{"id":902,"date":"2021-05-24T13:40:55","date_gmt":"2021-05-24T13:40:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sigai.acm.org\/dev\/?page_id=902"},"modified":"2026-01-15T02:16:58","modified_gmt":"2026-01-15T02:16:58","slug":"joint-aaai-acm-sigai-doctoral-dissertation-award","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/sigai.acm.org\/main\/joint-aaai-acm-sigai-doctoral-dissertation-award\/","title":{"rendered":"Joint AAAI\/ACM SIGAI Doctoral Dissertation Award"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Nomination details here<\/strong>: https:\/\/aaai.org\/about-aaai\/aaai-awards\/aaai-acm-sigai-doctoral-dissertation-award\/aaai-acm-sigai-doctoral-dissertation-award-call\/<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Winner of 2025 AAAI\/ACM SIGAI Joint Dissertation Award<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

ACM SIGAI and AAAI are pleased to announce the winner of the 2025 AAAI\/ACM SIGAI Dissertation Award: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The award goes to Noah Golowich <\/strong>(Ph.D. from Massachusetts Institute of Technology) for the dissertation titled \u201cTheoretical Foundations for Learning in Games and Dynamic Environments\u201d, and Akari Asai<\/strong> (Ph.D. from University of Washington) for the dissertation titled \u201cBeyond Scaling: Frontiers of Retrieval-Augmented Language Models\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The committee also awards the following Honorable Mentions:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sarah Alyami <\/strong>(Ph.D. from King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals; Current Affiliation: Imam Abdulrahman Bin Faisal University) for the dissertation titled \u201cContinuous Sign Language Recognition: Dataset Development and Novel Frameworks\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thom Badings <\/strong>(Ph.D. from Radboud University) for the dissertation titled \u201cRobust Verification of Stochastic Systems: Guarantees in the Presence of Uncertainty\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Brian Hu Zhang <\/strong>(Ph.D. from Carnegie Mellon University) for the dissertation titled \u201cNew Solution Concepts and Algorithms for Equilibrium Computation and Learning in Extensive-Form Games and Beyond\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Winner of 2024 AAAI\/ACM SIGAI Joint Dissertation Award<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

ACM SIGAI and AAAI are pleased to announce the winner of the 2024 AAAI\/ACM SIGAI Dissertation Award: The award goes to Shunyu Yao<\/strong> (Ph.D. from Princeton University), whose dissertation \u201cLanguage Agents: From Next-Token Prediction to Digital Automation\u201d is recognized for foundational contributions to the study and design of autonomous intelligent agents incorporating large language models.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The committee also awards Honorable Mentions to Frederik Kunstner<\/strong> (Ph.D. from the University of British Columbia), and Sewon Min<\/strong> (Ph.D. from the University of Washington)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Frederik Kunstner\u2019s dissertation \u201cWhy Do Machine Learning Optimizers That Work, Work?\u201d is recognized for resolving a long-standing open question on the complexity of EM, one of the most widely used AI algorithms, and for theoretical explanations of the behavior of popular neural network optimization routines..<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sewon Min\u2019s dissertation \u201cRethinking Data Use in Large Language Models\u201d is recognized for pioneering work on the science and engineering of language models, including better understanding in-context learning and designing nonparametric models for improved retrieval capabilities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Winner of 2023 AAAI\/ACM SIGAI Joint Dissertation Award<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

ACM SIGAI and AAAI are pleased to announce the winners of the 2023 AAAI\/ACM SIGAI Dissertation Award: The award is shared by Gabriele Farina<\/strong> (Ph.D. from Carnegie Mellon University) and Jonathan Frankle<\/strong> (Ph.D. from Massachusetts Institute of Technology).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gabriele Farina\u2019s dissertation \u201cGame-Theoretic Decision Making in Imperfect-Information Games\u201d is recognized for fundamental contributions, in both theory and practice, to learning and equilibrium computation in imperfect-information games.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jonathan Frankle\u2019s dissertation \u201cThe Lottery Ticket Hypothesis: On Sparse, Trainable Neural Networks\u201d is recognized for significantly advancing our understanding of neural network sparsity, pruning, and training dynamics, including the formulation of the lottery ticket hypothesis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The committee also awards an Honorable Mention to Ulrike Schmidt-Kraepelin<\/strong> (Ph.D. from Technische Universit\u00e4t Berlin), whose dissertation \u201cModels and Algorithms for Scalable Collective Decision Making\u201d is recognized for significant contributions to problems of scaling in computational social choice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Winner of 2022 AAAI\/ACM SIGAI Joint Dissertation Award<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

