Award

Paris, April 2024.



Since the early 1990s, in computer science as in many other fields of the exact and experimental sciences, conferences have played a central role in research activities. When we take a close look at what researchers do, we notice that they spend a lot of time double-blindly reviewing papers and software artifacts submitted to conferences in their field (sent in groups of 3, 6 or even 9), submitting or re-submitting their own contributions and, more occasionally, organizing panels. Over the past dozen years, a new evaluation activity has appeared on the scene, further reinforcing the centrality of the conference in the organization of scientific contributions (and in fact devaluing the value of journal article writing): awards for the best papers among those accepted, and for the best theses defended during the past year.
Since 2011, a special jury at ETAPS, a European software science conference founded in 1998, has been rewarding the contributions it considers the “best” in its annual edition, and announcing the winning titles at the banquet. The establishment of the awards is an incidental motivation that generates additional visibility thanks to the extension of the writing and reading chains. Indeed, the announcement of an prize leads to new entries on CVs, websites, newsletters and even on the walls of laboratories’ social areas, and even in the offices of the scientists concerned. But not all of these inscriptions take on the same meaning. In this office, one of the three award-winning author displays the justification for the Best Tool Papier Award he received at the 2024 edition. It is written that their paper solves a real-world problem, a formulation that is by no means trivial in this field of theoretical computer science, but constitutes a validation of new habits of thinking and acting at the same time as it unexpectedly validates some of the scientific and technical wagers of his career. Far away from the banquet in Luxemburg City, the display of the prize may become a conversational support for his immediate colleagues and his administration.