Discover Excellence in Innovation, Artistry, and Community with the ACM SIGGRAPH Awards Program

The ACM SIGGRAPH Awards Program celebrates the pioneers, innovators, and visionaries in research, the arts, community service, computer graphics and interactive techniques. From groundbreaking technical achievements to transformative artistic contributions, these prestigious awards recognize individuals and teams shaping the future of our industry.

Why the ACM SIGGRAPH Awards Matter

  • We Celebrate Excellence: Honoring lifetime achievements, revolutionary research, and emerging talents that drive the industry forward.
  • We Inspire Innovation: Recognizing contributions that push the boundaries of technology and creativity.
  • We Build Community: Highlighting those who foster collaboration, mentorship, and leadership within the ACM SIGGRAPH community.

Award Categories

Whether it’s honoring a career of innovation with the Steven Anson Coons Award, celebrating early-career breakthroughs with the Significant New Researcher Award, or spotlighting groundbreaking digital artistry through the Distinguished Artist Award for Lifetime Achievement in Digital Art.  The ACM SIGGRAPH Awards Program spans every facet of the field and service to the community.

Join us at the annual SIGGRAPH conference to celebrate the recognition of brilliance in our community. Be inspired by the achievements of our peers and the future they’re shaping.

Nominate Today: Help us recognize the exceptional contributions of individuals in our field. Nominate a peer, mentor, or colleague who deserves to be celebrated.  All the ACM SIGGRAPH Awards will be acknowledged at SIGGRAPH 2025.

To nominate ACM SIGGRAPH members for various awards, the following steps outline the nomination process:

  1. Understand the Awards: ACM SIGGRAPH presents multiple awards, including the Steven Anson Coons Award, Computer Graphics Achievement Award, Distinguished Artist Award for Lifetime Achievement, and others. Each award has specific eligibility criteria and focus areas.
  2. Eligibility and Guidelines:
    • Review the specific award’s guidelines for nominee eligibility, evaluation criteria, and required documentation.
    • Ensure the nominee meets all eligibility criteria, such as their contributions to computer graphics or digital art.
  3. Prepare the Nomination:
    • Include a detailed nomination letter explaining the nominee’s achievements and why they deserve the award.
    • Collect supporting materials, such as a CV, list of publications or works, and letters of support from colleagues or peers.
  4. Submission Process:
    • Follow the official nomination process outlined on the ACM SIGGRAPH Awards page.
    • Submit the nomination package by the deadline. Ensure all required documents are complete and in the specified format.
  5. Award Committee Review:
    • The award committees evaluate nominations based on the set criteria.
    • Be prepared to provide additional information if requested by the committee.
  6. Timelines and Deadlines:
    • Adhere to the announced timelines for nomination submission, as late submissions might not be considered.

For specifics on the nomination process or detailed forms, visit the ACM SIGGRAPH official awards page or contact their awards committee directly. If you’re managing the submission for a particular award or want further tailored advice, please ask and share details.

Visit ACM SIGGRAPH Awards to learn more and submit nominations. Together, let’s celebrate the best of computer graphics!

Data Feminism in Action

Data Feminism in Action

Women of SIGGRAPH Conversations (WOSC) presents a conversation with Catherine D’Ignazio, author of “Data Feminism.”

Catherine D’Ignazio is an Associate Professor of Urban Science and Planning in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning at MIT. She is also Director of the Data + Feminism Lab which uses data and computational methods to work towards gender and racial justice. D’Ignazio is a scholar, artist/designer and hacker mama who focuses on feminist technology, data literacy and civic engagement. She has run reproductive justice hackathons, designed global news recommendation systems, created talking and tweeting water quality sculptures, and led walking data visualizations to envision the future of sea level rise. With Rahul Bhargava, she built the platform Databasic.io, a suite of tools and activities to introduce newcomers to data science. Her 2020 book from MIT Press, Data Feminism, co-authored with Lauren Klein, charts a course for more ethical and empowering data science practices.

This talk will explore examples of data feminism in action, particularly as they relate to data visualization and technology design. In a grounded case study of co-designed technology, she will show how ethical principles can help us orient ourselves, but they cannot anticipate all the messiness and friction that inevitably arise in a design process.

Join WOSC at 11am on October 24th PST.

