Departmental Prizes Awards and Medals

Steve Furber Medal for Outstanding Doctoral Thesis in Computer Science

Each year, at the Research Students’ Symposium, a prize is awarded for the outstanding thesis for which a PhD has been awarded.

Rules for entry are as follows:

  • The PhD must have been awarded between January 1st of the preceding calendar year and the deadline (below) for submission.

  • If the work falls within what is commonly understood as computer science, then the thesis must meet all the criteria for entry in the CPHC/BCS Distinguished Dissertations Award (http://academy.bcs.org/content/distinguished-dissertations).

  • People eligible to take part must have been registered as students at the School of Computer Science, University of Manchester.

  • The thesis must have been submitted within four years of registration.

  • Each research group can submit at most 2 theses for consideration by the panel. If more than two theses are submitted from a single research group the committee will discuss this with the supervisors and head of the research group.

  • An electronic copy (in PDF format) of the thesis to be considered for the prize must be submitted to Dr. Ian Pratt-Hartmann 1 early February to fit in with the CPHC/BCS timetable but submissions can be made throughout the year. The following supporting evidence should be provided as a zipped file:

  1. The author’s written agreement.

  2. An indication as to whether the dissertation is being considered for publication elsewhere.

  3. Written justification by one of the examiners - preferably the external - explaining the dissertation’s claim to distinction.

  4. The names and contact details of at least three suggested reviewers from outside the School who are independent of the supervision and examining of the thesis, and who have explicitly agreed to provide a review upon request by the BCS.

  5. Any other material available as evidence of merit and impact (e.g., papers that are directly related to the results in the dissertation – with acceptance rate/impact factor, if possible, for, resp., conference and journals –, esteem indicators such as invited research seminars/research visits, etc.)

Steve Furber Medal winners

  • 2022: William Griggs - Disorder-and strain-mediated magnetic phase modifications in FeRh thin films. Alaa Alahmadi (Runner-up) - Exploiting an understanding of human visual perception to facilitate human-machine electrocardiogram interpretation of drug-induced long QT syndrome

  • 2021: Ahmed Bhayat - Automated Theorem Proving in Higher-Order Logic

  • 2020: Ghader Kurdi - Generation and Mining of Medical, Case-Based Multiple Choice Questions

  • 2019: Henry Reeve - Learning in high dimensions with asymmetric costs

  • 2018: Sarah Nogueira - Quantifying the Stability of Feature Selection

  • 2017: (joint winner) Sukru Eraslan - Eye tracking scanpath trend analysis on web pages; and

  • 2017: (joint winner) Nikolaos Nikolaou - Cost-sensitive boosting: a unified approach

  • 2016: (joint winner) Patrick Koopmann Fg- Practical Uniform Interpolation for Expressive Description Logics

  • 2016: (joint winner) Konstantinos Sechidis - Hypothesis Testing and Feature Selection in Semi-Supervised Data

  • 2015: Georgios Kontonatsios - Automatic Compilation of Bilingual Terminologies from Comparable Corpora

  • 2014: Maytham Alabbas - Textual entailment for modern standard Arabic

  • 2013: Adam Pocock - Feature Selection via Joint Likelihood

  • 2012: Yavor Nenov Computability of Euclidean Spatial Logics

  • 2011: Pavel Klinov Practical Reasoning in Probabilistic Description Logic

  • 2010: Not Awarded

  • 2009: Gwenn Englebienne, Animating Faces from Speech

  • 2008 (joint winner): Birte Glimm, Querying Description Logic Knowledge Bases

  • 2008 (joint winner): Paolo Missier, Modelling and Computing the Quality of Information in e-Science

  • 2007: Gilles Daniel, Asynchronous Simulations of a Limit Order Book

  • 2006: Chris Armstrong, CFG: A CSP-Based Framework Generator for Scientific Coupled Models

  • 2005: Tomaz Felicijan, Quality-of-Service for Asynchronous On-Chip Networks

  • 2004: Konstantin Korovine, Knuth-Bendix Orders in Automated Deduction and Term Rewriting

  • 2003: Nicola Gambino, Sheaf Interpretations for Generalised Predicative Intuitionistic Systems

  • 2002: Rhodri H. Davies, Learning Shape: Optimal Models for Analysing Natural Variability

  • 2001: Sergio Tessaris, Questions and Answers: Reasoning and Querying in Description Logic

  • 2000: William Bainbridge, Asynchronous System-on-Chip Interconnect

  • 1999: Simon Gibson, Efficient Radiosity Simulation using Perceptual Metrics and Parallel Processing

  • 1998: Ian Horrocks, Optimising Tableaux Decision Procedures for Description Logics

  • 1997: Rizos Sakellariou, On The Quest For Perfect Load Balance in Loop-Based Parallel Computations

Carole Goble Medal for Outstanding Doctoral Paper in Computer Science

Each year, at the Research Students’ Symposium, a prize is awarded for the outstanding paper by a research student. The rules for entry are as follows:

  • People eligible to take part must be registered as students at the School of Computer Science, University of Manchester.