ACM SIGAI and AAAI are pleased to announce the winners of the 2022 AAAI\/ACM SIGAI Dissertation Award: The award is shared by Alane Suhr<\/strong> (Ph.D. from Cornell University) and Erik Wijmans<\/strong> (Ph.D. from Georgia Tech).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Alane Suhr’s dissertation “Reasoning and Learning in Interactive Natural Language Systems\u201d is recognized for developing foundational algorithms for continual natural language learning through interaction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Erik Wijmans\u2019 dissertation \u201cEmergence of Intelligent Navigation Behavior in Embodied Agents from Massive-Scale Simulation\u201d is recognized for pioneering advances in reinforcement learning for robotics from ultra-large scale simulations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Winner of 2021 AAAI\/ACM SIGAI Joint Dissertation Award<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

ACM SIGAI and AAAI are pleased to announce the winner of the 2021 AAAI\/ACM SIGAI Dissertation Award is Shibani Santurkar<\/strong> (MIT thesis, currently at Stanford) for her work entitled “Machine Learning Beyond Accuracy: A Features Perspective On Model Generalization”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Honorable mention: Bryan Wilder<\/strong> (Harvard thesis, currently at CMU) for his work entitled \u201cAI for Population Health: Melding Data and Algorithms on Networks\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Winner of 2020 ACM SIGAI Dissertation Award<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

ACM SIGAI and AAAI are pleased to announce the winner of the 2020 AAAI\/ACM SIGAI Dissertation Award is David Abel<\/strong>, of Brown University for his work entitled A Theory of Abstraction in Reinforcement Learning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Runner-Up: Abhishek Das<\/strong><\/strong>, Georgia Institute of Technology for his work entitled Building Agents that Can See, Talk, and Act<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Winner of 2019 ACM SIGAI Dissertation Award<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

ACM SIGAI and AAAI are pleased to announce the winner of the 2019 AAAI\/ACM SIGAI Dissertation Award is Jiajun Wu<\/strong>, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, for his work entitled Learning to See the Physical World.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Two runners-Up were also honored: Aishwarya Agrawal<\/strong> of the Georgia Institute of Technology for Visual Question Answering and Beyond, and Li Dong<\/strong> of the University of Edinburgh for Learning Natural Language Interfaces with Neural Models. All winners will be honored during AAAI-21.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

AAAI and ACM SIGAI are excited to announce that we have established the Joint AAAI\/ACM SIGAI Doctoral Dissertation Award to recognize and encourage superior research and writing by doctoral candidates in artificial intelligence. The award will be presented annually at the AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence, and the winner will be invited to present a talk at the conference.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"off","_et_pb_old_content":"\n

Nomination details here<\/strong>: https:\/\/aaai.org\/about-aaai\/aaai-awards\/aaai-acm-sigai-doctoral-dissertation-award\/aaai-acm-sigai-doctoral-dissertation-award-call\/<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Winner of 2025 AAAI\/ACM SIGAI Joint Dissertation Award<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

ACM SIGAI and AAAI are pleased to announce the winner of the 2025 AAAI\/ACM SIGAI Dissertation Award: The award goes to Noah Golowich <\/strong>(Ph.D. from Massachusetts Institute of Technology) for the dissertation titled \u201cTheoretical Foundations for Learning in Games and Dynamic Environments\u201d, and Akari Asai<\/strong> (Ph.D. from University of Washington) for the dissertation titled \u201cBeyond Scaling: Frontiers of Retrieval-Augmented Language Models\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The committee also awards the following Honorable Mentions:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sarah Alyami <\/strong>(Ph.D. from King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals) for the dissertation titled \u201cContinuous Sign Language Recognition: Dataset Development and Novel Frameworks\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thom Badings <\/strong>(Ph.D. from Radboud University) for the dissertation titled \u201cRobust Verification of Stochastic Systems: Guarantees in the Presence of Uncertainty\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Brian Hu Zhang <\/strong>(Ph.D. from Carnegie Mellon University) for the dissertation titled \u201cNew Solution Concepts and Algorithms for Equilibrium Computation and Learning in Extensive-Form Games and Beyond\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Winner of 2024 AAAI\/ACM SIGAI Joint Dissertation Award<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

