Interactions - November/December 2018

ACM Chuck Thacker Breakthrough in Computing Award
The “ACM Breakthrough Award”
Nominations Solicited

Nominations are invited for the inaugural 2018

ACM Charles P. “Chuck” Thacker Breakthrough in Computing Award (the “ACM Breakthrough Award”).

ACM Turing Laureate Charles P. (Chuck) Thacker (1943–2017) received the 2009 ACM A.M. Turing Award for “the pioneering design and realization of the first modern personal computer— the Alto at Xerox PARC—and seminal inventions and contributions to local area networks (including the Ethernet), multiprocessor workstations, snooping cache coherence protocols, and tablet personal computers.” The award was established in recognition of Thacker’s pioneering contributions in computing.

These contributions are considered by the community to have propelled the world in the early 1970s from a visionary idea to the reality of modern personal computing, providing people with an early glimpse of how computing would deeply influence us all. The award also celebrates Thacker’s long-term inspirational mentorship of generations of computer scientists.

The Breakthrough Award will recognize individuals with the same out-of-the-box thinking and “can-do” approach to solving the unsolved that Thacker exhibited. The recipient should be someone who has made a surprising or disruptive leapfrog in computing ideas or technologies that provides a new capability or understanding that influences the course of computing technologies in a deep and significant manner through its numerous downstream influences and outcomes. Due to the breakthrough nature of the award it is expected that it will be presented biennially and will not be presented if there is no candidate who meets the criteria in a particular year.

The award is accompanied by a prize of $100,000 and would be presented at the annual ACM Awards Banquet. The award recipient would be expected to give the ACM Breakthrough Lecture at a major ACM conference of his or her choice during the year following the announcement. The travel expenses of the recipient, and a companion, to attend the Lecture are supported by the award. Financial support of the Thacker Award is provided by Microsoft.