Lovelace Medal
The Lovelace Medal is awarded for outstanding contribution to the understanding and advancement of computing.
Established in 1998, and administered by the BCS Academy of Computing’s awards committee, the Lovelace Medal is the top award in computing in the UK. Previous winners include worldwide web inventor Sir Tim Berners-Lee, Linux creator Linus Torvalds, and information retrieval pioneer Karen Spärck Jones.
Winners of the Lovelace Medal are asked to present their work at the annual Lovelace Lecture, the following year.
How do I nominate for the Lovelace Medal?
Nominations for the Lovelace Medal are currently closed. Watch out for announcements about next year’s Medal.
Nominations are considered from across the world but it’s expected that the medal is awarded to an academic or industry professional who has a direct connection with the UK.
Typically one medalist is chosen every year, though regulations allow for there to be several medal winners or, indeed, none! Following their nomination, a candidate is automatically considered for three years. Their nominator is invited to update their application for each of these years, and will be given feedback from the Awards Committee if their entry is judged unlikely to succeed.
Please make your nomination in the form of a single Word or PDF file, with the nominee’s name in the file title, and security levels set so that we can copy, print and extract from the document.
Entries need to include the following information:
- full name and contact details for both nominator and nominee
- a description of the candidate’s achievements, provided by the nominator - up to 500 words, in a form accessible to a general computer science audience
- the name and email of three referees who can provide an independent assessment of the nominee’s contribution
- the nominee’s CV - up to four pages
The Awards Committee has responsibility to seek the nominations of individuals - or submissions of work - on an annual, scheduled basis, for such awards.
The committee manages the review and selection processes and all the activities associated with the assignment of the awards to the selected recipients. The current members of the Awards Committee are:
- Prof Anthony G Cohn FREng CEng CITP, University of Leeds, Chair of the Awards Committee
- Prof James Davenport FBCS, University of Bath, Computer Algebra
- Prof Alastair Irons CITP FBCS, BCS Vice-President, Academy & Chair of the BCS Academy of Computing Board, Deputy Principal and Deputy Vice-Chancellor, Abertay University
- Julia Adamson CITP MBCS FRSA, Managing Director, BCS Education and Public Benefit
- Prof Dame Muffy Calder DBE OBE FRSE FREng FBCS, Vice Principal & Head of College of Science & Engineering, University of Glasgow
- Prof Alastair Donaldson, Faculty of Engineering, Department of Computing, Imperial College London
- Prof Katie Atkinson, Chair and Dean of the School of Electrical Engineering, Electronics and Computer Science, University of Liverpool
- Neil White, Altran
- Prof Carron Shankland SFHEA MBCS, Professor of Computing Science, University of Stirling
Submit your nomination
Please send us your nomination, or any questions you may have, by email to awardscommittee@bcs.uk
About Ada Lovelace
Augusta Ada King-Noel, Countess of Lovelace (1815-1852) was the daughter of the poet, Lord Byron, and an accomplished mathematician, scientist and writer.
Today she’s chiefly known for her work on Charles Babbage's proposed mechanical general-purpose computer, the Analytical Engine.
Ada was the first to recognise that the machine had applications beyond pure calculation and created the first algorithm intended to be carried out by such a machine. As a result, she’s regarded by many as the first computer programmer.