Who receives the award?

The award was established in memory of Professor Roger Needham (1935-2003) and is made annually for a distinguished research contribution in computer science by a UK based researcher who has completed up to 10 years of post-doctoral research.

Read about the review of BCS Awards

(Delayed) 2021 Roger Needham Lecture

Title to be announced

Winner of the 2020 Roger Needham Award, Professor Jade Alglave from Arm, will be speaking at the delayed 2021 Roger Needham lecture.

Date and venue: To be arranged

2020 Roger Needham winner

The winner of the 2019 Roger Needham Award was Professor Cristian Cadar from Imperial College London. The Award was made in recognition of his outstanding work in the field of Software Reliability.

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About Roger Needham

Roger Needham pioneered the technique of protecting passwords using a one-way hash function. Among his theoretical contributions is the development of the Burrows-Abadi-Needham (BAN) logic. The Needham-Schroeder security protocol forms the basis of the Kerberos authentication and key-exchange system, and he also co-designed the TEA and XTEA encryption algorithms.

Professor Needham joined Cambridge's Computer Laboratory (then called the Mathematical Laboratory) in 1962, becoming its head in 1980. He was made a professor in 1981 and remained with the laboratory until his retirement in 1995.

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