ACM SIGACT - Gödel Prize (original) (raw)

The 2025 Gödel Prize has been awarded to Eshan Chattopadhyay and David Zuckerman.

Nominations are closed for 2025; watch this space for nominations for 2026.

About the Prize

The Gödel Prize for outstanding papers in the area of theoretical computer science is sponsored jointly by the European Association for Theoretical Computer Science (EATCS) and the Special Interest Group on Algorithms and Computation Theory of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM SIGACT). This award is presented annually, with the presentation taking place alternately at the EATCS International Colloquium on Automata, Languages, and Programming (ICALP) and the ACM Symposium on Theory of Computing (STOC). The 32nd Gödel Prize was awarded at the 51st International Colloquium on Automata, Languages and Programming (ICALP) in Tallinn, Estonia, July 8-12, 2024.

The Prize is named in honor of Kurt Gödel in recognition of his major contributions to mathematical logic and of his interest, discovered in a letter he wrote to John von Neumann shortly before von Neumann’s death, in what has become the famous “P versus NP” question. The Prize includes an award of USD 5,000.

Award Committee

The 2025 Award Committee consists of Mikołaj Bojańczyk (University of Warsaw), Artur Czumaj (University of Warwick), Yuval Ishai (Technion), Anna Karlin (University of Washington), Marta Kwiatkowska (University of Oxford), Tim Roughgarden (chair, Columbia University).

Eligibility, 2025

Eligibility: The 2025 Prize rules are given below and they supersede any different interpretation of the generic rule to be found on websites of both SIGACT and EATCS. Any research paper or series of papers by a single author or by a team of authors is deemed eligible if:

The research work nominated for the award should be in the area of theoretical computer science. Nominations are encouraged from the broadest spectrum of the theoretical computer science community so as to ensure that potential award winning papers are not overlooked. The Award Committee shall have the ultimate authority to decide whether a particular paper is eligible for the Prize.

Nominations, 2025

Nominations for the award should be submitted by email to the Award Committee Chair:tim.roughgarden@gmail.com. Please make sure that the Subject line of all nominations and related messages begin with “Goedel Prize 2025”. To be considered, nominations for the 2025 Prize must be received by April 11, 2025.

A nomination package should include:

  1. A printable copy (or copies) of the journal paper(s) being nominated, together with a complete citation (or citations) thereof.
  2. A statement of the date(s) and venue(s) of the first conference or workshop publication(s) of the nominated work(s) or a statement that no such publication has occurred.
  3. A brief summary of the technical content of the paper(s) and a brief explanation of its significance.
  4. A support letter or letters signed by at least two members of the scientific community.

Additional support letters may also be received and are generally useful. The nominated paper(s) may be in any language. However, if a nominated publication is not in English, the nomination package must include an extended summary written in English.

Those intending to submit a nomination should contact the Award Committee Chair by email well in advance. The Chair will answer questions about eligibility, encourage coordination among different nominators for the same paper(s), and also accept informal proposals of potential nominees or tentative offers to prepare formal nominations. The committee maintains a database of past nominations for eligible papers, but fresh nominations for the same papers (especially if they highlight new evidence of impact) are always welcome.

Selection Process, 2025

The Award Committee is free to use any other sources of information in addition to the ones mentioned above. It may split the award among multiple papers, or declare no winner at all. All matters relating to the selection process left unspecified in this document are left to the discretion of the Award Committee.

Winners