AWARDS

ABOUT THIS AWARD

The ACM - Infosys Foundation Award in the Computing Sciences recognizes personal contributions by young scientists and system developers to a contemporary innovation that, through its depth, fundamental impact and broad implications, exemplifies the greatest achievements in the discipline. The award carries a prize of $175,000. Financial support for the ACM - Infosys Foundation Award is provided by the Infosys Foundation endowment.

ACM and Infosys Foundation Honor Innovator in Network Security Research

UC San Diego's Stefan Savage Honored for Work in Network Security, Privacy and Reliability to Help Keep Internet Safe

Stefan Savage from the University of California, San Diego is the recipient of the 2015 ACM-Infosys Foundation Award in the Computing Sciences. He was cited for innovative research in network security, privacy and reliability that has taught us to view attacks and attackers as elements of an integrated technological, societal and economic system. Savage’s impact on the field of network security stems from the systematic approach he takes to assessing problems and combating adversaries ranging from malicious software and computer worms to distributed attacks.

“Keeping networks secure is an ongoing battle,” explained ACM President Alexander L. Wolf. “Coming up with a technical advancement to block an adversary is important. But, very often, the adversaries soon find new ways in. Stefan Savage has shifted thinking and prompted us to ask ourselves how we might impede the fundamental support structure of an attacker. His frameworks will continue to significantly influence network security initiatives in the coming years.”

“Dr. Savage has dedicated his career to analyzing, protecting, and strengthening the systems and networks that make our digital age possible. From network congestion control, worms and malware to wireless security, his work has helped advance a wide range of areas,” said Vishal Sikka, Chief Executive Officer & Managing Director of Infosys. “Dr. Savage is a true innovator, pursuing his curiosity and passion toward new frontiers in cybersecurity, and exemplifying the kind of work that the ACM-Infosys Foundation Award is proud to support.”

Stanford’s Dan Boneh honored for ground-breaking contributions in the field of cryptography that improve computer security and privacy

Dan Boneh is the recipient of the 2014 ACM-Infosys Foundation Award in the Computing Sciences. Boneh's work was central to establishing the field of pairing-based cryptography where pairings are used to construct new cryptographic capabilities and improve the performance of existing ones. Boneh, in joint work with Matt Franklin, constructed a novel pairing-based method for identity-based encryption (IBE), whereby a user's public identity, such as an email address, can function as the user's public key. Since then, Boneh's contributions, together with those of others, have shown the power and versatility of pairings, which are now used as a mainstream tool in cryptography. The transfer of pairings from theory to practice has been rapid. Organizations now using pairings include healthcare, financial, and insurance institutions. Over a billion IBE-encrypted emails are sent each year. [more...]

Press release

Selected Bibliography:  Pairings-based Crypto papers

ACM will present the 2014 ACM-Infosys Foundation Award at its annual Awards Banquet on June 20 in San Francisco, CA.

ACM And Infosys Foundation Honor Leader In Machine Learning

David Blei is the recipient of the 2013 ACM-Infosys Foundation Award in the Computing Sciences. He initiated an approach to analyzing large collections of data using innovative statistical methods, known as "topic modeling," that make it possible to organize and summarize digital archives at a scale that would be impossible by human annotation.  His work is scalable to collections of billions of documents and has inspired new research programs across multiple disciplines, with applications for email archives, natural language processing, information retrieval, computational biology, social networks, and robotics as well as computational social sciences and digital humanities.

ACM President Vint Cerf said that Blei’s contributions provided a basic framework for an entire generation of researchers to develop statistical modeling approaches. "His topic modeling algorithms go beyond the search and links approach to information retrieval. In an era of explosive data on the Internet, he saw the advantage of discovering the latent themes that underlie documents, and identifying how each document exhibits these themes. In fact, he changed the way machine learning researchers think about modeling text and other objects in the digital realm."

Press release

2012 ACM-Infosys Foundation Award Recipients Dean, Ghemawat Honored for Innovations that Boost Online Search Capabilities

Jeff Dean and Sanjay Ghemawat led the conception, design, and implementation of much of Google's revolutionary software infrastructure, which has transformed the practice and understanding of Internet-scale computing.