ACM India Early Career Researcher Award

Nominations

Overview

The ACM India Early Career Researcher (ECR) Award recognizes individuals in early stages of their careers, who have made fundamental, innovative, and impactful contributions to the computing field while primarily working in India. In addition to acknowledging such contributions, the ACM India Council also believes that the award will provide international visibility to research from India, inspire early career researchers to scale further heights in the field, and nurture them to be candidates for future international recognition.

The award carries a prize of ₹15 lakhs. Financial support for this award is provided by Persistent Foundation.

Deadline

Nominations are due by 15 September 2024, 11 pm IST. This is a hard deadline. The recipient will be announced by 31 December 2024.

Eligibility

  • There is no age restriction for the candidate. However, he/she must be within 6 to 12 years of his/her terminal scientific degree date. Specifically, the degree date for the award in year X should be between January 1 of year X−12 and December 31 of year X−7. Accordingly, for the 2024 Award, the degree date range is 1 January 2012 to 31 December 2017.
  • For non-thesis degrees, the terminal degree date is the date the degree was awarded, while for thesis-oriented degrees, the terminal degree date is the date the thesis was successfully defended.
  • The candidate's contributions being considered for the award must have been carried out primarily while working in India.
  • The candidate can be from any walk of life in the broad field of computing, as understood in its general sense.
  • The candidate need not be an Indian national.
  • The candidate need not be a member of ACM.
  • The terminal scientific degree need not be PhD or from the computing discipline.

Nomination

  • No self-nomination is allowed.
  • The nominator should be a recognized member of the computing community who has personal knowledge of the candidate’s technical contributions and can testify to the candidate's impact on the broader community.
  • The nominator must take prior consent of the nominee before submitting the nomination. Further, it is expected that the nominator should not knowingly himself/herself be a nominee for the same award.
  • Nominators will now be required to indicate whether they are aware of any action committed by the candidate that violates the ACM Code of Ethics and ACM’s Core Values. See the Policy for Honors Conferred by ACM.
  • A nomination will remain in consideration for a period of up to 3 years from first submission, provided other eligibility criteria are met; details of the nomination may be updated if a nomination from a previous year is considered in a subsequent year.

Evaluation Criteria

  • The selection will be based on the impact of the eligible candidate’s research contributions to computing theory and/or practice.
  • As the award is based on early career achievements, the contributions for the nomination must be within the last decade.
  • An eminent international and independent jury will select the winner based on these criteria.

Timelines and Nature of the Award

  • The award will consist of a plaque and a prize of ₹15 lakhs.
  • The nominations deadline is 15 September 2024 (11 pm IST), and the recipient would be announced by 31 December 2024. No extensions to the nomination deadline will be granted.
  • The award ceremony will be held during the ACM India Annual Event in early February of the subsequent year. The awardee is expected to deliver a talk on their research contributions at the conference co-located with the Annual Event. The costs for the travel and stay will be borne by ACM India..

Submissions

Nominations for the award should be submitted using the online ACM India Award nomination form.

Submitted materials should explain the contribution in terms understandable to a non-specialist. Each nomination involves several components:

  • Name, address, phone number, and email address of the nominator (person making the nomination).
  • Name, address, and email address of the candidate (person being nominated). As a matter of policy, ACM India will neither reveal to the candidates who have nominated/endorsed them nor respond to any queries regarding a nomination once submitted.
  • Suggested citation if the candidate is selected. This should be a concise statement (maximum of 25 words) describing the key technical or professional accomplishment for which the candidate merits this award. Note that the final wording for awardees will be at the discretion of the Selection Committee.
  • 2-page nomination statement/executive summary addressing why the candidate should receive this award. This may describe the candidate's work in general, but should draw particular attention to the contributions that merit the award.
  • Copy of the candidate's CV, listing publications, patents, honours, service contributions, etc.
  • Supporting letters from 3 endorsers. A nominator cannot also be an endorser. Endorsers should be chosen to represent a range of perspectives and institutions and provide additional insights or evidence of the candidate's impact. Each letter must include the name, address, and telephone number of the endorser, and should focus on the accomplishments that the endorser can personally attest to and place in context. The nominator should collect these letters and bundle them for submission.

For questions on the above, please contact us at [email protected]. ACM's conflict-of-interest guidelines apply to all award nominations.