SIGMM Technical Achievement Award

Award Description

This award is presented every year to a researcher who has made significant and lasting contributions to multimedia computing, communication and applications. Outstanding technical contributions through research and practice is recognized. Towards this goal, contributions are considered from academia and industry that focus on major advances in multimedia including multimedia processing, multimedia systems, multimedia network protocols and services, and multimedia applications and interfaces. The award recognizes members of the community for long-term technical accomplishments or those who have made a notable impact through a significant technical innovation. The selection committee focuses on candidates' contributions as judged by innovative ideas, influence in the community, and/or the technical/social impact resulting from their work. The award includes a $1000 honorarium, an award certificate of recognition, and an invitation for the recipient to present a keynote talk at a current year's SIGMM-sponsored conference, the ACM International Conference on Multimedia (ACM Multimedia). A public citation for the award will be placed on the SIGMM website.

Funding

The award honorarium, the award certificate of recognition and travel expenses to the ACM International Conference on Multimedia is fully sponsored by the SIGMM budget.

Nomination Process

Nominations are solicited by May 1, 2010, with decision made by June 30, 2010, in time to allow the above recognition and award presentation at ACM Multimedia 2010. Nominations for the award must include:

1. A statement summarizing the candidate's accomplishments, description of the significance of the work, and justification of the nomination (two pages maximum);
2. Curriculum Vitae of the nominee;
3. Three endorsement letters supporting the nomination including the significant contributions of the candidate. Each endorsement should be no longer than 500 words with clear specification of nominee contributions and impact on the multimedia field;
4. A concise statement (one sentence) of the achievement(s) for which the award is being given. This statement will appear on the award certificate and on the website.

The nomination rules are: The nominee can be any member of the scientific community.

1. The nominator must be a SIGMM member.
2. No self-nomination is allowed.
3. Nominations that do not result in an award can be resubmitted.
4. The SIGMM elected officers as well as members of the Awards Selection Committee are not eligible.

Previous Recipients

• 2009: Lawrence A. Rowe
  "for pioneering research in continuous media software systems and visionary leadership of the multimedia research community"
• 2008: Ralf Steinmetz
  "for pioneering work in multimedia communications and the fundamentals of multimedia synchronization"

Latest News

The 2009 winner of the prestigious ACM Special Interest Group on Multimedia (SIGMM) award for Outstanding Technical Contributions to Multimedia Computing, Communications and Applications is Dr. Lawrence A. Rowe. Dr. Rowe is currently President of FX Palo Alto Laboratory and an Emeritus Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the University of California, Berkeley. The ACM SIGMM Technical Achievement award, given in recognition of outstanding contributions over a researcher's career, cited Dr. Rowe's "pioneering research in continuous media software systems and visionary leadership of the multimedia research community." The SIGMM award will be presented at the ACM International Conference on Multimedia 2009 that will be held October 19-24, 2009 in Beijing China.

While at Berkeley, Dr. Rowe made significant contributions to the INGRES and POSTGRES database projects, and he lead the development of the Berkeley MPEG1 Tools software and the Berkeley webcasting system, an early lecture webcasting system that produces material viewed on the Internet by millions of people around the world each year.

ACM is the professional society of computer scientists, and SIGMM is the special interest group on multimedia.

Dr. Rowe's presentation in MM'09 is available as slides.ppt and slides.pdf.