EAPLS Best PhD Dissertation Award

Call for Nominations

The European Association for Programming Languages and Systems has established a Best PhD Dissertation Award in the international research area of programming languages and systems. The award will go to the PhD student who in the previous period has made the most original and influential contribution to the area. The purpose of the award is to draw attention to excellent work, to help the career of the student in question, and to promote the research field as a whole.

Eligibility

Eligible for the award are those who successfully defended their PhD
  • at an academic institution in Europe
  • in the field of Programming Languages and Systems
  • in the period from 1 January 2022 - 31 December 2022

Nominations

Candidates for the award must be nominated by their supervisor. Nominating a candidate consists of submitting the nomination via EasyChair. The nomination must consist of a single PDF file containing

  • a letter from the supervisor describing why the thesis should be considered for the award;
  • a report from an independent researcher who has acted as examiner of the thesis at its defense; and
  • the thesis itself.

The nominated theses will be evaluated with respect to originality and significance to the field, and (to a lesser degree) quality of writing. Where the thesis 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 thesis, as well as the quality of the individual papers and their consistent use of notation, concepts, etc. 

Questions can be directed to the PhD award chairs Andreas Wortmann at [email protected].

Procedure

The nominations will be evaluated and compared by an international committee of experts. The letter from 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. 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 dissertation award 2021 and the supervisor will receive a copy of this certificate. If possible, the certificate will be handed out ceremonially at a suitable occasion, for instance at the ETAPS conference. In addition, the winner will be invited to submit a short video summarising 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.

Important Dates

  • 30 September 2023: Extended deadline for nominations
  • 1 December 2023: Announcement of the award winner

Expert Committee

The decision on the award is taken by an expert committee, consisting of leading researchers in programming languages and systems. The committee currently consists of:
  • Ana Sokolova (University of Salzburg, AT)
  • Christoph Kirsch (University of Salzburg, AT)
  • Eerke Boiten (De Montfort University, UK)
  • Greg J. Michaelson (Heriot-Watt University, UK)
  • James Cheney (The University of Edinburgh, GB)
  • Jens Knoop (TU Vienna, AT)
  • Kei Davis (Los Alamos National Laboratory, USA)
  • Mariangiola Dezani-Ciancaglini (Università di Torino, IT)
  • Matteo Pradella (Politecnico di Milano, IT)
  • Sandra Alves (University of Porto, PT)
  • Santiago Escobar (Universitat Politècnica de València, ES)
  • Stefan Gruner (University of Pretoria, SA)
  • Stefano Crespi Reghizzi (Politecnico di Milano, IT)

Organizers

  • Maribel Fernandez, King's College London, UK (co-chair)
  • Andreas Wortmann, University of Stuttgart, Germany (co-chair)

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.