  • Papers must either have been published externally or accepted for publication in the preceding twelve months.

  • The research student must either be the first author, or the submission should be made with a covering letter explaining the role of the research student in the production of the paper.

  • A copy of the paper to be considered for the prize must be submitted to Dr. Ian Pratt-Hartmann 1 early February.

This will be a hard deadline (the same as the above thesis deadline) but submissions can be made throughout the year. Submitted papers will also be considered for other awards (e.g. at the faculty level). The following supporting evidence should be provided as a zipped file:

  1. At least three, substantial anonymous referee reports. (More are welcome.) If a conference paper, the reports needed are those notifying acceptance. If a journal paper, the reports needed are the most substantive ones, from any round of revision (if any). If so wished, all the reports from all rounds can be submitted.

  2. The number of papers published in the conference or journal (preferably in the year of publication, or else the historical average).

  3. The acceptance rate (resp., impact factor) of the conference (resp., journal) (preferably at the publication year, or else the historical average).

Note that if there aren’t as many referee reports as required above or if they’re not substantial or if the data about number of papers accepted and acceptance rate/impact factor are not known, then the Research School considers that there is a lack of a priori evidence for the nomination. In this case, the supervisor(s) is/are welcome to make a case for exemption in writing, especially in cases of journals whose impact factor is not available at all. In particular, the supervisor(s) may wish to ask prominent researchers in the area to write to the panel in support of the paper. In this case, it is the supervisor(s) responsibility to make it evident to the panel how these invited expressions of support complement the referee reports and are also both authoritative and unbiased.

Carole Goble Medal winners

  • 2022: Hugo Lefeuvre - FlexOS: Towards Flexible OS Isolation

  • 2021: Maolin Li - A Neural Model for Aggregating Coreference Annotation in Crowdsourcing. Viktor Schlegel (Runner Up) - Semantics Altering Modifications for Evaluating Comprehension in Machine Reading & Maksymilian Wojtas (Runner Up) - Feature importance ranking for deep learning.

  • 2020: Yuan Chai - Load balancing routing for wireless mesh network with energy harvesting

  • 2019: Alaa Alahmadi - Evaluating the Impact of Pseudo-Colour and Coordinate System on the Detection of Medication-induced ECG Changes

  • 2018: Mantas Mikaitis - Neuromodulated Synaptic Plasticity on the SpiNNaker Neuromorphic System

  • 2016: Nikos Nikolaou - Cost Sensitive Boosting Algorithms: Do We really need them? Nikos Nikolaou, Nara Edakunni Meelis Kull, Peter Flach, and Gavin Brown, Machine Learning Journal, 104(2), 359 - 384, 2016.

  • 2015: Fan-Lin Meng - A Profit Maximization Approach to Demand Response Management with Customers Behavior Learning in Smart Grid, Fan-Lin Meng and Xiao-Jun Zeng, accepted for publication in IEEE Transactions on Smart Grid 2015

  • 2014: Patrick Koopmann - Forgetting Concept and Role Symbols in ALCH-Ontologies. Patrick Koopmann and Renate A. Schmidt, published in LPAR-19, LNCS 8312, pp. 552-567, 2013

  • 2013: Paraskevas Yiapanis - Optimizing software runtime systems for speculative parallelization, by Paraskevas Yiapanis, Demian Rosas-Ham, Gavin Brown, Mikel Lujan, published in ACM Transactions on Architecture and Code Optimization 9(4):39 (2013)

  • 2012: Hugh Steele - Constructing Fully Complete Models for Multiplicative Linear Logic, Andrea Schalk and Hugh Steele, in Logic in Computer Science 2012 (LICS2012), the 27th Annual IEEE Symposium.

  • 2011: Yavor Nenov - On the Decidability of Connectedness Constraints in 2D and 3D Euclidean Spaces Roman Kontchakov, Yavor Nenov, Ian Pratt-Hartmann and Michael Zakharyaschev Proceedings of the Twenty-second International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI 2011), AAAI Press, 2011, pp. 957–962.

  • 2010 (joint winner): Yavor Nenov - On the Computability of Region-based Euclidean Logics, Yavor Nenov and Ian Pratt-Hartmann. Computer Science Logic, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2010, Volume 6247/2010, 439-453.

