SC showcases the best and brightest in HPC. A variety of awards from computing societies and the SC Conference honor important accomplishments in the field, from innovative achievements to work of enduring historical impact.
Awards
Tuesday–Thursday, 17–19 November 2026
Awards Co-ChairJanine C. Bennett, Sandia National Laboratories
Awards Co-ChairDorian C. Arnold, Emory University
Gordon Bell Prize
The ACM Gordon Bell Prize recognizes outstanding achievement in high performance computing. The purpose of the award is to track the progress over time of parallel computing, with particular emphasis on rewarding innovation in applying high performance computing to applications in science, engineering, and large-scale data analytics.
NOMINATIONS CLOSE 15 APR 2026
Nominations Are Open
Gordon Bell Prize for Climate Modelling
The ACM Gordon Bell Prize for Climate Modelling will be awarded every year for ten years beginning in 2023 to recognize the contributions of climate scientists and software engineers. The award aims to recognize innovative parallel computing contributions toward solving the global climate crisis.
Student Research Competition
The ACM Student Research Competition is a national competition involving many ACM-sponsored conferences. Each participating conference runs its own round of the competition, with the winner proceeding to the national competition. Awards are presented to both graduate and undergraduate students at the conference level and the national level.
SUBMISSIONS CLOSE 1 AUG 2026
Submissions Are Open
Outstanding Doctoral Dissertation Award
SIGHPC’s Outstanding Doctoral Dissertation Award is given for the best doctoral dissertation completed in high performance computing. This award is open to students studying anywhere in the world who have completed a PhD dissertation with HPC as a central research theme.
NOMINATIONS CLOSE 26 APR 2026
Nominations Information (Open 15 March 2026)
Fellowships in Computational and Data Science
A five-year program to increase the diversity of students pursuing graduate degrees in data science and computational science, these fellowships specifically target women or students from racial/ethnic backgrounds that have not traditionally participated in the computing field. The program is open to students pursuing degrees at institutions anywhere in the world.
NOMINATIONS CLOSE 30 APR 2026
Nomination Information (Open March 2026)
Emerging Woman Leader in Technical Computing Award
The ACM SIGHPC Emerging Woman Leader in Technical Computing (EWL/TC) is an annual award open to any woman who has engaged in HPC and technical computing research, education, and/or practice for 5–15 years since receiving her highest degree.
NOMINATIONS CLOSE 30 JUN 2026
Nomination Information (Open April 2026)
Educational Award For Outstanding Contribution to Computational Science Education
This award recognizes outstanding contributions to computational, data-enabled science, and HPC education and training in all disciplines. The ACM SIGHPC Education Chapter seeks candidates who have led projects or programs that have made significant contributions to computational science education defined broadly to include all disciplines and all education levels.
NOMINATIONS CLOSE 31 MAY 2026
George Michael Memorial HPC Fellowships
Endowed in memory of George Michael, one of the founding fathers of the SC Conference Series, the ACM IEEE-CS George Michael Memorial HPC Fellowships honor exceptional PhD students throughout the world whose research focus areas are in high performance computing, networking, storage, and large-scale data analysis.
NOMINATIONS CLOSE 1 MAY 2026
Ken Kennedy Award
The ACM/IEEE-CS Ken Kennedy Award recognizes substantial contributions to programmability and productivity in computing and substantial community service or mentoring contributions.
NOMINATIONS CLOSE 20 JUN 2026
Seymour Cray Computer Engineering Award
The IEEE-CS Seymour Cray Computer Engineering Award recognizes innovative contributions to high performance computing systems that best exemplify the creative spirit demonstrated by Seymour Cray. Recipients may be recognized for technologies that have contributed to working machine deployed at scale, which has had long-term impact valued by the HPC community.
Sidney Fernbach Award
The Sidney Fernbach Memorial Award is presented annually to an individual for an outstanding contribution in the application of high-performance computers using innovative approaches.
Award for Excellence for Early Career Researchers in High Performance Computing
The award recognizes up to 3 individuals who have made outstanding, influential, and potentially long-lasting contributions in the field of high-performance computing within 5 years of receiving their PhD degree as of January 1 of the year of the award.
NOMINATIONS CLOSE 14 JUL 2026
Nomination Information (Open Winter 2026)
Test of Time Award
The Test of Time award recognizes a paper from a past SC conference that has deeply influenced the HPC discipline. It is a mark of historical impact, and requires clear evidence that the paper has changed HPC trends.
Learn more about the Test of Time Award, how to make a nomination, and view past awardees.
Best Paper Award
The SC Papers Committee follows a rigorous evaluation process to identify the best paper submitted to the conference’s Technical Program. The selection is made based on a holistic assessment that considers factors such as originality and technical innovation; the potential impact on the relevant field, industry, or society at large; peer review feedback; and the overall quality of both the paper’s content (technical soundness, experimental rigor, clarity, etc.) and its presentation at the conference.
Best Student Paper Award
The SC Papers Committee follows a rigorous evaluation process to identify the best paper submitted to the conference’s Technical Program and for which the lead author is a student. The selection is made based on a holistic assessment that considers factors such as originality and technical innovation; the potential impact on the relevant field, industry, or society at large; peer review feedback; and the overall quality of both the paper’s content (technical soundness, experimental rigor, clarity, etc.) and its presentation at the conference.
Best Research Poster Award
The SC Posters Committee identifies one submission as the best poster based on scientific content, clarity of communication, innovation, significance, impact, and visual appeal.
Best Reproducibility Advancement Award
The SC Best Reproducibility Advancement Award aims to recognize outstanding efforts in improving transparency and reproducibility of methods for high performance computing, storage, networking and analysis. This award will recognize the paper or a research object of a paper that most significantly advances the state of art in transparency and reproducibility. In this context, a research object refers to a collection of computational artifacts that extend beyond the submitted paper, such as software, datasets, environment configuration, mechanized proofs, benchmarks, or test suites with scripts.
Student Cluster Competition Awards
The SCC is an opportunity for students to showcase their expertise in a spirited competition demonstrating the breadth of skills, technologies, and science that it takes to assemble an HPC-style system, port scientific applications to it, and optimize the code for the best possible performance.
The SCC Connect is a competition where students use provided cloud resources to optimize scientific applications and run benchmark tests, highlighting their talents and sharpening skills in cloud technologies.
Two awards are presented, one for the best-performing team in the SCC and one for the best-performing team in SCC Connect.
Contact the Awards committee with questions about the SC or Society Awards. We’d be happy to help.
