community.

ACM Names 2023 Distinguished Members

ACM has named 52 Distinguished Members for outstanding contributions to the field. All 2023 inductees are longstanding ACM members and were selected by their peers for a range of accomplishments that advance computing as a science and a profession. The ACM Distinguished Member program recognizes up to 10 percent of ACM worldwide membership based on professional experience and significant achievements in computing.

Career-Long Contributions

Early-to-Mid-Career Contributions

Specific Types of Contributions

Student Contributions

Regional Awards

SIG Awards

How Awards Are Proposed

Call for ACM-W Rising Star Award Nominations

The ACM-W Rising Star Award recognizes exceptional women or non-binary individuals whose early-career research has had a significant impact on the computing discipline, as measured by factors such as frequent citation of their work, creation of a new research area, a high degree of technology transfer, and/or other positive influences and societal impact. Self-nominations are encouraged. The award is given annually, and the recipient will receive a framed certificate and a $1,000 stipend. Nominations close on March 31, 2024.

In Memoriam: Niklaus Wirth

Programming language pioneer and A.M. Turing Laureate Niklaus Wirth passed away on January 1, 2024. Wirth created the Euler and PL360 languages, breaking new ground in formal separation of syntax and semantics. Working with Tony Hoare, Wirth used Euler as the basis of Algol-W which then became the basis for Pascal, which provided a foundation for future computer languages, systems, and architectural research for years to come. He also popularized the adage of "Wirth's law," which states that software is getting slower more rapidly than hardware becomes faster. He was the recipient of the 1984 ACM A.M. Turing Award, the IEEE Emanuel R. Piore Award, and the Marcel Benoist Prize, among other honors.

Niklaus Wirth

2023 Gordon Bell Prize Awarded

An eight-member team drawn from American and Indian institutions was named the winner of the 2023 ACM Gordon Bell Prize for the project, “Large-Scale Materials Modeling at Quantum Accuracy: Ab Initio Simulations of Quasicrystals and Interacting Extended Defects in Metallic Alloys,” which presented a framework that combines the accuracy provided by QMB methods with the efficiency of Density-Functional Theory (DFT) to access larger length scales at quantum accuracy. The award was bestowed during the SC23 conference.

2022 Gordon Bell Prize Awarded

2023 Gordon Bell Climate Modelling Prize Awarded

A 19-member research team was awarded the ACM Gordon Bell Prize for Climate Modelling for their project, "The Simple Cloud-Resolving E3SM Atmosphere Model Running on the Frontier Exascale System,” proving that by using exascale supercomputers along with a new algorithmic model they have introduced, the longstanding challenge of developing efficient and accurate simulations of deep convective clouds can be accomplished. The award was bestowed during the SC23 conference.

Bob Metcalfe Gives His A.M. Turing Award Lecture at The Web Conference 2023: View On Demand

2022 ACM A.M. Turing Award recipient Bob Metcalfe delivered his Turing Lecture “Connectivity,” at The Web Conference 2023, on Sunday, April 30. In the lecture, Metcalfe examines the most impactful influence on the human condition in recent history—the Internet, which could not exist without Ethernet. He also reflects upon the history of Ethernet as well as its evolution and legacy. Learn more about Metcalfe’s contributions on the ACM AM Turing website. View his Turing Lecture on demand on ACM's YouTube.

Yael Tauman Kalai Honored with ACM Prize in Computing

ACM has named Yael Tauman Kalai, Senior Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research and an Adjunct Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the recipient of the 2022 ACM Prize in Computing for breakthroughs in verifiable delegation of computation and fundamental contributions to cryptography. Kalai’s contributions have helped shape modern cryptographic practices and provided a strong foundation for further advancements. Kalai has developed methods for producing succinct proofs that certify the correctness of any computation.

2022 ACM Prize recipient Yael Tauman Kalai

ACM Breakthrough in Computing Award Goes to David Papworth

ACM has named David B. Papworth, formerly of Intel (retired), as the recipient of the ACM Charles P. “Chuck” Thacker Breakthrough in Computing Award. Papworth is recognized for fundamental groundbreaking contributions to Intel’s P6 out-of-order engine and Very Long Instruction Word (VLIW) processors. Papworth was a lead designer of the Intel P6 (sold commercially as the Pentium Pro) microprocessor, which was a major advancement over the existing state-of-the-art, not just for Intel but for the broader computer design community.

