BCS Lovelace Medal
Celebrating exceptional education and research contributions, in honour of pioneering computer programmer Ada Lovelace.
Established in 1998, the BCS Lovelace Medal recognises people who have made exceptional contributions to either the understanding and advancement of computing, or to computing education. Winners are presented with a Lovelace Medal award, and their contribution and achievements are celebrated at a special event.
Previous winners include Demis Hassabis CBE, Jane Hillston MBE, Tom Crick MBE, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, and Karen Spärck Jones.
Who's eligible to receive the medal?
The Lovelace Medal celebrates people from academia, industry or education who have had major, notable impact in their field. They will have furthered knowledge or public understanding or driven transformational change in their discipline, made significant breakthroughs or advanced the efficacy or availability of computing education.
2025 BCS Lovelace Medal Winners
The 2025 Lovelace Medal winners are Professor Mirella Lapata, University of Edinburgh, awarded the Lovelace Medal for Computing Research, and Professor Michael Kölling, King’s College London, recipient of the Lovelace Medal for Computing Education.
Read more here.
Professor Lapata was recognised for her pioneering research in natural language processing and AI. Her work has transformed how machines understand and generate human-like narratives from text and structured data, bridging language with other modalities such as images and video. These advances have shaped mainstream technologies now embedded in everyday life.
Professor Kölling was recognised for his transformative impact on programming education worldwide. Over the past two decades, he has developed new pedagogical approaches, designed some of the most widely adopted educational programming systems in the history of computer science education, and authored textbooks that have shaped how programming is taught in thousands of schools and universities
Find out more about the selection criteria
Nominations are accepted from anyone, anywhere in the world but it is expected that nominees are academic, industry or education professionals who have a direct connection with the UK. Nominators and nominees do not need to be BCS members.
Nominees will have had major, notable impact in their field, and be widely recognised for their excellence as well as their wider contribution to the computing community.
They will have furthered knowledge or public understanding, or driven a transformational change in their discipline. They may have made a breakthrough, opened a new area of research, or advanced the efficacy or availability of computing education, including through public policy.
There are no career stage restrictions or expectations with this prize, the emphasis is on impact.
Selection of the Lovelace Medal winners is made by a Lovelace Medal Selection Panel appointed each year by the BCS Academy of Computing Board.
The Selection Panel will base their evaluations on the overall quality of relevant contributions and achievements by nominees, in relation to the selection criteria outlined below.
Research:
- originality, significance and impact of research, innovation.
- quality of publications and/or patents and/or software.
- collaborations and teamwork, supporting the development of colleagues and encouraging wider collaboration.
- consideration of ethical and societal implications within their research and its direction.
- professional standing.
Education:
- quality of contributions to and impact on availability and quality of educational provision.
- raising the profile and reach of computing in the curriculum, within and across departments and disciplines.
- scale and quality of computing talent that has been inspired, nurtured and developed through their efforts.
- championing and advancing inclusion and diversity in computing education.
- supporting the development of colleagues and encouraging wider collaboration.
2024 Selection Panels
Lovelace Research
- Professor Anthony G Cohn FREng FLSW CEng CITP FAAAI FEurAI FAISB FAAIA FAIIA FIET FBCS University of Leeds (Chair)
- Julia Adamson MBE CITP FBCS, Managing Director, BCS Education & Public Benefit
- Czarina Barnsby FBCS, 6point6
- Professor Tom Crick MBE FLSW FAcSS FBCS
- Professor Jane Hilston MBE CITP FBCS FRSE, University of Edinburgh
- Professor Nick Jennings FREng CITP CEng FBCS, Loughborough University
- Professor Marta Kwiatkowska FBCS, University of Oxford
Lovelace Education
- Professor Tom Crick MBE FLSW FAcSS FBCS, Swansea University & DCMS (Chair)
- Julia Adamson MBE CITP FBCS, Managing Director, BCS Education & Public Benefit
- Claire Arbery, Weston College
- Professor Anthony G Cohn FREng, FLSW, CEng, CITP, FAAAI, FEurAI, FAISB, FAAIA, FAIIA, FIET, FBCS, University of Leeds
- Pete Dring, Fulford School
- Professor Alan Hayes CITP FBCS, University of Bath
- Dr Fiona McNeill FBCS, University of Edinburgh
Nominations should be written for a general computing audience and submitted online.
