The Informatics Europe Best Dissertation Award (BDA) is granted annually for an excellent PhD dissertation in Informatics, endorsed by one of the members of Informatics Europe. The Award aims to recognise and encourage emerging researchers while promoting excellence in research within the Informatics Europe community and beyond.
[Read the 2025 Award Results Press Release]
Each year the Award Committee will select the winner based on the following criteria:
- Innovative research and methodology
- Impact and quality of results
- Societal relevance
- Clarity and quality of exposition
Should more than one dissertation reach an equivalent top score, the one with the highest societal impact score will be selected.
Sponsored by Springer, the Award includes a EUR 3,000 prize, an Award plaque, and an exclusive invitation to publish the dissertation in a dedicated Springer series.
The Award Committee reserves the right to award two candidates as winners and consequently split the monetary prize between them. To expand the reach of excellent dissertations, should the winning dissertation be already published with an ISBN or under copyright protection, the Award Committee will extend the publishing invitation to the best unpublished dissertation submitted.
The 2026 Official Award Ceremony will take place during the annual European Informatics Leaders Summit (ECSS 2026). The Award winner(s) will receive financial support to attend the Summit. Noteworthy runners-up or finalists may also be recognised and invited to join the Award ceremony.
The Award Committee, partially renewed every year, is composed of a subset of the Board of Directors of Informatics Europe. In case a PhD dissertation is submitted from an institution that the Award Committee member currently belongs to, the Committee member from that institution will not participate in the discussion and the voting of that particular submission.
Key Dates
- Submission Deadline: 21 May 2026
- Notification of results to candidates: late August 2026
- Award ceremony: 26 or 27 October 2026
The Award winner(s) will be invited to give a brief talk on their dissertation during the Award ceremony.
How to Submit
Nominations should be submitted by academics of the Informatics Europe member institutions. Each member may nominate one candidate who defended their PhD in Informatics in the academic years 2024-2025 or 2025-2026, but on or before December 31, 2025. Federated members can submit only one dissertation for their entire set of members.
The submission should be composed of a single PDF file containing the following information:
- Full name and affiliation of the nominee (i.e. institution where the nominee obtained the PhD title).
- A letter of recommendation supporting the nomination for the Award, provided by your institution’s IE Representative or Deputy Representative (usually the Director/Head of the Faculty, Department, or Laboratory).
- Nomination brief by the submitting academic, if different from the Director/Head (a succinct description of why the nominee is well-qualified for the Award, 200-500 words).
- Dissertation review or evaluation reports by the members of the PhD awarding committee (with a maximum of two).
- One- or two-page summary of the nominee's dissertation in English.
- Link to download the nominee's dissertation in English.
- List of the nominee's publications that were used as the basis of chapters in the nominated dissertation.
Submissions must be done via the EasyChair platform (to be announced by mid-January), ensuring the submitted PDF file name follows this format: “Nominee Name - Dissertation title”. Please also refer to our submission guidelines on the EasyChair platform by clicking the “Read Instructions” button.
Submissions not conforming to the above rules and applications outside of the scope of the Award will be rejected without consideration and notification.
2026 Award Committee
- Ernestina Menasalvas, Technical University of Madrid, Spain (Chair)
- Gabriella Pasi, University of Milano-Bicocca, Italy
Frequently Asked Questions
I defended my dissertation in late 2024 but graduated in 2025. Am I eligible to compete for the 2026 Award?
How many Award nominations can our university submit?
Our university is not a member of Informatics Europe, or we have multiple outstanding candidates. What are our options?
If your department belongs to one of our member National Informatics Associations (full list here), you may request an endorsement from the association. However, each member association may endorse only one candidate.
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