2022 ACM Thacker Breakthrough in Computing Award recipient David Papworth

View on Demand: Diversifying ACM Award Nominations

In this Tapia Conference panel, ACM CEO Vicki Hanson moderates a discussion with ACM Awards Committee Co-Chair Roy Levin and Awards Committee members Stephanie Ludi (University of North Texas) and Timothy Pinkston (University of Southern California) concerning the need to nominate deserving and diverse individuals for Awards and ACM Advanced Member Grades (Distinguished Members and Fellows). This panel provides an understanding of ACM’s Awards process from submission to selection, with specific tips for working as a community to develop nominations.

Karlstrom Educator Award Goes to Michael Caspersen

Michael E. Caspersen, Managing Director of It-vest and Honorary Professor, Aarhus University, receives the Karl V. Karlstrom Outstanding Educator Award for his contributions to computer science education research, his policy work at the national and international levels to advance the teaching of informatics for all, and his outstanding service to the computing education community. Caspersen has authored almost 70 papers on computer science education, is also co-author of a two-volume textbook on programming, and co-editor of Reflections on the Teaching of Programming

Photo of ACM Karl V. Karlstrom Outstanding Educator Award recipient Michael Caspersen

ACM Honors Ramesh Jain with Distinguished Service Award

Ramesh Jain, Professor, University of California, Irvine, receives the ACM Distinguished Service Award for establishing the ACM Special Interest Group on Multimedia Systems (SIGMM), and for outstanding leadership and sustained services to ACM and the computing community for the past four decades. In 1993, Jain organized the first NSF workshop on visual information management systems. He was one of the organizing committee members of the first ACM Multimedia conference, paving the way for the successful establishment of ACM SIGMM.

Photo of ACM Distinguished Service Award recipient Ramesh Jain

ACM Recognizes Joseph Konstan for Outstanding Contributions

Joseph A. Konstan, Professor, University of Minnesota, receives the Outstanding Contribution to ACM Award for 25 years of dedicated service and leadership in support of ACM's mission and operation, and the advancement of ACM's research, education, and practitioner communities. Konstan has been involved in ACM’s activities for over 25 years: participating in, developing, and nurturing new technical areas, serving on key task forces and committees, and leading several of ACM’s major boards and working groups.

Photo of Outstanding Contribution to ACM Award recipient Joseph Konstan

Jelani Nelson Receives 2022 ACM Eugene L. Lawler Award

Jelani Nelson, Professor, University of California, Berkeley, receives the ACM Eugene L. Lawler Award for Humanitarian Contributions Within Computer Science and Informatics for founding and developing AddisCoder, a nonprofit organization which teaches programming to underserved students from all over Ethiopia. AddisCoder has led many students to higher education and successful careers. Nelson has not only been an AddisCoder instructor himself, but he has recruited a large team of teachers and raised money from government, industry, and academic institutions to fund the initiative.

2022 ACM Eugene L. Lawler Award recipient Jelani Nelson

Mohammad Alizadeh Receives ACM Grace Murray Hopper Award

Mohammad Alizadeh, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is the recipient of the 2022 ACM Grace Murray Hopper Award for pioneering and impactful contributions to data center networks. Alizadeh has fundamentally advanced how data centers communicate efficiently in transporting data. One of his key contributions is the control of data center network congestion and packet loss with a groundbreaking Data Center Transport Control Protocol (DCTCP). DCTCP significantly increases performance in datacenter environments where state-of-the-art TCP protocols fall short.

2022 Grace Murray Hopper Award recipient Mohammad Alizadeh

ACM Names Margo Seltzer 2023-2024 Athena Lecturer

ACM has named Margo Seltzer, a Professor at the University of British Columbia, as the 2023-2024 ACM Athena Lecturer. Seltzer is recognized for foundational research in file and storage systems, pioneering research in data provenance, impactful software contributions in Berkeley DB, and tireless dedication to service and mentoring. Seltzer is especially known for her efforts to broaden participation in computer science among traditionally underrepresented groups. She has also served as program chair for conferences in systems and databases, and serves on numerous advisory boards for scientific and national boards.