  • 2010 (joint winner): Kevin Sharp - Dense Message Passing for Sparse Principal Component Analysis, Kevin Sharp and Magnus Rattray. Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Statistics (AISTATS), Vol 9: 725-732.

  • 2009: Nestan Tsiskaridze - Conflict Resolution, by Konstantin Korovin, Nestan Tsiskaridze and Andrei Voronkov. Proceedings of the 15th international conference on Principles and Practice of Constraint Programming (CP 2009): 509-523.

  • 2008: Richard Pearson - A Comprehensive Re-Analysis of the Golden Spike Data: Towards a Benchmark for Differential Expression Methods. BMC Bioinformatics 2008, 9:164.

  • 2007: Robin Houston - Finite products are Biproducts in a Compact Closed Category. Journal of Pure and Applied Algebra Volume 212, Issue 2, February 2008, Pages 394-400.

  • 2006: Julian Seidenberg - Web Ontology Segmentation: Analysis, Classification and Use. Proceedings of The 15th International World Wide Web Conference, WWW2006

  • 2005: Xuejun Liu - X. Liu, M. Milo, N.D. Lawrence and M. RattrayA tractable probabilistic model for Affymetrix probe-level analysis across multiple chips. Bioinformatics 21, 3637-3644 (2005).

  • 2004: Omaima Bamasak - O. Bamasak, N. Zhang A Secure Proxy Signature Protocol for Agent-Based M-Commerce Applications. Proc. Ninth IEEE Symposium on Computers and Communications, 2004.

  • 2003: Delia Critchlow - D. Critchlow, N. Zhang. Security-Enhanced, Accountable, Anonymous PKI Certificates for Mobile E-commerce. Computer Networks 45(4): 483-503 (2004).

  • 2002: Lilia Georgieva - L. Georgieva, U. Hustadt, R. A. Schmidt. A. Hyperresolution for Guarded Formulae. Journal of Symbolic Computation, Volume 36, Issues 1-2, (July - August 2003),pp. 163-192. 2003.

  • 2001: Rhodri Davies - R.H. Davies, C.J. Twining, T.F. Cootes, J. C. Waterton and C.J. Taylor. A Minimum Description Length Approach to Statistical Shape Modelling. IEEE Transactions on Medical Imaging. May 2002.

  • 2000:Konstantin Korovin - K. Korovin, A. Voronkov. A Decision Procedure for the Existential Theory of Term Algebras with the Knuth-Bendix Ordering, Proc. Logic in Computer Science (LICS), 291-302, 2000.

  • 1999: Mike Lewis - M. Lewis, J. Garside, L. Brackenbury. Reconfigurable Latch Controllers for Low Power Asynchronous Circuits, Proc. Async, IEEE Press, 1999.

  • 1998: Tom Duckett - T. Duckett, U. Nehmzow. Mobile Robot Self-Localization and Measurement of Performance in Middle Scale Environments, J. Robotics and Autonomous Systems, Vol 24, No 1-2, 1998.

  • 1997: Willem Visser - W. Visser, H. Barringer, D. Fellows, G. Gough, A. Williams. Efficient CTL* Model Checking for the Analysis of Rainbow Designs, Proc. Conference on Advances in Hardware Design and Verification (CHARME), 128-145, 1997.

Nomination Process

Eligibility Conditions

In all cases, prizes are for research students that are, or were, registered as such at the Department of Computer Science, University of Manchester.

For a thesis nomination, the submission date must have fallen with four years of registration and the PhD must have been awarded between January 1st of the preceding calendar year and the deadline for submission (see below).

If the thesis falls within what is commonly understood as computer science, then it must meet all the criteria for entry in the CPHC/BCS Distinguished Dissertations Award (https://www.bcs.org/).

For a paper nomination, the paper must have been either published or accepted for publication in an external scholarly outlet (typically, a conference of a journal) between January 1st of the preceding calendar year and the deadline for submission (see below).

The PGR must be the primary and most significant author of the paper (which is typically and implicitly signalled by a placement as first author in the list of authors), otherwise the nomination must also include a covering letter explaining the role of the PGR in the production of the paper.

Nominations can only come from the supervisory team and must have the consent, in writing, of the PGR.

No more than two nominations for a prize can come from the same research group.

Deadline

The deadline for nominations normally falls in mid-February and is always widely advertised through a call sent by the academic responsible for the PGR Symposium in the Department team (typically at the start of the year).

Nominations are sent to the academic named for that purpose in the call for nomination and consist of the items described below, separately, for theses and for papers.