Entries need to include the following:
- full name and contact details for both nominator and nominee
- a short citation to briefly describe what the nominee should be awarded for
- Concise information on the nominee’s contributions, impact and exceptionality
- Link to a biography or LinkedIn profile of the nominee
- Name and email address of someone who will endorse your nomination.
Endorsers will be asked to confirm their endorsement and provide a short statement of support.
All nominators and endorsers are asked to confirm that to the best of their knowledge there is no impediment, relating to professional conduct, to their nominee receiving this prize.
Guide to nominating
Our guidance for nominators has advice on making a good quality nomination. Offline copies of the nomination form are available for download, to assist with preparing your nomination.
When you are ready to make your nomination, you can copy and paste the information from your offline copy to the online nomination form.
Prepare Lovelace Education nomination
Prepare Lovelace Research nomination
Thank you for helping us to highlight and appreciate extraordinary people and their exceptional contributions to computing.
Previous winners
View the previous winners of the medal below.
2024
Aggelos Kiayias – for transformative contributions to the theory and practice of cyber security and cryptography.
Philippa Gardner – for contributions to mechanised language specification and scalable software verification and true bug detection.
Sue Sentance – for exceptional contributions and research in computing education.
Read more
2023
Tom Crick – for contributions to computer science education across research, policy and practice.
Demis Hassabis – for extraordinary contribution to artificial intelligence and to the UK technology industry.
Jane Hillston – for work developing new approaches to modelling both artificial and natural systems by combining elements of formal languages with mathematical modelling.
2020
Ian Horrocks – for significant contributions to the advancements of reasoning systems. Read more
Nick Jennings and Michael Wooldridge – for contributions to multi-agent systems. Read more
2019
Marta Kwiatkowska – for probabilistic model checking for the data-rich world. Read more
2018
Gordon Plotkin – for contributions to semantic framework for programming languages. Read more
2017
Georg Gottlob – for contributions to the logical and theoretical foundations of databases. Read more
2016
Andrew Blake – for contributions to the understanding and advancement of computing as a discipline.
2015
Ross Anderson – for contributions to building security engineering into a discipline. Read more
2014
Steve Furber – for designing the ARM microprocessor architecture and contributions to computer systems. Find out more
2013
Samson Abramsky – for contributions to domain theory, game semantics and categorical quantum mechanics
2012
Grady Booch – for contributions to software architecture, software engineering and collaborative environments. Read more
2011
Hermann Hauser– for entrepreneurship and for co-developing the BBC Micro Computer.
2010
John C. Reynolds – for contributions to logical foundations of programs and programming languages.
2009
Yorick Wilks – for contributions to meaning-based understanding of natural language
2008
Tony Storey – for contributions to Autonomic Computing
2007
Karen Spärck Jones – for contributions to natural language processing. Read more
2006
Sir Tim Berners-Lee – for inventing the World Wide Web.
2005
Nick McKeown – for contributions to router hardware design.
2004
John Warnock of Adobe Systems – for contributions in document processing.
2002
Ian Foster and Carl Kesselman – for contributions to grid computing.
2001
Douglas C. Engelbart – for inventing the computer mouse.
2000
Linus Torvalds – for creating the Linux kernel operating system. Read more
1998
Michael A. Jackson and Chris Burton – for program design and structured programming.
About Ada Lovelace
Augusta Ada King-Noel, Countess of Lovelace (1815-1852), was an extraordinary mathematician, scientist, and writer, whose legacy had a great impact on the world of computing. She is best known for her work on Charles Babbage's proposed mechanical general-purpose computer, the Analytical Engine.
Ada Lovelace’s work really was ahead of her time. She’s often credited with writing the world's first computer program, as she developed an algorithm for the Analytical Engine that envisioned the potential of these machines to perform tasks beyond just calculation, even though the machine was never actually built during her lifetime. Her contributions to the field and her recognition of the potential for computers to go beyond basic calculations, have rightfully earned her a place in history as a revolutionary figure in computer science.