2023-2024 ACM Athena Lecturer Margo Seltzer

Kunle Olukotun Receives 2023 Eckert-Mauchly Award

Kunle Olukotun, a Professor at Stanford University, is the recipient of the 2023 ACM-IEEE CS Eckert-Mauchly Award for contributions and leadership in the development of parallel systems, especially multicore and multithreaded processors. In the early 1990s, Olukotun became a leading designer of a new kind of microprocessor known as a “chip multiprocessor”—today called a “multicore processor.” His work demonstrated the performance advantages of multicore processors over the existing microprocessor designs at the time.

2023 Eckert-Mauchly Award recipient Kunle Olukotun

Doctoral Dissertation Award Recognizes Young Researchers

Aayush Jain is the recipient of the 2022 ACM Doctoral Dissertation Award for establishing the feasibility of mathematically rigorous software obfuscation from well-studied hardness conjectures. Honorable Mentions for the 2022 ACM Doctoral Dissertation Award go to Alane Suhr whose PhD was earned at Cornell University, and Conrad Watt, who earned his PhD at the University of Cambridge.

Aayush Jain, Alane Suhn, Conrad Watt

ACM Announces 2023 ACM-IEEE CS George Michael Memorial HPC Fellowship Recipients

James Gregory Pauloski of the University of Chicago and Rohan Basu Roy Of Northeastern University are the 2023 ACM-IEEE CS George Michael Memorial HPC Fellowships recipients. Hua Huang of the Georgia Institute of Technology received an Honorable Mention. The Fellowships will be formally presented at the International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage, and Analysis (SC23) in November.

2023 ACM-IEEE CS George Michael Memorial HPC Fellowship recipients James Gregory Pauloski, Rohan Basu Roy, and Hua Huang

Software System Award Goes to Fourteen for the Development of Groundbreaking High-Performance Operating System

Gernot Heiser, University of New South Wales; Gerwin Klein, Proofcraft; Harvey Tuch, Google; Kevin Elphinstone, University of New South Wales; June Andronick, Proofcraft; David Cock, ETH Zurich; Philip Derrin, Qualcomm; Dhammika Elkaduwe, University of Peradeniya; Kai Engelhardt; Toby Murray, University of Melbourne; Rafal Kolanski, Proofcraft; Michael Norrish, Australian National University; Thomas Sewell, University of Cambridge; and Simon Winwood, Galois, receive the ACM Software System Award for the development of the first industrial-strength, high-performance operating system to have been the subject of a complete, mechanically-checked proof of full functional correctness.

2022 ACM Software System Award recipients Gernot Heiser, Gerwin Klein, Harvey Tuch, Kevin Elphinstone, June Andronick, David Cock, Philip Derrin, Dhammika Elkaduwe, Kai Engelhardt; Toby Murray, Rafal Kolanski, Michael Norrish, Thomas Sewell and Simon Winwood

Inventors of BW-transform and the FM-index Receive Kanellakis Award

Michael Burrows, Google; Paolo Ferragina, University of Pisa; and Giovanni Manzini, University of Pisa, receive the ACM Paris Kanellakis Theory and Practice Award for inventing the BW-transform and the FM-index that opened and influenced the field of Compressed Data Structures with fundamental impact on Data Compression and Computational Biology. In 1994, Burrows and his late coauthor David Wheeler published their paper describing revolutionary data compression algorithm—the “Burrows-Wheeler Transform” (BWT). A few years later, Ferragina and Manzini showed that it was possible to build a “compressed index,” later called the FM-index. The introduction of the BW Transform and the development of the FM-index have had a profound impact on the theory of algorithms and data structures with fundamental advancements.

2022 ACM Paris Kanellakis Award recipients Michael Burrows, Paolo Ferragina, and Giovanni Manzini

ACM, AAAI Recognize Bernhard Schölkopf and Stuart J. Russell for Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence

Bernhard Schölkopf, Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems and ETH Zurich, and Stuart J. Russell, University of California at Berkeley, receive the ACM - AAAI Allen Newell Award. Schölkopf is recognized for his widely used research in machine learning, advancing both mathematical foundations and a broad range of applications in science and industry and making fundamental contributions to kernel methods and causality. Russell is recognized for a series of foundational contributions to Artificial Intelligence, spanning a wide range of areas such as logical and probabilistic reasoning, knowledge representation, machine learning, reinforcement learning, and the ethics of AI.

