The Association for Computing Machinery has changed the name of its annual award recognizing computing professionals for early-to-mid-career innovations from the ACM-Infosys Foundation Award to the ACM Prize in Computing, and boosted the value of the prize by $75K.
Good call on the name change, which the ACM figures will raise awareness of the award and be more recognizable. Though not to be confused: the group's more famous AM Turing Award, given annually for major contributions of lasting importance to computing, is known informally as the "Nobel Prize of Computing". (See also: "Crypto dream team of Diffiie & Hellman wins 2016 'Nobel Prize of Computing'")
MORE: Whirlwind tour of computing & telecom's top awards, honors and prizes
Infosys, a giant consulting and outsourcing company, will continue to fund the award, and will bump up the cash prize to $250,000.
The inaugural ACM-Infosys Foundation Award was granted in 2007 to Daphne Koller of Stanford University. Network security expert Stefan Savage, of the University of California at San Diego, won last year.
Future winners, in addition to getting the prize and cash award, will also now be invited to participate in the Heidelberg Laureate Forum, an annual networking event in Germany for mathematicians and computing scientists from all over the world.
The recipient of the 2016 ACM Prize in Computing will be announced in April 2017. The ACM boasts 100,000 members.