Items for Nominating Theses

The nomination of a thesis must include the following items:

  1. An electronic copy (in PDF format) of the thesis

  2. The author’s written agreement to participate in the Department’s competition and, if the panel so decides, the CPHC/BCS Distinguished Dissertations Award as well.

  3. A statement as to whether the dissertation is being considered for publication elsewhere.

  4. Written justification by one of the examiners - preferably the external - explaining the outstanding nature of the thesis.

  5. The names and contact details of at least three suggested reviewers from outside the Department who have no had any participation in either the supervision or the examining of the thesis, and who have already explicitly agreed to provide a review upon request by the BCS in the context of the CPHC/BCS Distinguished Dissertations Award.

  6. Any other material available as evidence of merit and impact, e.g., (a) papers that are directly related to the results reported in the thesis – with acceptance rate/impact factor, if possible, for, resp., conference and journals, (b) esteem indicators such as invited research seminars/research visits, etc., (c) patents awarded, etc.

Note that it is the supervisory teams’ responsibility (not the panel’s, nor the Department’s, more broadly) to nominate the winner thesis (and possibly selected others) to the CPHC/BCS Distinguished Dissertations Award, the deadline for which typically falls sometime towards the end of March, possibly up to the end of April.

Items for Nominating Papers

The nomination of a paper must include the following items:

  1. At least three substantive, anonymous, referee reports (but see below). For a conference paper, the reports needed are those notifying acceptance. For a journal paper, the reports needed are the most substantive ones, from any of the possibly many refereeing rounds. If so wished, all the reports from all rounds can be submitted.

  2. The number of papers published in the conference or journal (preferably in the year of publication, or else the historical average).

  3. The acceptance rate (resp., impact factor) of the conference (resp., journal) (preferably at the year of publication year, or else the last one available accompanied by the corresponding year of measurement).

Note that if there aren’t as many referee reports as required above or if they’re not substantive or if the data about number of papers accepted and acceptance rate/impact factor are not known, then the Department considers that there is a lack of a priori evidence for the nomination.

In this case, the supervisory team is welcome to make a case for exemption in writing, especially in cases of journals whose impact factor is not available at all, but also in cases where there are fewer referee reports than required.

In particular, the supervisory team may wish to ask prominent researchers in the same technical area that are from outside the Department and have no had any participation in the supervision to write to the panel in support of the paper. In this case, it is the supervisor(s) responsibility to make it evident to the panel how these invited expressions of support complement the referee reports and are also both authoritative and unbiased.

Award Process

The Panel

The nominations are judged by a panel of academics who are members of the Department team, typically with three members.

The Brief

Because a member of the panel is, more often than not, not an expert in the research areas to which the thesis or paper contributes, the panel does not judge the technical quality of the submissions.

The panel aims to identify an outstanding thesis or paper on the basis of the compelling nature of the evidence amassed from expert in the research areas to which the thesis or paper contributes: this is the role, therefore, of the referee or examiner reports required for a nomination to be valid.

This means that the more compelling the testimonies, as gleaned from the referee or examiner reports accompanying the nomination, the stronger the claim to exceptional achievement.

The Outcomes

The panel aims to award one prize of outstanding thesis, but has, exceptionally, announced joint winners in the past.

For the purposes of a Department submission to the CPHC/BCS Distinguished Dissertations Award, the winner is automatically submitted to the external competition and the panel often recommends the submission of other submitted theses when they are judged worthy of representing the Department externally.

The panel awards one prize for outstanding paper and names two joint (i.e., non-ranked) runner-up papers.

The Prizes

An award comes with a certificate and a prize sponsored by an external organization (such as, in the past, Oracle, and, more recently, IBM), the origin and value of which are announced in the call for nominations.

The prizes are given to the winners at the annual PGR Symposium.

An Approximate Timeline

  1. beginning of January:

    • call for nominations is sent

    • eligible students discuss potential nominations of eligible papers and theses with supervisory teams

  2. from beginning of January to mid-February:

    • students and supervisory teams construct the cases (see, in particular, the list of items above)

  3. mid-February:

    • deadline for nominations

  4. end of February

    • awards panel meets

  5. beginning of March

    • awards announced

    • supervisory team(s) of winner thesis (and possibly selected others) construct the case(s) for nomination to the CPHC/BCS Distinguished Dissertations Award

  6. mid-April

    • prizes are given in the annual PGR Symposium

  7. between end of March and end of April (depending on an external deadline)

    • supervisory team(s) of winner (and possibly selected others) complete the Web-based process of nominating the thesis(es) to the CPHC/BCS Distinguished Dissertations Award

  8. between September and November

    • CPHC/BCS announce their Distinguished Dissertations Award(s)