Joint AAAI/ACM SIGAI Doctoral Dissertation Award

Limited competition (one nomination per university)

AAAI and ACM SIGAI are excited to announce that we have established the Joint AAAI/ACM SIGAI Doctoral Dissertation Award to recognize and encourage superior research and writing by doctoral candidates in artificial intelligence. The award will be presented annually at the AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence, and the winner will be invited to present a talk at the conference.

A nominated dissertation must have been successfully defended (but not necessarily finalized) between October 1 of the previous year through September 30 of the current year. [For the 2024 competition: October 1, 2023-September 30, 2024.] Only English-language dissertations will be accepted. Only one nomination may be submitted per Ph.D.-granting institution, including large universities. The faculty nominator must be an ACM SIGAI member and/or AAAI member.

Since UIC can nominate only one dissertation, the Graduate College is running a limited competition.

To be nominated for the internal competition, a nominated dissertation must have been successfully defended (but not necessarily finalized) between October 1 of the previous year through September 30 of the current year. The faculty nominator must be the dissertation advisor AND an ACM SIGAI member and/or AAAI member.

The criteria include the following, but there is no fixed weighting of them:

  • Novelty of application area
  • Novelty and technical excellence of the approach
  • Importance of AI techniques for the approach
  • Actual and predicted societal benefits of the fielded application

Nominations are due in the Graduate College by 11:59 pm (CT) on November 1. Since UIC is allowed one nomination, the Dean of the Graduate College will determine our sole nominee for the national competition. Nominations must be made by the thesis advisor. A complete nomination includes the following:

  1. The names, affiliations, and contact information of the nominator and the candidate.
  2. A nomination statement (200-300 words in length) that explains why the candidate should receive this award and addresses the significance of the dissertation. This should not simply repeat the information in the abstract.
  3. Supporting letters (not fewer than two, and not more than three) from from experts in the field who can speak to the impact of the dissertation.)
  4. An electronic copy of the submitted dissertation – if the file is too large, send separately or provide the link to a cloud-share file. If there is an embargo, the student must nonetheless provide an e-copy of the dissertation.

 

Nominations must be sent in an email (with all the materials attached as a single file) to the Graduate College’s Limited Competition folder in Box (a FERPA-compliant cloud storage service): AAAI_AC.k4ajf4pys9uuc9ma@u.box.com

File naming convention: 

Here is an example of Chuck Baudelaire’s application from Computer Science: AAAI_2024_CS_BaudelaireC.pdf.

If the dissertation is too large to be combined with the other materials, send separately, following this naming convention:

AAAI_2024_CS_Baudelaire-DISS.pdf

Graduate College contact: Benn Williams, Fellowships and Awards Coordinator (bwilli7@uic.edu)

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DEADLINE: 11:59 p.m., October 2, 2023