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Call for Nominations: The 2021 ACM SIGAI Industry Award for Excellence in Artificial Intelligence
The ACM SIGAI Industry Award for Excellence in Artificial Intelligence (AI) will be given annually to individuals
or teams who have transferred original academic research into AI applications in recent years in ways that
demonstrate the power of AI techniques via a combination of the following features: originality of the research
novelty and technical excellence of the approach; importance of AI techniques to the approach; and actual or
predicted societal impact of the application. Awardees receive a plaque accompanied by a prize of $5,000, and
will be recognized at the International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence through an agreement with the
IJCAI Board of Trustees.
After decades of progress in the theory, research and development of AI, AI applications are increasingly
moving into the commercial sector. A great deal of pioneering application-level work is being done by those
transferring research results into industry—from startups to large corporations—and this is influencing
commerce and the broad public in a wide variety of ways. This award complements the numerous academic,
best-paper and related awards, in that it focuses on innovators of fielded AI applications. It is intended
especially to recognize those who are not only active in the academic community, but also playing key roles in
AI commercialization. The award honors these innovators and highlights their achievements (and thus the
benefit of AI techniques) to computing professionals and the public at large. The award committee will consider
applications that are open-source or proprietary and that may or may not involve hardware.
Evaluation Criteria: The criteria include the following, but there is no fixed weighting of them:
Novelty of application area
Novelty and technical excellence of the approach
Importance of AI techniques for the approach
Actual and predicted societal benefits of the fielded application
Eligibility Criteria: Any individual or team, worldwide, is eligible for the award.
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Nomination Procedure:
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One nomination and three endorsements must be submitted. The nomination must identify the individual or
team members, describe their fielded AI system, and explain how it addresses the award criteria. The
nomination must be written by a member of ACM SIGAI. Two of the endorsements must be from members of
ACM or ACM SIGAI. Endorsements are intended to be brief statements of support (typically 1-2 paragraphs
and should not exceed 1000 words) that provide additional perspective on the nomination itself.
Please submit the nomination and endorsements as a single PDF file in an email to the chair of the committee,
Craig Boutilier <cboutilier@google.com>.
We will acknowledge receipt of the nomination.
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Timeline: