Winner EAPLS Best PhD Dissertation Award 2010

It is the great pleasure of the European Association on Programming Languages and Systems to announce the outcome of the EAPLS Best Dissertation Award 2010.

This award is given to the PhD student who has made the most original and influential contribution to the area of Programming Languages and Systems, and has graduated in the period up to November 2010 at a European academic institute. 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.

The winner of this first edition of the EAPLS Dissertation Award is

• Dr. Alexey Gotsman
  Computer Laboratory, University of Cambridge
  

for his dissertation on

• Logics and analyses for concurrent heap-manipulating programs

The winner was selected by a committee of international experts. Details on the procedure can be found at http://eapls.org/pages/phd_award/. The candidate theses were judged on originality, impact, relevance, and quality of writing.

The jury concluded unanimously that Dr. Gotsman's dissertation is an outstanding piece of work; it received the best marks amidst some very strong contenders. A summary of the jury's findings:

• Program logic and analysis are two related fields, but here they are unified at a very deep level, and the author presents important results in both fields. The subject is very difficult and very relevant, and the author masters it all.

• The breadth and depth of the dissertation are excellent; it provides the reader with a competent and intriguing overview of this interesting field of research.

• The quality of the publication venues (PoPL, SAS, PLDI) and the impact of the work, measured by the number of citations, are impressive.

• The dissertation is very well written.

We offer Dr. Gotsman our heartfelt congratulations with his achievement. We are confident that it will be a sign of a long and distinguished scientific career.