IEEE Computer Society TCSE Awards
Each year, the IEEE Computer Society Technical Community on Software Engineering solicits nominations of distinguished individuals and teams for its annual international awards in the following categories:
TCSE Rising Star Award: presented annually to an academic researcher or an industry professional in the early stages of their post PhD career who has made contributions to Software Engineering and Software Development, which go above and beyond those expected for a person at such an early career stage.
TCSE Distinguished Service Award: presented annually to an individual for outstanding and/or sustained contributions and service to TCSE, to the IEEE Computer Society, to the IEEE, and the wider Software Engineering community.
TCSE Distinguished Education Award: presented annually to an individual for outstanding and/or sustained contributions to software engineering education.
TCSE Distinguished Synergy Award: presented annually to a Research Centre or Institute for outstanding contributions that stand as an exemplar in the software engineering community of an effective partnership between industry and universities.
TCSE Barbora Bühnová Distinguished Leadership Award for Women in Science and Engineering (WISE): presented annually to an individual for outstanding and/or sustained leadership in the software engineering community to encourage women to explore science and engineering career paths.
TCSE Lifetime Achievement Award: presented annually to an individual who has contributed a lifetime of outstanding and sustained contributions to the Software Engineering community. These contributions have had a practical impact on the way Software Engineering is currently practiced or taught.
TCSE New Directions Award: presented annually to an individual or team whose pioneering software engineering research or practice have moved the field in a new direction.
Each award includes an award plaque that will be presented at the IEEE/ACM International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE) along with a public citation for the award on the IEEE TCSE website.
A nominee must be an IEEE Computer Society and TCSE member at the time of nomination (unless the nominee is an institution). Self-nominations are not allowed. Achievements that have previously been recognized by an award in a similar category by this or other societies may not be re-nominated. All other nominations may be resubmitted in any subsequent year. A same person cannot be nominated for different awards in the same year.
The deadline for nomination is generally in October/November, while the notification of awards is communicated in January.
2025 Awards
We are thrilled to announce the winners of 2025 IEEE TCSE Awards as follows:
Lifetime Achievement
Anthony (Tony) I. Wasserman (Carnegie Mellon University) for more than five decades of outstanding contributions to software engineering across research, practice, service, and education.
Barbora Bühnová Leadership Award for Women in Science and Engineering (B-WISE)
Myra Cohen (Iowa State University) for her seminal and innovative research on combinatorial interaction testing and her exceptional records of one-on-one mentoring of women at all levels.
Synergy Award
Centro de Informática at Universidade Federal de Pernambuco (Brazil) for 22 years of strong industry and public-sector partnerships, fostering a robust entrepreneurial culture, and introducing technological residencies to Brazil.
Rising Star Award
Pinjia He (Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen) for his impact in the fields of “AI for SE” and “SE for AI,” notably for developing SE techniques in the field of AI and AI-powered log analytics.
New Directions Award
Foutse Khomh (Polytechnique Montréal) and Lei Ma (University of Tokyo and University of Alberta) for their outstanding vision, leadership, and collaboration in establishing and advancing the field of trustworthy assurance for data-driven software systems.
Synergy Award
Simula Research Laboratory (Norway) for 20 years of advancing both industry practice and academic research through world-class software engineering.
Awards History
2024 Women in Science and Engineering (WISE) Leadership: Lori Pollock (University of Delaware, USA) for her seminal work in text analysis of programs and in testing of object-oriented programs, outstanding mentoring of women at all levels, and leadership in organizing communities dedicated to promoting women in computing.
2024 Service: Rick Kazman (University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, USA) for his outstanding track record of impactful volunteer work for the Software Engineering community including major conferences (ICSE), journals (IEEE TSE), and IEEE CS TCSE, over several decades.
2024 Education: Peter Sawyer (Aston University, United Kingdom) for his noteworthy contribution to Software Engineering education, particularly Requirements Engineering, over an extended period of time, showcasing an exceptional commitment to advancing the field internationally.
2024 Rising Star: Li Li (Beihang University, China) for his contributions to improve privacy, security, and quality of mobile applications, including widely-used datasets and tools, and a series of important papers on improving API usage within Android applications.
2023 IEEE CS TCSE Distinguished Education Award
Tayana Uchôa Conte (Federal University of Amazonas Manaus, Brazil) in recognition of her impact in educating university students in software engineering at all levels. Her practice and research in software engineering education has been influencing Brazil and South America for a long time, and more recently is having impact in Europe and other international countries.
2023 IEEE CS TCSE New Directions Award
Patricia Lago (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, The Netherlands) in recognition of her pioneering work in sustainable software where new dimensions of software engineering with enormous impact on society–such as e-waste and software energy efficiency – are considered in the software engineering process.