Volunteer Development Committee Chair Named

Mashhuda Glencross has been named as the Volunteer Development Committee Chair.  Dr Glencross research interests are in computer graphics, human computer interaction and the application of these areas to real industry problems.  She is the director for teaching and learning in the school of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the University of Queensland where she leads Graphics and Visualisation research with a focus on its application to safety in severe weather events. With a background in industry focused research,  her work in computer graphics has been supported through industry contracts and research council funding. Dr. Glencross’s work has had commercial impacts across computer games, visual effects, displays, mobile phones and image-based capture technologies.

As chair of the Volunteer Development Committee at ACM SIGGRAPH, she is excited to bring her previous experience in the organization to help develop our future leaders. ACM SIGGRAPH is a global organization that is underpinned by its strong volunteer base, without whom our year long activities and conferences would not be possible. Her vision is to develop mentorship schemes to move this community of volunteers to key contributors of technical, art, and interactive techniques, content to both our annual conferences. Dr. Mashhuda Glencross said, “I’m keen to work with the Professional and Student Chapters Committee and the Student Volunteers program to help develop strong volunteer development and mentorship programs that pair up key volunteers in our organization with academic and/or practitioner volunteers.”  Her objective is for our student volunteers, chapter volunteers and conference volunteers that take part in our conferences to become lifelong contributors to year long events, become our future content contributors and our future leaders. She said, “I’m seeking support from our community of experts internationally and from members of SIGGRAPH Academy to take part in these development programs to help make this happen.”

If you are interested in participating in the program, please contact Mashhuda at volunteer-development-chair@siggraph.org.

Call for Candidates for the 2025 ACM SIGGRAPH Outstanding Service Award

The Outstanding Service Award is presented annually to recognize a career of outstanding service to ACM SIGGRAPH by a volunteer. It recognizes an individual who has given extraordinary service to ACM SIGGRAPH, both in the trenches and in positions of more responsibility or visibility, over a significant period of time. The award includes a lifetime Pioneers membership in ACM SIGGRAPH.

For more information about the Award and the list of past winners, go to https://www.siggraph.org/awards/outstanding-service-award/.

If you are interested in submitting a candidate please contact the Chair of the Outstanding Service Award Committee, Scott Owen, at owen@siggraph.org. The deadline is January 31, 2025.

Announcing 2024-2025 ACM SIGGRAPH Officers

The ACM SIGGRAPH Officer Selection Advisory Group (OSAG) provided their recommendations to the Executive Committee and the following directors were elected to serve as Chair and Treasurer–elect for 2024-2025. Their term as Chair and Treasurer will commence 1 September 2025.

  • EC Chair-Elect: Darin Grant
  • Treasurer-Elect: David Spoelstra

Introducing the 2024 – 2023 ACM SIGGRAPH Officers

 ACM SIGGRAPH would like to thank Mona Kasra and David Spoelstra for serving as the Chair and Treasurer for 2023 – 2024. Their leadership and guidance was invaluable.

Chair – Eakta Jain, Ph.D., is an associate professor in the Department of Computer & Information Science & Engineering at the University of Florida. Dr. Jain is interested in the safety, privacy and security of data gathered for user modeling, particularly eye tracking data. She is advancing the EC Chair role in her third year on the EC.  We look forward to her leadership in the governance of ACM SIGGRAPH.

Chair – elect – Darin Grant was elected by the EC to serve as Chair-Elect in the upcoming year. Darin’s wealth of experience and expertise as CTO of Animal Logic makes him an excellent addition to the EC.  We look forward to the contributions Darin will make as his role on the EC and as Chair-Elect.

Treasurer – Brad Lawrence is the Imagery Engineering Lead at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. He began his career in the Navy and went on to various Engineering duties for ITT and Texas Instruments before joining the Space Shuttle team in 1985. Brad was ACM SIGGRAPH Treasurer from 2018-2020 and was re-elected Treasurer in 2022, so he brings a wealth of experience to this position.  We welcome his continued leadership in this area.

Treasurer – elect – David Spoelstrahas served in executive and senior engineering management roles responsible for multi-million-dollar budgets at both startups and Fortune 500 companies for the last 20 years. David got his start at SIGGRAPH as an early employee of Truevision. David was Treasurer last year, and has been reappointed to Treasurer-Elect.

ACM SIGGRAPH is a volunteer-run organization that hosts a set of conferences and year-round activities for its members. More than a thousand volunteers help create vibrant conferences and an effective organization each year.