SIGMETRICS Awards

ACM SIGMETRICS sponsors three major awards to recognize important contributions in the area of performance evaluation.


The SIGMETRICS Achievement Award

The ACM SIGMETRICS Achievement Award is given by the ACM Special Interest Group on Measurement and Evaluation (SIGMETRICS) to an individual who has made long-lasting, influential contributions to the theory or practice of computer/communication system performance evaluation. These contributions may include one or more of the following: theoretical advances that have influenced the techniques used to evaluate system performance; pragmatic techniques or software tools that have been applied widely to the evaluation of system performance; innovative applications of performance evaluation techniques that have had impact on the design of computer/communication systems.

In selecting the achievement award recipient, the Awards Committee will place particular emphasis on seminal contributions and a sustained record of high-impact in the field. The award includes a plaque and a $2000 award, as well as expenses for travel to the ACM SIGMETRICS annual conference, where the award is presented. The recipient is also invited to give a technical talk at the conference.

An Awards Committee consisting of five individuals appointed by the SIGMETRICS Executive Committee selects the SIGMETRICS Achievement Award recipient.

Past winners

2011: Dr. Onno J. Boxma (press release)
2010: Dr. Jeffrey P. Buzen (press release)
2009: Dr. Frank Kelly (press release)
2008: Dr. Erol Gelenbe (press release)
2007: Dr. Don F. Towsley (press release)
2006: Dr. Richard R. Muntz (press release)
2005: Dr. Stephen S. Lavenberg (press release)
2004: Dr. Ken C. Sevcik (press release)
2003: Dr. Ed G. Coffman (press release)


The SIGMETRICS Rising Star Researcher Award

The ACM SIGMETRICS Rising Star Researcher Award is given annually to recognize a rising star in our community who demonstrates outstanding potential for research in the field of computer and communication performance. The selection is based on the impact of the candidate's work in the field in creating promising new ideas, paradigms, and tools, related to the performance analysis of computer and communication systems, which may be analytical or empirical in nature. Depth and impact are valued over breadth of contribution for this award.

The recipient of the ACM SIGMETRICS Rising Star Researcher award is selected by a committee consisting of five individuals appointed by the SIGMETRICS Executive Committee.

The award includes a plaque and travel expenses to attend the conference where the award is presented.

2011 Call for Nominations [pdf]

The 2011 ACM SIGMETRICS Rising Star Researcher Award will be presented at the SIGMETRICS 2011 conference, June 7-11, 2011, in San Jose, USA.

The membership of the Awards Committee for 2011 is: Peter Key (chair), Jean Bolot, Devavrat Shah, Prashant Shenoy, Milan Vojnovic, Jean Walrand.

Please submit all nominations by April 22, 2011 to Peter Key at this email address: peter.key @ microsoft.com

Nominations for the award must include:

  1. A two-page statement summarizing the candidate's research accomplishments.
  2. A description of the significance of the work and justification of the nomination (2 pages maximum).
  3. Curriculum vitae of the nominee, including publications.
  4. Three endorsement letters from researchers in the field supporting the nomination. At least one of the three endorsers must be an ACM SIGMETRICS member.
  5. Copies of at least one and not more than three of the most significant papers or other documents that form the basis of the nomination.
  6. A concise statement (one sentence) of the achievement(s) for which the award is being given.

Rules for Nomination:

  1. The nominator must be a SIGMETRICS member
  2. The nominee must be within 7 years of having attained their PhD.
  3. The nominee cannot be any of the following:
    a. the nominator,
    b. a member of the Sigmetrics Executive Committee,
    c. a member of the Rising Star Researcher Award Committee.
  4. Nominations that do not result in an award can be resubmitted in subsequent years.

Please include Rising Star in the subject header. It is preferable to have the nominator collect all materials and send them in a single e-mail.

Questions should be sent to the committee chair, Peter Key, at
peter.key @ microsoft.com.

Past Winners

2011: Dr. Adam Wierman (press release)
2010: Dr. Milan Vojnovic (press release)
2009: Dr. Alexandre Proutiere (press release)
2008: Dr. Devavrat Shah (press release)


The SIGMETRICS Test of Time Award

The ACM SIGMETRICS Test of Time Award recognizes an influential performance evaluation paper whose impact is still felt 10-12 years after its initial publication.

Past Winners

The inaugural Test of Time awards in June 2010 honoured three papers from the first 30 years of ACM SIGMETRICS conferences:

Jeffrey P. Buzen. "Fundamental Laws of Computer System Performance". In Proceedings of ACM SIGMETRICS 1976.
This paper laid the groundwork for operational analysis.

Derek Eager, Ed Lazowska, and John Zahorjan. "A Comparison of Receiver-initiated and Sender-initiated Adaptive Load Sharing". In Proceedings of ACM SIGMETRICS 1985.
This paper provided fundamental results for practical load balancing strategies across a large number of servers in a distributed system.

Mark E. Crovella and Azer Bestavros. "Self-similarity in World Wide Web Traffic: Evidence and Possible Causes". In Proceedings of ACM SIGMETRICS 1996.
This paper explained the impact of the distribution of WWW document sizes on the buildup of self-similar traffic in the Internet.

At ACM SIGMETRICS 2011, there were two co-winners of the Test of Time award:

Yang-hua Chu, Sanjay Rao, and Hui Zhang. "A Case for End System Multicast". In Proceedings of ACM SIGMETRICS 2000.
This paper demonstrated that multicast functionality could be provided at end systems using an overlay network, with only modest performance penalties.

Lixin Gao and Jennifer Rexford. "Stable Internet Routing without Global Coordination". In Proceedings of ACM SIGMETRICS 2000.
This paper provided a formal analysis of BGP routing policies, and showed how to ensure convergence to stable Internet routes without requiring routers to divulge their BGP configurations.

Quick Links

Conferences

  • SIGMETRICS is the flagship conference of the SIGMETRICS community.
  • Performance is the flagship conference of IFIP WG 7.3 and occurs jointly with SIGMETRICS once every three years.
  • IMC is at the intersection between SIGCOMM and SIGMETRICS, focusing on Internet measurement.
  • SenSys focuses on the design, implementation, and application of sensor networks.
  • HotMetrics is an interactive workshop that seeks to identify the "important" and "hard" problems in performance evaluation.
  • MAMA is a high profile workshop that focuses on mathematical performance modeling tools.
  • ValueTools bridges the study of performance methodologies and the development of tools for performance evaluation.
  • ICPE (formerly WOSP) focuses on the intersection of software design and performance evaluation.

Recent News

Publications

  • Performance Evaluation Review (PER) is the SIGMETRICS quarterly review. PER is a refereed publication that features guest edited special issues from leading researchers in the field.
  • Other SIGMETRICS publications
    The ACM Digital library provides a convenient archive of all SIGMETRICS publications, including PER and conference proceedings.