Do you know someone who has profoundly changed the way society benefits from computing or information technology?
Distinguished Fellow of the BCS is an award and fellowship granted to people who have made an outstanding contribution to the advancement of computing; it is the highest Fellowship award granted by the BCS. The Award was approved in 1969 and the first election was made in 1971 to Edsger Dijkstra; the most recent award was in 2020 to Sophie Wilson, for her work on the Acorn, BBC Micro and ARM architectures. You can see the full roll of BCS Distinguished Fellows; they’re not all BCS members and they hail from different parts of the world, but what they all hold in common is their profound contribution to the development of computing and the way in which society benefits from IT.
This is my fifth and final year on the BCS Distinguished Fellowship Committee (currently chaired by Past President Paul Martynenko) and this year we celebrate the 50th anniversary of our most prestigious award; as in previous years, we wish to ensure the call for nominations is as wide as possible, reflecting the updated criteria to recognise contributions against the wider BCS theme of “making IT good for society”:
“We welcome nominations from all backgrounds and from anywhere in the world. The nominee’s contribution should be considered of major importance to the overall development of computing, and they will have gained substantial recognition over an extensive and sustained career.”
Nominations for BCS Distinguished Fellowships can be made online and close at noon (GMT) on 18 June 2021.
Digital, Data & Policy 