2022 IEEE CS TCSE Distinguished Women in Science and Engineering (WISE) Leadership Award
Margaret Burnett (Oregon State University, USA) in recognition for decades of work breaking glass ceilings for women in computing and SE.
2022 IEEE CS TCSE Distinguished Service Award
Valerie Issarny (National Institute for Research in Digital Science and Technology, France) in recognition for significant contributions in service, mentorship, and influence to the SE community.
2022 IEEE CS TCSE Lifetime Achievement Award
Michael Jackson (Open University, UK) in recognition for more than five decades of contribution to academic and industrial software engineering and its research, influencing generations of software engineers.
2021 IEEE CS TCSE New Directions Award
Yuriy Brun (University of Massachusetts) in recognition of setting a new direction in software engineering research by defining the area of software fairness testing. His advocacy for industrial uptake of software fairness testing has attracted both funding and opportunities for real-world impact, and charted a roadmap for software engineering research in this new area.
2024 Lifetime Achievement: Margaret Hamilton(MIT Instrumentation Laboratory, USA) for her seminal contributions to the creation of the Software Engineering field, defining many of its founding principles and concepts (especially relating to software testing, reliability, and safety), and the practice of software development.
2024 Lifetime Achievement: Mary Shaw(Carnegie-Mellon University, USA) for her pioneering and lifetime contributions to research, including abstract data types, architecture, and data abstraction, education, and service in Software Engineering.
2024 Synergy: The McMaster Center for Software Certification (McSCert, Canada) for conducting a significant number of collaborative research projects addressing real-life problems funded by the industry and government, for developing and transferring tools both via open-source and through contributions to commercial tools such as Simulink and Stateflow, and for their leadership in standing up the Software Certification Consortium.
2023 IEEE CS TCSE Lifetime Achievement Award
Victor Basili (University of Maryland, USA) in recognition of formalizing the concepts around measurement programs and process improvement to support decision making in software development organizations, and founding the field of Empirical Software Engineering.
2023 IEEE CS TCSE Synergy Award
The SINTEF Digital Process Innovation Research Group (Trondheim, Norway) in recognition of significant impact for more than 23 years since its founding in 1999, assisting both private and public organizations, nationally and internationally. Its research has focused on evidence-based process improvement and agile methods, extensively impacting both research and practice.
2022 IEEE CS TCSE Distinguished Education Award
Didar Zowghi (CSIRO’s Data61, Australia) in recognition for outstanding contribution to software engineering education by her long-term efforts to increase diversity in the student body studying computer programming.
2022 IEEE CS TCSE New Directions Award
Cristian Cadar (Imperial College London) and Abhik Roychoudhury (National University of Singapore) in recognition for their contributions to symbolic execution for test generation and program repair.
2022 IEEE CS TCSE Rising Star Award
Baishakhi Ray (Columbia University, USA) in recognition for innovative and high-quality research on software engineering and artificial intelligence, which has impacted both the academic and industrial communities.
2021 IEEE CS TCSE Rising Star Award
Federica Sarro (University College London) in recognition of her high-impact, industrially relevant research on predictive modeling for software engineering. In parallel to her research excellence, she has also made substantial contributions to the training of a large cohort of students, and to the development of improved curricula in support of this training.
2023 IEEE CS TCSE Rising Star Award: Fabio Palomba (University of Salerno, Italy) in recognition of his research on code refactoring and code smells. The use of alternative sources of information, such as historical and textual information, besides the structural information previously used in the literature, has led to significant research advancements in the area.
2023 IEEE CS TCSE Distinguished Women in Science and Engineering (WISE) Leadership Award: Laura Dillon (Michigan State University, USA) in recognition for decades of work in mentoring and improving the representation of women and underrepresented minorities in computing.
2022 IEEE CS TCSE Rising Star Award
Sonia Haiduc (Florida State University, USA) in recognition for innovative and influential research and professional leadership in the area of software maintenance and evolution.
2021 IEEE CS TCSE Distinguished WISE Leadership Award
Sue Black (Durham University) in recognition for creating highly recognized and sustained programs to help women, who are not originally related to computing and technology, develop the required skills to pursue their dreams and improve their quality of lives through computer science and software engineering career paths. The impact she has generated by mentoring underprivileged women, and ever their children, is endless.
2021 IEEE CS TCSE Distinguished Service Award
David Lo (Singapore Management University) in recognition of his extensive and outstanding service to the software engineering community in his many roles in major software engineering conferences and journals.
2021 IEEE CS TCSE Distinguished Education Award
Ahmed Hassan (Queen’s University) in recognition of his continuous efforts in raising generations of software engineering researchers coming to his lab from all over the world. Twenty six of his former trainees are now faculty members in various areas of software engineering.