EAPLS Best PhD Dissertation Award
Call for Nominations
The European Association for Programming Languages and Systems (EAPLS) has established a Best Doctoral Dissertation Award in the research area of programming languages and systems. The award will go to a young Doctor of Computer Science (Informatics) who has since the previous EAPLS award made the most original and influential contribution to the designated field. The purpose of the award is to draw attention to excellent work, to support the career of the young Computer Scientist (Informatician) in question, and to promote the research field as a whole.
Eligibility
Eligible for the award are those who successfully defended their PhD
- at a Tertiary Academic Institution in Europe,
- with a Doctoral Dissertation in the field of Programming Languages and Systems,
- in the time between the 1st of January 2024 and the 31st of December 2025.
NOTE: IF a Doctoral Dissertation designated for nomination was written in any European Language other than English, then please contact the Committee in advance, before making any submission.
Nominations
Candidates for the award must be nominated by their Academic Supervisor. Nominating a candidate is done by e-mailing the nomination to phdaward@eapls.org The nomination must consist of one single PDF file which contains:
- a Photocopy of the Doctoral Degree Certificate from the candidate's University (located in Europe);
- a Letter from the supervisor explaining why the thesis should be considered for the award;
- a Report from an independent researcher who has acted as examiner of the dissertation at its defense;
- the Dissertation itself.
The nominated dissertations will be evaluated with respect to originality and significance to the field, and (to a lesser degree) their quality of writing. Where the dissertation consists of a collection of papers, in assessing the quality of writing careful consideration will be given to the introduction and overall conclusion chapters of the dissertation, as well as the quality of the individual papers and their consistent use of notation, concepts, etc.
E-mails, for clarification of questions, can be sent to the award committee's chair: phdaward@eapls.org
Procedure
The nominations will be evaluated and compared by an international committee of experts. The justification by the supervisor and the external report will play an important role in the evaluation. The final decision is made by the EAPLS board, based on the recommendation of the expert committee. To avoid any conflict of interest, members of the expert committee and the EAPLS board are barred from nominating their own PhD students for the award. The award consists of a certificate announcing the winner of the EAPLS PhD award, and the supervisor will receive a copy of this certificate. If possible, the certificate will be handed out ceremonially at a suitable occasion, (for example at the ETAPS conference). In addition, the winner will be invited to submit a short video summarizing the thesis work which will be made available via the EAPLS website. Apart from the winner, no further ranking of nominees will be published. The decision of the expert committee is final and binding and will not be subject to discussion. The committee reserves the right to give out no award if none of the received submissions meet the expected high quality standards.
Important Dates
- 31 October 2026: Deadline for Nominations, via e-mail to phdaward@eapls.org
- By the end of this year 2026: Announcement of the Committee's Decision.
Expert Committee
The following experts have agreed to act as award committee members:
- Mariangiola Dezani-Ciancaglini (Dipartimento di Informatica: Università di Torino)
- Kei Davis (Los Alamos National Laboratory)
- Sandra Alves (University of Porto)
- Greg Michaelson (Heriot-Watt University)
- Stefano Crespi Reghizzi (Politecnico di Milano)
- Eerke Boiten (De Montfort University Leicester)
- Matteo Pradella (Politecnico di Milano)
- Christoph Kirsch (University of Salzburg)
- Santiago Escobar (Universitat Politècnica de València)
- Jorge Perez (Universiteit Groningen)
- Stefan Gruner (Chairman of the Committee on behalf of EAPLS)
Past Best Dissertation Awards
-
2023 EAPLS Best Dissertation Award
Aurèle Barrière, University of Rennes
Formal verification of just-in-time compilation
Read more about the motivation for this award. -
2021 EAPLS Best Dissertation Award
Conrad Watt, University of Cambridge
Mechanising and evolving the formal semantics of WebAssembly: the Web's new low-level language
Read more about the motivation for this award. -
2020 EAPLS Best Dissertation Award
Amir Kafshdar Goharshad, Institute of Science and Technology Austria
Parameterized and Algebro-geometric Advances in Static Program Analysis
Read more about the motivation for this award. -
2019 EAPLS Best Dissertation Award
Martin Bromberger, Saarland University
Decision Procedures for Linear Arithmetic
Read more about the motivation for this award. -
2018 EAPLS Best Dissertation Award
Christian Hensel, RWTH Aachen University
The Probabilistic Model Checker Storm - Symbolic Methods for Probabilistic Model Checking
Read more about the motivation for this award. -
2016/17 EAPLS Best Dissertation Award
Jesper Cockx, KU Leuven
Dependent Pattern Matching and Proof-Relevant Unification
Read more about the motivation for this award. -
2015 EAPLS Best Dissertation Award
Maria Christakis, ETH Zürich
Narrowing the gap between verification and systematic testing
Read more about the motivation for this award. -
2014 EAPLS Best Dissertation Award
Fabrizio Montesi, IT University of Copenhagen
Choreographic Programming
Read more about the motivation for this award. -
2013 EAPLS Best Dissertation Award
Zhiwu Xu, Université Paris Diderot
Parametric Polymorphism for XML Processing Languages
Read more about the motivation for this award. -
2012 EAPLS Best Dissertation Award
Delphine Demange, ENS Cachan - Brittany Extension and the Celtique team at IRISA / INRIA Rennes
Semantic Foundations of Intermediate Program Representations
Read more about the motivation for this award. -
2011 EAPLS Best Dissertation Award
Santiago Zanella Béguelin, École nationale supérieure des mines de Paris
Formal Certification of Game-Based Cryptographic Proofs
Read more about the motivation for this award. -
2010 EAPLS Best Dissertation Award
Alexey Gotsman, Computer Laboratory, University of Cambridge
Logics and analyses for concurrent heap-manipulating programs
Read more about the motivation for this award.