ACM SIGAI and AAAI are pleased to announce the winner of the 2024 AAAI\/ACM SIGAI Dissertation Award: The award goes to Shunyu Yao<\/strong> (Ph.D. from Princeton University), whose dissertation \u201cLanguage Agents: From Next-Token Prediction to Digital Automation\u201d is recognized for foundational contributions to the study and design of autonomous intelligent agents incorporating large language models.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The committee also awards Honorable Mentions to Frederik Kunstner<\/strong> (Ph.D. from the University of British Columbia), and Sewon Min<\/strong> (Ph.D. from the University of Washington)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Frederik Kunstner\u2019s dissertation \u201cWhy Do Machine Learning Optimizers That Work, Work?\u201d is recognized for resolving a long-standing open question on the complexity of EM, one of the most widely used AI algorithms, and for theoretical explanations of the behavior of popular neural network optimization routines..<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sewon Min\u2019s dissertation \u201cRethinking Data Use in Large Language Models\u201d is recognized for pioneering work on the science and engineering of language models, including better understanding in-context learning and designing nonparametric models for improved retrieval capabilities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Winner of 2023 AAAI\/ACM SIGAI Joint Dissertation Award<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

ACM SIGAI and AAAI are pleased to announce the winners of the 2023 AAAI\/ACM SIGAI Dissertation Award: The award is shared by Gabriele Farina<\/strong> (Ph.D. from Carnegie Mellon University) and Jonathan Frankle<\/strong> (Ph.D. from Massachusetts Institute of Technology).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gabriele Farina\u2019s dissertation \u201cGame-Theoretic Decision Making in Imperfect-Information Games\u201d is recognized for fundamental contributions, in both theory and practice, to learning and equilibrium computation in imperfect-information games.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jonathan Frankle\u2019s dissertation \u201cThe Lottery Ticket Hypothesis: On Sparse, Trainable Neural Networks\u201d is recognized for significantly advancing our understanding of neural network sparsity, pruning, and training dynamics, including the formulation of the lottery ticket hypothesis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The committee also awards an Honorable Mention to Ulrike Schmidt-Kraepelin<\/strong> (Ph.D. from Technische Universit\u00e4t Berlin), whose dissertation \u201cModels and Algorithms for Scalable Collective Decision Making\u201d is recognized for significant contributions to problems of scaling in computational social choice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Winner of 2022 AAAI\/ACM SIGAI Joint Dissertation Award<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

ACM SIGAI and AAAI are pleased to announce the winners of the 2022 AAAI\/ACM SIGAI Dissertation Award: The award is shared by Alane Suhr<\/strong> (Ph.D. from Cornell University) and Erik Wijmans<\/strong> (Ph.D. from Georgia Tech).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Alane Suhr's dissertation \"Reasoning and Learning in Interactive Natural Language Systems\u201d is recognized for developing foundational algorithms for continual natural language learning through interaction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Erik Wijmans\u2019 dissertation \u201cEmergence of Intelligent Navigation Behavior in Embodied Agents from Massive-Scale Simulation\u201d is recognized for pioneering advances in reinforcement learning for robotics from ultra-large scale simulations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Winner of 2021 AAAI\/ACM SIGAI Joint Dissertation Award<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

ACM SIGAI and AAAI are pleased to announce the winner of the 2021 AAAI\/ACM SIGAI Dissertation Award is Shibani Santurkar<\/strong> (MIT thesis, currently at Stanford) for her work entitled \"Machine Learning Beyond Accuracy: A Features Perspective On Model Generalization\".<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Honorable mention: Bryan Wilder<\/strong> (Harvard thesis, currently at CMU) for his work entitled \u201cAI for Population Health: Melding Data and Algorithms on Networks\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Winner of 2020 ACM SIGAI Dissertation Award<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

ACM SIGAI and AAAI are pleased to announce the winner of the 2020 AAAI\/ACM SIGAI Dissertation Award is David Abel<\/strong>, of Brown University for his work entitled A Theory of Abstraction in Reinforcement Learning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Runner-Up: Abhishek Das<\/strong><\/strong>, Georgia Institute of Technology for his work entitled Building Agents that Can See, Talk, and Act<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Winner of 2019 ACM SIGAI Dissertation Award<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

