5. Distinguished dissertations

The schemes we know about are listed below. Each has a different scope, different application procedures, and different deadline. Typically the winning theses are published, and sometimes there is a cash prize. Note that the information below is not definitive: please follow the link to find up-to-date submission instructions etc.

Please do submit the best Edinburgh PhD theses for these awards!

Receipt of an award is good for us and very good for the student concerned, as well as a feather in the supervisor's cap. When you submit a thesis to any of these competitions, please notify the Graduate School office so that we can keep track of success rates.

The student or student's supervisor is typically not allowed to make a nomination, or else explicit support is required from somebody else such as the external examiner, but the supervisor can initiate the process by prompting the examiners to consider whether a nomination would be appropriate. When a letter of support from the Head of School (rather than the supervisor or examiners) is required, please ask the Graduate School office for this.

The BCS/CPHC Distinguished Dissertation Award has been awarded to UK dissertations in Computer Science, broadly construed, since 1990. We have done fairly well with this one over the years. The usual deadline is at the beginning of April for dissertations that have been examined and recommended for a PhD in the UK since the previous deadline. The submission is done by the examiners or the Head of School.

The BCS/CPHC Distinguished Dissertation Award

The E.W. Beth Dissertation Prize is awarded by FoLLI (the European Association for Logic, Language, and Information, www.folli.org) to dissertations in the fields of Logic, Language, and Information, worldwide. "The dissertations will be judged on the impact they made in their respective fields, breadth and originality of the work, and also on the interdisciplinarity of the work. Ideally the winning dissertation will be of interest to researchers in all three fields." The usual deadline is in March or April for dissertations leading to award of a PhD during the previous calendar year.

The E.W. Beth Dissertation Prize

The Artificial Intelligence Dissertation Award is awarded by ECCAI, the European Coordinating Committee for Artificial Intelligence, to a European dissertation in the general area of Artificial Intelligence. The usual deadline is in January. Multiple submissions of the same doctoral dissertation to other dissertation award activities of other societies are excluded.

The Artificial Intelligence Dissertation Award

The Ackermann Award is awarded by EACSL, the European Association for Computer Science Logic, for PhD dissertations "in topics specified by the EACSL and LICS conferences" which were accepted during the previous two calendar years. The submission deadline is in March.

The Ackermann Award

The ACM Doctoral Dissertation Award is awarded to "the best doctoral dissertation in computer science and engineering". The deadline is in August for theses accepted during the previous 12-month period. Nominations are submitted by the supervisor with support from head of department, and we are allowed a maximum of two nominations per year.

The ACM Doctoral Dissertation Award

The Georges Giralt PhD Award is given by EURON (the European Robotics Research Network) for the best robotics PhD thesis in Europe. Any student who has been awarded a PhD degree within the last 2-3 years can submit a thesis for consideration, together with publications related to the work and a recommendation from the supervisor.

The Georges Giralt PhD Award

ERCIM's Cor Baayen Award is not for a PhD thesis, but for a postdoc within 2 years of completion of a PhD who is currently working in one of the ERCIM countries. The deadline is in April. Nomination is by the postdoc's current employer.

Cor Baayen Award