An annual award, called the Alonzo Church Award for Outstanding Contributions to Logic and Computation, was established in 2015 by the ACM Special Interest Group for Logic and Computation (SIGLOG), the European Association for Theoretical Computer Science (EATCS), the European Association for Computer Science Logic (EACSL), and the Kurt Goedel Society (KGS) (referred to below as the four “Sponsoring Organizations”). The award is for an outstanding contribution represented by a paper or small group of papers within the past 25 years. This time span allows the contribution to have established evidence of lasting impact and depth. The award can be given to an individual, or a group of individuals who have made substantial contributions to the result.
Eligibility and Nominations
The basic eligibility criterion is that the contribution has appeared in a paper or papers within the past 25 years. When a paper has appeared in a conference and then in a publication of record such as a journal or a book chapter, the date of the latter publication will determine the cut-off date. Thus, for the first award, which was presented in Summer 2016, the cut off date was 1st January 1991.
Nominations will be solicited through the newsletters, bulletins, mailing lists, social networks, and websites of the sponsoring organizations and through publicity flyers at major conferences. The nominating letter must summarize the contribution and make the case for why it is outstanding. The nominating letter can have multiple co-signers. Self-nominations are excluded. A nomination must state clearly the contribution, explain why the contribution is fundamental and outstanding, and may be accompanied by supporting letters and other evidence of worthiness. Nominations must include a proposed citation (up to 25 words), a succinct (100-250 words) description of the contribution(s), and a detailed statement to justify the nomination.
The award will be given for intellectual depth, novelty, and impact. The award will be selected by the Award Committee from the submitted nominations by consensus, following the Ground Rules for Award-Committee Decision Making by ACM Awards Committee. If the Award Committee does not select any nomination, then no award will be made in the given year. The Award Committee shall provide a detailed citation that explains the basis of the award. The Award Committee shall take into account all individuals who have contributed to an awarded accomplishment, as well as independent discoveries of an awarded contribution, and assure that all individuals are treated fairly. In particular, the Award Committee can select a nomination, but change the set of selected individuals. The Committee must follow the Guidelines on Conflict-of-Interest by ACM Awards Committee.
Presentation of the Award
The award will be given annually and will be presented in turn at LICS,CSL, and ICALP, which are the flagship conferences of SIGLOG, EACSL, and EATCS, respectively. (The 2016 award was given at LICS, the 2017 award was given at CSL, and the 2018 award will be given at ICALP.) The award will be accompanied by an invited lecture by the award winner or one of the award winners at the conference where the award will be presented.
The awardee(s) will receive a certificate and a cash prize of USD2,000. If there are multiple awardees, this amount will be shared. The award will be covered by the operating expenses of the sponsoring organizations. The individual conference organization will cover the travel and other expenses for one of the award winners to present the invited talk. Each of the sponsoring organizations will contribute USD500 every year for the award honorarium.
Award Committee
The Church Award Committee will consist of five members appointed by EACSL (in consultation with KGS), EATCS, and SIGLOG. The appointments should be coordinated to strive for multi-dimensional diversity of the Committee, as well as to provide broad coverage of expertise across different research areas. A member of the Award Committee will serve for five years, with one member retiring every year. (There will be an initial transient period with an accelerated retirement schedule; see below.). Members of the Award Committee are not eligible to receive the Award during their service on the Committee. Officers of the sponsoring organizations are not eligible to serve on the Award Committee. The four positions on the Award Committee are referred to as 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5. The Sponsoring Organizations will appoint the members of first Award Committee to specific positions. The tenure of a member in position n shall be n years. In respective subsequent years, the member in position 1 shall retire from the Committee, the member in position n (n > 1) shall assume position n-1, and a new member shall be appointed by the Sponsoring Organizations for position 5. The Sponsoring Organizations shall take turns in appointing new members, to ensure a fair representation on the Award Committee according to the schedule specified below. In the event of an unanticipated vacancy on the Award Committee, the Sponsoring Organizations shall appoint a new member to the vacated position.
