Call-for-Nominations: SPEC Benchmarking Research PhD Award 2011

Monday, May 16, 2011 05:06

SPEC has established a Research Award to be presented to a PhD student whose thesis is regarded to be an exceptional, innovative contribution in the scope of SPEC's Research Group.

SPEC's Research Group is established to serve as a platform for collaborative research efforts in the areas of computer benchmarking, performance evaluation, and quantitative system analysis in general, fostering the interaction between industry and academia in the field.

The scope of SPEC's Research Group includes techniques and tools for measurement, load testing, profiling, workload characterization, dependability and efficiency evaluation of computing systems. While the focus is on performance and scalability, other extra-functional system properties such as availability, reliability, cost and energy efficiency are considered as well.

The winner will receive $1000, which will be awarded at the ICPE 2012 International Conference{.external-link-new-window} in Boston, Massachusetts, USA.

Criteria for selection are the overall contribution in terms of scientific originality, scientific significance, practical relevance, impact, and quality of the presentation.

A nomination should include:

  • A nomination letter (including the name of the student, the title of the thesis, the institution where the PhD was defended, and the date of the defense).
  • A 1-page report that outlines the outstanding contribution of the thesis.
  • The PhD thesis itself including a 1-page extended abstract of the thesis. (If the thesis is written in language other than English, it may be accompanied by publications, in English, describing the same research as the thesis.)

The SPEC Research PhD award is open to PhD theses that have been defended after July 1, 2010. If there are several outstanding submissions, the committee may split the award between them.

The submission deadline is September 30, 2011. The selection of recipient(s) will be announced in January 2012 at the SPEC Annual and Joint Meeting.

Nominations are welcome at any time before the final submission deadline. Nominations, or questions about the application process, should be sent by e-mail to: Dianne Rice (Email: firstname underscore lastname at spec dot org).

Selection committee:

  • J. Nelson Amaral, University of Alberta, Canada
  • Wilhelm Hasselbring, University of Kiel, Germany (Chair)
  • Seetharami R. Seelam, IBM Watson Research Center, USA
  • Petr Tuma, Charles University of Prague, Czech Republic
  • Walter Bays, Oracle Corporation, USA

Addendum (December 16, 2011)

  • To better emphasize the broad scope of the award and its focus on the dissertation as an "end product", the official name of the award was changed to "SPEC Distinguished Dissertation Award".
  • The initial announcement of the selection of recipient(s) will be made in the second half of December 2011.