Professor Judith Gal-Ezer

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Outstanding Contribution to ACM Award

Israel - 2024

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In recognition of her sustained contributions to computer science education policy and research and, more broadly, to the ACM Europe Council

Professor Judith Gal-Ezer has a record of sustained contributions to ACM over a 25 year period.  She has made many contributions in computing education which have been recognised by the awards of the ACM SIGCSE Award for Outstanding Contribution to Computer Science Education (2007) and the Karl V. Karlstrom Outstanding Educator Award (2017).  She is a member of the ACM Education Advisory Committee and  became the Chair of the ACM Europe Education Committee in 2023.  During her long involvement with ACM, she has served as Associate Editor for the ACM Inroads magazine and as Co-Chair and programme committee member for several ACM SIGCSE conferences.

She has been very active in the ACM Europe Council and its sub-committees.  She represents ACM Europe in the Informatics For All (I4All) coalition ? a coalition between ACM Europe, Informatics Europe, CEPIS and IFIP which was created to promote informatics education at school-level in Europe. This coalition has had significant impact on the European Commission?s recognition of the importance of informatics education at all stages of the curriculum.   In addition to her education activities, she served on the ACM Europe Council from 2015-2019 and was Vice Chair from 2017-2019.  She became an ACM Fellow in 2021.

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ACM Fellows

Israel - 2021

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For contributions to research and implementation in computer science education

Press Release

ACM Karl V. Karlstrom Outstanding Educator Award

Israel - 2017

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For her central role in developing a groundbreaking high-school computer science curriculum, her outstanding CS education research and her extensive service to the education community.

For more than 25 years, Judith Gal-Ezer has led the construction and evolution of Israel's high-school computer science curriculum. The result is widely considered to be the world's most successful K-12 CS curriculum with respect to formulating requirements, developing high-quality teaching material, conducting associated computing education research, and setting the highest standards for pre-service as well as in-service training of teachers. She has for years chaired the Israeli Education Ministry's Computer Science Committee. Her work has had a substantial global impact on computer science education.

Prof. Gal-Ezer has been the driving force in founding the Computer Science Department at the Open University of Israel, and then chairing it, personally taking a lead role in creating the textbooks and learning materials for more than 20 courses. She also initiated and led the building of the Open University's master's program in computer science.

She is noted for her remarkable ability to successfully navigate higher education, K-12 education and the government, getting buy-in and agreements from all of these constituencies, as well as for her own track record as a successful CS education researcher, especially as regards to her ability to introduce advanced CS concepts to high school students.

She is extremely active in the computer science education community, through journal editorial boards, her work on ACM's International Science and Engineering Fair, Google's education advisory council, the Computer Science Teachers Association advisory council, the Committee on European Computing Education, and the ACM Europe Council.

Overall, Prof. Gal-Ezer is outstanding as a researcher, as an educator, as curriculum designer, as textbook author, and a global leader in computing education.