2022 ACM-AAAI Allen Newell Award recipients Bernhard Schölkopf and Stuart J. Russell

ACM, CSTA Announce Cutler-Bell Prize Student Recipients

ACM and the Computer Science Teachers Association have announced the 2022-2023 recipients of the ACM/CSTA Cutler-Bell Prize in High School Computing. The award recognizes computer science talent in high school students and comes with a $10,000 prize, which they will receive at CSTA's annual conference in July. The 2022-2023 recipients are Okezue Bell, Moravian Academy, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania; Nathan Elias, Liberal Arts and Sciences Academy, Austin, Texas; Hannah Guan, BASIS San Antonio Shavano, San Antonio, Texas; and Sirihaasa Nallamothu, University High School, Normal, Illinois.

2022-2023  Cutler Bell recipients Okezue Bell, Nathan Elias, Hannah Guan, Sirihaasa Nallamothu

ACM Names 2022 Fellows

ACM has named 57 members ACM Fellows for significant contributions in areas including cybersecurity, human-computer interaction, mobile computing, and recommender systems among many other areas. The ACM Fellows program recognizes the top 1% of ACM Members for their outstanding accomplishments in computing and information technology and/or outstanding service to ACM and the larger computing community. In keeping with ACM’s global reach, the 2022 Fellows represent universities, corporations, and research centers in Canada, Chile, China, France, Germany, Israel, the Netherlands, Spain, Switzerland, and the United States.

SIAM, ACM Announce 2023 Computational Science & Engineering Prize Recipient

The SUNDIALS Core Development Group, consisting of Carol S. Woodward, Cody J. Balos, Peter N. Brown, David J. Gardner, Alan C. Hindmarsh, Daniel R. Reynolds, and Radu Serban, are the recipients of the 2023 SIAM/ACM Prize in Computational Science and Engineering at SIAM's CSE 2021 conference.The group received the award for innovative research and development of nonlinear and differential/algebraic equation solvers for high-performance computing that provides unique, critical capabilities in the scientific software ecosystem.

The SUNDIALS Core Development Group

Geoffrey Hinton Talks AI on 60 Minutes

2018 A.M. Turing Award recipient Geoffrey Hinton appeared on 60 Minutes to discuss the risks and promise of artificial intelligence. Hinton—one of the "Godfathers of AI" along with Yoshua Bengio and Yann LeCun—wants governments, companies and developers to carefully consider the best ways to safely advance the technology. He also believes that AI has the potential for both good and harm, that now is the moment to run experiments to understand AI and pass laws to ensure the technology is ethically used, and that AI does have the potential to one day take over from humanity.

Mark Horowitz Receives 2022 Eckert-Mauchly Award

Mark Horowitz, a Professor at Stanford University, was named the recipient of the 2022 ACM - IEEE CS Eckert-Mauchly Award for for contributions to microprocessor memory systems. Horowitz was the first to identify the processor to dynamic random-access memory (DRAM) interface as a key bottleneck that required architecture and circuit optimization. He pioneered high-bandwidth DRAM interfaces. In addition, modern DRAM interfaces such as SDDR and LPDDR were strongly influenced by his techniques.

2022 Eckert-Mauchly Award recipient Mark Horowitz

ACM Honors Judy Brewer with Policy Award

Judy Brewer receives the ACM Policy Award for her leadership of the Web Accessibility Initiative and development of multiple web accessibility standards, which have been adopted globally and improved accessibility for millions worldwide. Brewer leads the development of standards and strategies for inclusive web design, providing web developers with tools necessary to bring the power and the promise of the World Wide Web to millions of people.

Photo of ACM Policy Award recipient Judy Brewer

Keshav Pingali Recognized with Ken Kennedy Award

ACM has named Keshav Pingali, the W.A. ”Tex” Moncrief Chair of Grid and Distributed Computing at the University of Texas at Austin, as the recipient of the 2023 ACM-IEEE CS Ken Kennedy Award. The Ken Kennedy Award recognizes groundbreaking achievements in parallel and high-performance computing. Pingali is cited for contributions to high-performance parallel computing for irregular algorithms such as graph algorithms. The award will be formally presented to Pingali in November at The International Conference for High-Performance Computing, Networking, Storage and Analysis (SC23).

