Call for Nominations: The Microsoft BCS/BCS IRSG Karen Spärck Jones Award 2021

[Apologies for cross-postings.]

*Call for Nominations: The Microsoft BCS/BCS IRSG Karen Spärck Jones Award
2021*


*Closing date: 10 September 2021*

*                   ~ An award to commemorate Karen Spärck Jones ~*
A pioneer of information retrieval, the computer science sub-discipline
that also underpins the technology of modern Web search engines, Karen
Spärck Jones was a British professor of Computers and Information at the
University of Cambridge in Cambridge. Her contributions to the fields of
Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Information Retrieval (IR),
especially with regard to experimentation, have been outstanding, highly
influential and lasting, and include the introduction of InverseDocument
Frequency <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tf%E2%80%93idf> for relevance
ranking. Her achievements resulted in her receiving a number of prestigious
accolades such as the BCS Lovelace medal for her advancement in Information
Systems, and the ACM Salton Award for her significant, sustained and
continuing contributions to research in information retrieval. Karen was
also an outspoken advocate for women in computing, and we encourage former
advisors of talented scientists to provide the judges with a rich and
diverse candidate pool to select from.

To learn more about Karen and her work, see:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_Sp%C3%A4rck_Jones
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8FecRxSiUM
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5fYeKiebpuo

In order to honour Karen's achievements, the BCS Information Retrieval
Specialist Group (BCS IRSG) in conjunction with the BCS has established an
annual award to encourage and promote talented researchers who have
endeavoured to advance our understanding of Natural Language Processing or
Information Retrieval with significant experimental contributions.

To celebrate the commemorative event, the recipient of the 2021 award will
be invited to present a keynote lecture at BCS IRSG’s annual conference —
the European Conference on Information Retrieval (ECIR) next year (in
Stavanger, Norway, in April 2022).  This forum provides an excellent venue
to present and announce the award as the conference attracts many new and
young researchers.

Eligibility. Open to all NLP/IR researchers, who have no more than 10 years
experience after their Ph.D. at the closing date for nominations (non-research
times, e.g. parental leave or career breaks, will be taken into account to
ensure equity; please point at such times in the nominee's CVs).

Criterion. *To have endeavoured to advance our understanding of NLP or IR
or both through experimentation.*

Nominations. The following should be provided:
 • Name of nominee, position, affiliation, years since completion of the
Ph.D.;
 • Name of person proposing the nominee, position, and affiliation;
 • Short case for the award, not to exceed 2,500 words, highlighting the
contributions the individual has made;
 • List of the individual's top five publications reflecting the relevant
contributions, and role within these; and
 • Exactly two supporting letters from people who would like to
encourage/support the nomination.

Nominations should be emailed to the panel chair below.  The support
letters can be emailed separately by the referees.  It is possible for
individuals to nominate themselves, in which case they should provide three
support letters.  Please note that we anticipate that people who provide
support letters will do so only for a single candidate.

Award Panel. The Award Panel Chair, appointed by the BCS IRSG Committee,
will invite panel members from amongst representatives of the BCS main
council, the BCS IRSG Committee, the European Chapter of the Association
for Computational Linguistics (EACL), the Award-sponsoring organisation
(unless there could be a conflict of interest), as well as seasoned experts
in IR and NLP from academia and industry.

Prize. The recipient of the award will receive a certificate, a trophy, a
cash prize of £1000 plus expenses for the awardee to travel to ECIR 2022.

Note that the Karen Spärck Jones Award will now alternate between ECIR and
EACL to promote integration between the IR and NLP communities that Karen
Spärck Jones was an active member of.

Timeline for the 2021 Award to be presented at ECIR 2022:
 • 10 September 2021 — closing date for nominations;
 • 17 September 2021 — deadline for support letters;
 • 15 December 2021 — notification of the prize recipient;
 • 10 April-14 April 2022 — recipient presents keynote at ECIR 2022 in
Stavanger, Norway.

The Karen Spärck Jones Award is sponsored by Microsoft Research Cambridge
<https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/lab/microsoft-research-cambridge/>;
we would like to thank our generous sponsors.

Current Award Chair: Professor Jochen L. Leidner <leidner AT acm.org>.

For a list of previous recipients of the award, cf.
http://irsg.bcs.org/ksjaward.php .



-- 
Prof. Jochen L. Leidner *M.A. M.Phil. Ph.D. FRGS*

Professor of Explainable and Responsible Artificial Intelligence, Coburg
University of Applied Sciences, Coburg, Germany
Visiting Professor of Data Analytics, Department of Computer Science,
University of Sheffield, Sheffield, United Kingdom

[ E-Mail: leidner (at) acm.org | Web:
*https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/dcs/people/academic/jleidner
<https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/dcs/people/academic/jleidner>* | LinkedIn:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/leidner/ | Twitter: @jochenleidner
<https://twitter.com/jochenleidner> ]

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