ACM SIGAI and AAAI are pleased to announce the winner of the 2019 AAAI\/ACM SIGAI Dissertation Award is Jiajun Wu<\/strong>, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, for his work entitled Learning to See the Physical World.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Two runners-Up were also honored: Aishwarya Agrawal<\/strong> of the Georgia Institute of Technology for Visual Question Answering and Beyond, and Li Dong<\/strong> of the University of Edinburgh for Learning Natural Language Interfaces with Neural Models. All winners will be honored during AAAI-21.<\/p>\n","_et_gb_content_width":"1080","inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"yoast_head":"\nJoint AAAI\/ACM SIGAI Doctoral Dissertation Award - ACM SIGAI<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/sigai.acm.org\/main\/joint-aaai-acm-sigai-doctoral-dissertation-award\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Joint AAAI\/ACM SIGAI Doctoral Dissertation Award - ACM SIGAI\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"AAAI and ACM SIGAI are excited to announce that we have established the Joint AAAI\/ACM SIGAI Doctoral Dissertation Award to recognize and encourage superior research and writing by doctoral candidates in artificial intelligence. The award will be presented annually at the AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence, and the winner will be invited to present a talk at the conference.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/sigai.acm.org\/main\/joint-aaai-acm-sigai-doctoral-dissertation-award\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"ACM SIGAI\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2026-01-15T02:16:58+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"4 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/sigai.acm.org\/main\/joint-aaai-acm-sigai-doctoral-dissertation-award\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/sigai.acm.org\/main\/joint-aaai-acm-sigai-doctoral-dissertation-award\/\",\"name\":\"Joint AAAI\/ACM SIGAI Doctoral Dissertation Award - ACM SIGAI\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/sigai.acm.org\/main\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2021-05-24T13:40:55+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2026-01-15T02:16:58+00:00\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/sigai.acm.org\/main\/joint-aaai-acm-sigai-doctoral-dissertation-award\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/sigai.acm.org\/main\/joint-aaai-acm-sigai-doctoral-dissertation-award\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/sigai.acm.org\/main\/joint-aaai-acm-sigai-doctoral-dissertation-award\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/sigai.acm.org\/main\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Joint AAAI\/ACM SIGAI Doctoral Dissertation Award\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/sigai.acm.org\/main\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/sigai.acm.org\/main\/\",\"name\":\"ACM SIGAI\",\"description\":\"ACM Special Interest Group on Artificial Intelligence\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/sigai.acm.org\/main\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":{\"@type\":\"PropertyValueSpecification\",\"valueRequired\":true,\"valueName\":\"search_term_string\"}}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Joint AAAI\/ACM SIGAI Doctoral Dissertation Award - ACM SIGAI","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/sigai.acm.org\/main\/joint-aaai-acm-sigai-doctoral-dissertation-award\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Joint AAAI\/ACM SIGAI Doctoral Dissertation Award - ACM SIGAI","og_description":"AAAI and ACM SIGAI are excited to announce that we have established the Joint AAAI\/ACM SIGAI Doctoral Dissertation Award to recognize and encourage superior research and writing by doctoral candidates in artificial intelligence. The award will be presented annually at the AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence, and the winner will be invited to present a talk at the conference.","og_url":"https:\/\/sigai.acm.org\/main\/joint-aaai-acm-sigai-doctoral-dissertation-award\/","og_site_name":"ACM SIGAI","article_modified_time":"2026-01-15T02:16:58+00:00","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_misc":{"Est. reading time":"4 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/sigai.acm.org\/main\/joint-aaai-acm-sigai-doctoral-dissertation-award\/","url":"https:\/\/sigai.acm.org\/main\/joint-aaai-acm-sigai-doctoral-dissertation-award\/","name":"Joint AAAI\/ACM SIGAI Doctoral Dissertation Award - ACM SIGAI","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/sigai.acm.org\/main\/#website"},"datePublished":"2021-05-24T13:40:55+00:00","dateModified":"2026-01-15T02:16:58+00:00","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/sigai.acm.org\/main\/joint-aaai-acm-sigai-doctoral-dissertation-award\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/sigai.acm.org\/main\/joint-aaai-acm-sigai-doctoral-dissertation-award\/"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/sigai.acm.org\/main\/joint-aaai-acm-sigai-doctoral-dissertation-award\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/sigai.acm.org\/main\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Joint AAAI\/ACM SIGAI Doctoral Dissertation Award"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/sigai.acm.org\/main\/#website","url":"https:\/\/sigai.acm.org\/main\/","name":"ACM SIGAI","description":"ACM Special Interest Group on Artificial Intelligence","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/sigai.acm.org\/main\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sigai.acm.org\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/902"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sigai.acm.org\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sigai.acm.org\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sigai.acm.org\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sigai.acm.org\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=902"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/sigai.acm.org\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/902\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2515,"href":"https:\/\/sigai.acm.org\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/902\/revisions\/2515"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sigai.acm.org\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=902"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}