2023 Ken Kennedy Award recipient Keshav Pingali

Jack Dongarra Gives His A.M. Turing Award Lecture at SC22: View On Demand

2021 ACM A.M. Turing Award recipient Jack Dongarra delivered his Turing Lecture, "A Not So Simple Matter of Software," at SC22 on Tuesday, November 15. In it, he examines how high-performance computing has changed over the last 40 years, looks toward future trends, and discusses how a new generation of software libraries and algorithms is needed to use dynamic, distributed, and parallel environments effectively. Learn more about Dongarra's contributions on the ACM AM Turing website. View his Turing Lecture on demand on ACM's YouTube.

2019 AM Turing Award Recipients Ed Catmull and Pat Hanrahan Delivered Their Turing Lectures at SIGGRAPH 2022 - View the Recording

Ed Catmull and Pat Hanrahan received the 2019 ACM A.M. Turing Award for fundamental contributions to 3-D computer graphics, and the revolutionary impact of these techniques on computer-generated imagery (CGI) in filmmaking and other applications. They presented their Turing Lectures, "Shading Languages and the Emergence of Programmable Graphics Systems" and "The Wild, Unexpected, Exponential Ride Through Computer Graphics," at SIGGRAPH 2022 on Monday, August 8, 2022. View the recording.

ACM A.M. Turing Award

Jack J. Dongarra - 2021 ACM A.M. Turing Award

Jack J. Dongarra of University of Tennessee and Oak Ridge National Laboratory received the 2021 ACM A.M. Turing Award for pioneering contributions to numerical algorithms and libraries that enabled high performance computational software to keep pace with exponential hardware improvements for over four decades.

Alfred Aho and Jeffrey Ullman - 2020 ACM A.M. Turing Award

Alfred Aho, Professor Emeritus at Columbia University, and Jeffrey Ullman, Professor Emeritus at Stanford University received the 2020 ACM A.M. Turing Award for fundamental algorithms and theory underlying programming language implementation, and for synthesizing these results and those of others in their highly influential books, which educated generations of computer scientists.

Ed Catmull and Pat Hanrahan - 2019 ACM A.M. Turing Award

Ed Catmull, computer scientist and former president of Pixar and Disney Animation Studios, and Pat Hanrahan, a founding employee at Pixar and Stanford University professor received the 2019 ACM A.M. Turing Award for fundamental contributions to 3-D computer graphics, and the revolutionary impact of these techniques on computer-generated imagery (CGI) in filmmaking and other applications.

Yoshua Bengio, Geoffrey Hinton, and Yann LeCun - 2018 ACM A.M. Turing Award

Yoshua Bengio of the University of Montreal, Geoffrey Hinton of Google, and Yann LeCun of Facebook received the 2018 ACM A.M. Turing Award for conceptual and engineering breakthroughs that have made deep neural networks a critical component of computing.

John Hennessy and David Patterson - 2017 ACM A.M. Turing Award

John L. Hennessy, former President of Stanford University, and David A. Patterson, retired Professor of the University of California, Berkeley, received the 2017 ACM A.M. Turing Award for pioneering a systematic, quantitative approach to the design and evaluation of computer architectures with enduring impact on the microprocessor industry.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee - 2016 ACM A.M. Turing Award

Sir Tim Berners-Lee of Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Oxford received the 2016 ACM A.M. Turing Award for inventing the World Wide Web, the first web browser, and the fundamental protocols and algorithms allowing the Web to scale.

Spotlight on Turing Laureates

The ACM A.M. Turing Award, computing’s most prestigious honor, acknowledges individuals who have made lasting and major contributions to the field. Here, we look back at some of these technologies and breakthroughs that continue to impact our lives, and the remarkable innovators who helped shape them. 

Celebrating 50 Years of the ACM Turing Award

ACM's celebration of 50 years of the Turing Award culminated with a conference June 23 and 24, 2017 at the Westin St. Francis in San Francisco. Keynote talks and panel discussions highlighted the significant impact of the contributions of the Turing Laureates on computing and society, as well as looking ahead to the future of technology and innovation. You can watch videos of these historic presentations here