The Committee shall be chaired by the member in position 2. Thus, after serving as a chair, a member serves one additional year and then retires. The chair is responsible for publicizing the request for nominations, receiving nominations and distributing them to members of the Award Committee, and overseeing the selection processes.
For the 2019 Committee, the positions are appointed as follows:
(1) EATCS (2) SIGLOG (3) EACSL (4) EATCS and (5) SIGLOG. In 2020 the new member will be appointed by EACSL and in 2021 by EATCS; thereafter this pattern will repeat.
Oversight
- Winner of the 2022 Alonzo Church Award 10 September 2022Continue reading...
The 2022 Alonzo Church Award for Outstanding Contributions to Logic and Computation is given to Dexter Kozen for for his fundamental work on developing the theory and applications of Kleene Algebra with Tests, an equational system for reasoning about iterative programs.
- Alonzo Church Award for Outstanding Contributions to Logic and Computation 2022 Call for Nominations 8 March 2022Continue reading...
SIGLOG is calling for nominations for The Alonzo Church Award, which should be submitted to rjagadee at depaul.edu by April 2, 2022. The details of the award and the nomination procedure for this year are described in this post.
- Winners of the 2021 Alonzo Church Award 29 May 2021Continue reading...
The 2021 Alonzo Church Award for Outstanding Contributions to Logic and Computation is given jointly to Georg Gottlob, Christoph Koch, Reinhard Pichler, Klaus U. Schulz, and Luc Segoufin for their fundamental work on logic-based web data extraction and querying tree-structured data
- Winners of the 2020 Alonzo Church Award 27 June 2020Continue reading...
The 2020 Alonzo Church Award for Outstanding Contributions to Logic and Computation is given jointly to Ronald Fagin, Phokion G. Kolaitis, Renée J. Miller, Lucian Popa, and Wang Chiew Tan for their ground-breaking work on laying the logical foundations for data exchange.
- Alonzo Church Award for Outstanding Contributions to Logic and Computation 2020 Call for Nominations 24 January 2020Continue reading...
SIGLOG is calling for nominations for The Alonzo Church Award, which should be submitted to thomas.eiter@tuwien.ac.at by April 1, 2020. The details of the award and the nomination procedure for this year are described in this post.
- Winners of the 2019 Alonzo Church Award 17 April 2019Continue reading...
The 2019 Alonzo Church Award for Outstanding Contributions to Logic and Computation is given jointly to Murdoch J. Gabbay and Andrew M. Pitts for their ground-breaking work introducing the theory of nominal representations.
- Alonzo Church Award for Outstanding Contributions to Logic and Computation 2019 Call for Nominations 15 June 2018Continue reading...
SIGLOG is calling for nominations for The Alonzo Church Award, which should be submitted to shankar@csl.sri.com by March 1, 2019. The details of the award and the nomination procedure for this year are described in this post.
- Winners of the 2018 Alonzo Church Award 11 April 2018Continue reading...
The 2018 Alonzo Church Award for Outstanding Contributions to Logic and Computation is given jointly to Tomás Feder and Moshe Y. Vardi for their fundamental contributions to the computational complexity of constraint-satisfaction problems.
- The 2018 Alonzo Church Award for Outstanding Contributions to Logic and Computation Call for Nominations 8 January 2018Continue reading...
SIGLOG is calling for nominations for The Alonzo Church Award, which should be submitted to catuscia@lix.polytechnique.fr by March 1, 2018. The details of the award and the nomination procedure for this year are described in this post.
- Winners of the 2017 Alonzo Church Award 4 May 2017Continue reading...
The 2017 Alonzo Church Award for Outstanding Contributions to Logic and Computation is given jointly to Samson Abramsky, Radha Jagadeesan, Pasquale Malacaria, Martin Hyland, Luke Ong, and Hanno Nickau for providing a fully-abstract semantics for higher-order computation through the introduction of game models, thereby fundamentally revolutionising the field of programming language semantics, and for the applied impact of these models.