I have just heard that my MPhil mini-thesis supervisor, Professor Karen Spärck Jones, of the Computer Laboratory in the University of Cambridge (UK) has been awarded the joint ACM and AAAI Newell Award for her work on natural language processing ACM: Press Release, March 22, 2007.
Congratulations, I am a proud alumnus of the taught masters course she co-founded with the late Professor Frank Fallside, an innovative linkage of computer science and engineering, "Computer Speech and Natural Language Processing", where we did Hidden Markov Models and Neural Networks side-by-side with Prolog and LISP in the late-1980s. I believe that where I now work in the TSSG in Waterford Institute of Technology also captures the creative energy of working where disciplines intermingle, here with telecommunications engineering and Internet technologies.
The notice also mentions that Karen is being given two further awards:
The Athena Lecturer Award, given by the ACM Committee on Women in Computing (ACM-W) recognizes women researchers who have made fundamental contributions to Computer Science [...and...] the Lovelace Medal, presented by the British Computer Society to those who have made significant contributions to advancing and understanding Information Systems.
Well done Karen, you were an inspiration to me and many other students.
UPDATE: 2007-04-26 Karen Spärck Jones, IR Pioneer, Winner of Two ACM Awards Karen Spärck Jones, recently named as the recipient of ACM/AAAI's Allan Newell Award and ACM-W's Athena Lecturer Award, passed away on April 4. As we say in Irish "Ní bheidh a leithid arís ann" - "We will not see her likes again".
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